One of the things we often forget to do in life is being straight forward about a lot of things. We sometimes confuse being straight forward with being impolite or rude. Well, I'm here to tell you something. A lot of times as entrepreneurs we miss out on opportunities with or clients and partners for one simple reason: we didn't ask.
So today I'd like to share some advice from my imaginary friend, Tyler Durden:
Just like asking a friend for a favor or maybe a girl at a bar. You might get some NOs, that's also true, but you might get some YESs too. You won't know what it'll be until you take the shot. Here's another helpful statistic: You'll miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
Ask for reviews
I didn't tap into this until I was already in business for a couple of years until one day, perhaps after watching Fight Club, a client expressed how very happy they were to have found us. I immediately jumped at the opportunity and asked if they would mind leaving a short review on Google. Best decision ever. I started getting five star reviews from many of my clients and pretty soon, my business was ranked number 1 for recording studios in my city. If a business or band was in search for a recording studio in my city and found us at the very top with loads of 5-star reviews, guess who they called first.
That's right, they called us.
Ask for referrals
Word of mouth is incredibly powerful. You may have heard this before
People like to do business with people the know, like and trust.
Well, part of gaining someone's trust is hearing about your excellent service from someone else they already know, like and trust. Think about it. Are you more likely to trust an online review from a stranger or your brother who bought the product and gave you a nice breakdown of the pros and cons?
Anybody in any industry is likely to know someone for whom you can solve a problem. Add to that a short recommendation and you're on your way to closing a new business deal. Don't pass up that opportunity by simply asking for referrals.
Ask for feedback
This is super important too. You might get great feedback on your amazing service or you might also get bad (or should I say constructive) feedback. Which, if you think about it, is also good because it allows you to identify an area of improvement which will make you better and allow you to better serve future clients.
Ask for payment
Last, but not least, don't ever be afraid to ask a client to pay up. Cash is like the oxygen of a business and if you accumulate too many accounts receivable and too many accounts payable, your business will suffocate. Easy as that. Don't let that happen. When welcoming a new client into your client base, make sure you have all the correct communication channels including who handles invoices.
These are four things you can just ask for as an entrepreneur that will surely help you improve your processes, get new leads and keep your accounts receivable to a minimum.
In that vein, I have two things I'd like to ask you
- If you like the content I make on this platform, please consider supporting me with an upvote. I'd be happy to continue making these posts for you.
- If you like my work as a content curator, please kindly consider a Hive Power delegation. I'm a fully manual curator and carefully select content that I consider
- Valuable to the HIVE ecosystem
- Interesting/valuable to me
- From users who are valuable to the community
- Shows effort
- Original
The posts I vote on don't have to meet all criteria; just any one of the ones listed above with the highest weight given to the first category.
That's it for today folks.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
source: [taylor.getyarn.io](https://taylor.getyarn.io/)
I should learn a few things from you ;) Well, all these! 😁 I don't ask for referrals or reviews and I still haven't started to announce my services in the new place where we live. The majority of the private students I have had during many years found me as they heard from others about me. I can't bring all of them with me to our new place nor travel to our old place forever. I should make some moves and your post is a good reminder I stop procrastinating hahaha
Do it! haha. It was the best thing I could do to get automatic incoming calls, emails, etc. If someone Googles "Piano lessons in ____" And you have some good reviews, Google will automatically start placing you in the "snack pack" which is the top 3 businesses for that category in your city. This will get you a lot of clicks, phone calls and incoming business.
🙌🙌
Trust is one of the most undervalued tools in business. People want to protect their time and money and the only way to do this is to associate with people they know and trust. The power of referral is amazing, it can take you from having one client to having multiple just because you have one big client you know and trust who have multiple connections.
Word of mouth referrals are an incredible resource. To acquire them requires being known, being liked and being trusted. In that order.
Your review is very interesting and of course this post is very useful. Regarding "Just Ask" I can underline that by asking, we can get feedback, either in the form of appreciation or constructive criticism, which is very useful for improvement and growth. And, in a business context, asking can provide great benefits, such as getting positive reviews, new customer references, or a clearer explanation of client needs.
Yes, that's correct. Thank you for commenting.
The joy of being successful after working hard can never be achieved by people telling themselves to be successful
@tipu curate
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