Actually this is a serious point to bear in mind. More and more people are coming online who haven’t been taught these business skills. In many cases it’s not deliberate, I suspect it has more to do with online communications being seen as a little more informal than the old written business correspondence of yesteryear. Anyway, as I promised you here is a quick and easy-to-use template for when you are replying to customers’ queries. It is simple but effective, follow this and you will truly stand apart from the rest of your competitors.

Here is a genuine email from a customer – this is  a typical query (name changed to protect the innocent!)

Hi, Is the £1.97 the resale rights price only and do you offer reprint rights for your products. ie. Can i put my brand to your work and resell your products? Thanks Rick

OK, my “Golden Rules” for dealing with customers are pretty simple

1. Address the customer by name
2. Thank him or her for their email/message
3. Address and answer EVERY one of their questions
4. Sign off with your name

Identify all the questions – in the example above “Rick” has asked me 4 different ones:

1. Is £1.97 the price for resale rights?
2. Do I offer reprint rights?
3. Can I brand your products?
4. Can I resell your products?

So using the 4 “Golden Rules” my reply would be…

Hi Rick

Many thanks for your email.

1. Answer Question 1
2. Answer Question 2
3. Answer Question 3
4. Answer Question 4

I hope this answers your questions, please let me know if there is anything else I can help with

Best regards

Robert

Simple isn’t it? But don’t overlook those steps – at the risk of repeating myself, the vast majority of marketers do NOT do this, crazy as it sounds. There is actually one more very important element missing from that email, and we’ll have a look at that tomorrow.

Let’s look at this from the viewpoint of selling on eBay for now, although the same principles also apply off eBay. Most of us are either selling digital products on there, or thinking about it. You will get questions from potential customers on a regular basis. Contrary to what some people say questions are good. In fact they are better than that – they are great. If someone goes to the trouble of asking you a question, then this means they are getting ready to buy from you.

In the majority of cases they want to buy from you, if you can overcome their objections. You should welcome this with open arms – they have gone to the trouble of asking you a question which in a lot of cases narrows down to “if you can answer this for me then I am ready to buy from you”. For every 1 person who has asked a question of you there were maybe another 10, 50 or 100 who also viewed your sales page but didn’t send you an email, they didn’t send you an eBay message. These people haven’t bought from you but…..you don’t know why they haven’t bought because they didn’t get in touch with you.

This is in contrast to the person who has gone to the trouble of sending you a message asking about your product. So you should actively welcome questions from prospective buyers. What this means in practise is to act quickly and reply truthfully to their question. It does not mean wait a day or two until you have more time, or there isn’t anything on the TV that night.

The question might be simple (“can I have a discount if I buy 3 items?”) or it might be more complicated (“why should I buy from you when this similar looking product I have seen elsewhere is cheaper?”). If the question is straightforward enough for you to be able to answer it immediately do so! You’d be amazed at the number of people who will email you straight back expressing surprise and complimenting you on the speed of your response.

I keep writing this over and over again but this is a point I want to stress to you – MOST eBay sellers do NOT do this. Not only the part time eBayers who are only clearing out their attic but also many Power Sellers are guilty of waiting 2, 3 days before they send a reply to a seemingly standard question. DON’T be like this – stand out from the crowd!

Now, on the other hand if the query you have received is a little more involved and may take a while to answer what can you do? Very simple – write back to them immediately thanking them for their correspondence, state that you will look into their request and get back to them by a particular date or time. Imagine how professional that looks! Of course if you have written that you will reply within 24 hours, then make sure you do.

Tomorrow I’ll give you a working template to use when replying to customers – the essential elements you must include for your messages to be effective.

You regularly see eBay listings written in “text speak” and full of grammatical errors such as

i will send u the video’s immediately after u pay m8

That’s part of a sales page I read – one of my “competitors”! I would guess around 95% of people selling on eBay communicate like that. Now – if a buyer is asking me a question about a product then I don’t care about that, after all the customer is always right. No problem with that at all. But I see this happening more and more in correspondence from sellers - emails riddled with spelling mistakes. Sales copy full of ridiculous spelling and grammatical errors, and this is for expensive digital products where there really should be no excuse.

Now I will readily hold up my hand – none of us are perfect, and I am sure the pedantic will find grammatical errors in this post (hopefully no spelling mistakes)! But really (yes I am aware that it is not good practise to begin a sentence with ‘but’!), there is no excuse at all for this. Almost every program has a built-in spell checker feature. This applies whether you are composing an email, writing an ebook or designing a web page with an HTML editor. This blog uses WordPress, and has a spell checker included. Before I publish this post I’ll click a button to make sure I haven’t made any errors with my spelling.

It’s so simple to do. Do the same with your emails, use the spell checker option. Look this is important. Most of your competitors will not do this, whether it’s due to laziness, lack of knowledge or a general feeling of apathy towards good communication I really don’t know. However I am totally convinced that if you make just a bit of an effort to communicate correctly then you will stand out from “the rest of the herd”.

Remember this. You have no store where customers can come inside and interact with you face to face. Obviously there are no worries about spelling when you are speaking with someone! It is far easier to communicate with customers when they are standing right in front of you. When I ran my offline business I would much prefer to drive 100 miles to visit a customer and negotiate face to face than attempt to do business over the phone. It was just a lot easier to do business that way.

However, in the online world generally we don’t have that option. The main interaction is the printed word. So make sure your emails, your web sites, your eBay listings, all your written communications are spelled correctly, check your grammar and stay away from the dreaded “TXTSPK”.

Alrite m8?Mor 2moro

PS I’ve spell checked and re-read this post several times – I just know I’ve set myself up for several people writing in to point out this error and that error. Never mind, I can take it By the way, has anyone else wondered why almost every spell checker thinks the word “internet” is wrong? Weird.