Every small service business gets them: people fishing for free help, or asking twenty questions so they can go off and do it on their own. If you don’t have an established way to help them easily and convert them into paying clients, you are missing out on business and going crazy, I’ll bet.
Cody Heitschmidt (@codyks) mentioned to me that he gets three or more calls a week from people wanting his free advice so they can do their own websites. What can he do to convert these people to potentially paying clients, without driving himself to distraction and bankruptcy with giving free help?
Educate them on your terms
The basic answer is to offer them the help they need, but in a way that respects your valuable time. Here are two ideas of how to educate people on your own terms.
Create a standard booklet you give to people that want to do it themselves. Invest a few hours in creating a simple how-to booklet, and recoup those hours you would normally spend trying to assist the freebie-seekers. You probably have all the info you need on your blog.
Why not do workshops? Charge a modest fee. Then Do-It-Yourself-ers can be encouraged to take the class. This lets you group up the learners, help them all a certain amount, get paid for it, and allow some of them to see that they really do want professional help. Then the next time you get hit up for more free advice, you can hand out a flyer for your workshop.
The goal is to give them some help, but do it in the least time-intensive way possible. And to make them as likely as possible to come back when they graduate to wanting professional help. The more you give away, the more you get, if you are smart about how you do it.
Cody already teaches classes, and he has plenty of clients. But we all need ways to give good customer service, even before the person becomes a paying customer.
This article is part of the Small Biz 100, a series of 100 practical hands-on posts for small business people and solo entrepreneurs, whether in a small town, the big city, or in between. If you have questions you’d like us to address in this series, leave a comment or send us an email at becky@smallbizsurvival.com. This is a community project!
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
Great advice. I think it’s also important to make sure people know that what they are asking for is something you actually sell. You can give away general “what” information, but sell the “how to” information. By giving stuff away and not placing value on it, you’re perpetuating the belief that some people have that they don’t have to pay for expert advice. We get many emails every week asking us for help with blogs or to look at a blog and give feedback. We reply that we’d love to help them and we offer a blog critique service or extreme blog makeover and direct them to the appropriate links to submit payment. Some people make the investment and some don’t.
This is an important issue for small business and entrepreneurs to understand so they can make a living and get paid what they’re worth.
Thanks, Denise. You’ve really expanded on being smart about how you give away info. Most of us are givers by nature, and this is one technique to use that to your advantage in business. Glad to have your insight and experience.
It is arguable whether a prospect is a customer before they pay and therefore whether they are entitled to good customer service.
If I visit a hotel for afternoon tea I do not expect free service, so why should these prospects? They are simply taking the mick and should be dispatched summarily!
Who qualifies as a customer, entitled to good service? I think it’s anyone whose actions affect your results. Credit Steve Yastrow for that definition.
It’s quite possible to be nice, give good service, but to limit that unpaid interaction.
Zowoco, thanks for commenting! I’m glad to have your perspective.
A couple of friends responded on Twitter, when I asked, “Are prospects entitled to good customer service, or do you reserve that only for paying customers?”
Shama Hyder “I really believe in that saying-The true worth of a person is how he treats someone who cannot benefit him.”
GrantGriffiths “short answer, yes. It benefits you just as much as them.”
Giving free customer service, help, advice and time to someone not a customer helps you just as much as it benefits them. In turn, not doing it hurts you and your reputation much more than it hurts them. They can go elsewhere. You have lost the opportunity to develop a relationship with this person.
We have some discussion of the subject at MaineBusiness.com. Basically we see free advice as a way to establish yourself as an expert in the field and build relationships.
We’re all “freebies” at some point. We surf the Internet for advice on blogging platforms. We cruise the Big Boxes to figure out how to install flooring ourselves. We walk into stores trying to figure out which camera to buy. We call attorneys to figure out how to handle our wills. How do we like to be treated at this stage?
I like Becky’s ideas on doing this in as efficient manner as possible.
Carl, thanks for coming by and commenting. You make an excellent point about how we all do this, to some extent. This has been an excellent discussion!