I never question the freshness of a candy bar when I buy it.  If the candy bar is not up to my standard, I toss it.  It would “cost” me more in effort than what I spent on the candy bar to report my dissatisfaction.  When it comes to big ticket items, there is a lot more at “risk” and customer satisfaction becomes a turning point in the decision making process.  So how can a salesperson narrow the gap between perceived financial risk and customer satisfaction?  By creating witnesses of previous clients who have no fear of taking a financial risk because they have experienced being satisfied customers with your organization. 

Salesperson 101 has a whole lesson on creating a “me” book and how to collect testimonials to fill up the pages of this book.  In a perfect world, that book should speak volumes about the service provided.  In reality, there are additional sources for getting the word out.  Example:  Recently, The Manus Group under went a “program upgrade” that required that the website be updated.  One of the changes made to the website was to include testimonials above the detail for the service being described on that web page.  The testimonial listed the name of the person and the organization they worked for without any additional contact information.   After the website update, an inbound phone lead regarding our Recruiting Services came into the office and the account manager reported that the caller had already checked out our references.  The account manger wanted to know what references has been sent out since they was no record of previous contact.  It was discovered that the caller had been to our website and called the person listed in our testimonial for a reference.  In order to reach out, the caller had to Google the contact information for our client, but felt compelled to make this step because of what the testimonial claimed.  Instantly, The Manus Group website had become part of our “me” book. 

With that in mind, the pages of your “me” book just went global if your company has a website, social network profile or any other World Wide Web presence.  The challenge comes in making a space for your best evangelist to be heard on all of your online presence.  Let your consumers testify to the world that your organization has closed the gap between risk and customer satisfaction. 

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