We’ve all heard the old adage that to do business with someone you need to know, like and trust them. But I realised recently how true this actually is.
We were recently looking for a new accountant and found that there was actually an accountancy company in the business park near us.
We met with the accountant and really liked her. We liked her approach, liked her way of working and felt that she would do a good job for us. She explained that while she would manage the relationship with us, she worked with another accountancy firm in Evesham and they would actually do the work behind the scenes and we were fine with that.
We left the meeting with her promising to send us a quote shortly – all good.
A day or so after the meeting, we got an email saying how lovely it was to meet us, that she was preparing a quote and would have it over to us shortly – again, all good.
Imagine our surprise then when, a week or two later, we got another email saying she was now selling the firm to the other accountancy practice and they would be in touch to send us the quote.
When we got the quote through with an introduction from one of the new partners, we immediately rejected it as being too high.
You see, interestingly, although the quote would have been higher than what we’re paying now, we would have gone with the first accountant because we liked and trusted her.
The new firm had not built that rapport and so the quote felt high. They did want to meet with us, but we felt that we’d already gone through a fact find and didn’t want to repeat this and, because it was just a quote without the rapport behind it, all credibility had gone.
So what’s the moral of this story? In sales and marketing, once you’ve built rapport and trust, it’s very easy to break it. Remember, the potential clients you’re trying to sell to are human beings with feelings, so always treat them how you’d expect to be treated.
Rapport always begins by having a conversation, so if you’d like to do that to find out how we could potentially help you with marketing and lead generation and get you four to six leads per month consistently, let’s have a chat.
Simply reply to this email, call us on 01386 298 042 or click here to find a convenient time in my diary:
