People have choices on where to go for their signaling agent needs. Be easy to work with, and you'll help them make the decision to choose you.
Whether you work out of your office or you're a mobile notary, being easy to do business with is important for:
o acquiring new clients
o retaining existing clients
o getting referral business
Read these five tips to evaluate the ease of doing business with you.
1. Be easy to reach
Can clients and prospects easily reach you at the phone numbers, website, email address and physical address you provide?
If you have a PO Box, but only check it sporadically, you could be missing out on important communications from clients.
If you have ongoing server problems and your website goes down and emails bounce back, this will frustrate people. It gives the impression that your notary business is not professional or current.
2. Get back in touch quickly
The contact methods you provide need to be checked frequently.
People will expect to have their communication returned within 24 hours on weekdays. This may be difficult if you're not a full-time notary. But it's still important and needs to be part of your business process.
If you have an office number you only check periodically, remove that number from your website and marketing materials. The same is true for email addresses. It's better to have fewer contact methods, but to check them reliably, than to have more ways of reaching you than you can support.
3. Answer questions appropriately
As a notary, people will come to you with questions. You can not afford to spend too much time giving away free advice. But you have to be responsive, professional and knowledgeable.
If you shirk their questions, prospects may believe you do not care about their needs or their business. Can you blame them for going elsewhere?
4. Follow up on leads from referrals
When clients and business partners send you referrals asking you to contact a colleague, do it soon!
If you do not quickly touch base with these qualified referrals, your business partners and clients will think you do not value these leads. They'll stop sending them.
5. Do not be afraid to apologize
If you are not able to return a call or email quickly, let the prospect know you're sorry. People often respect transparency or honestly. If you were out of the office with a family emergency or broke your cell phone, let the person know what happened. Make sure they know it's not how you typically work.
Put these tips in place today and make it easy for clients to use you for all of their signing agent needs.
