Turning your B2B clients into company evangelists is one of the most effective ways to earn more customers. A Neilsen report found that 92% of consumers trust recommendations from people in their network more than they do company advertisements.
B2B buyers are especially motivated by referrals since hearing that your company produced great results for their colleagues in the industry reassures them that your offering is a worthwhile investment.
Keep reading to learn how to turn your B2B clients into company evangelists.
According to a study published in the Harvard Business Review, strategic account management programs create a 20%+ increase in client satisfaction and a 15%+ increase in revenue.
Exceptional account management helps turn your clients into company evangelists by:
When your account managers quickly address all of your B2B clients’ ideas and concerns, it proves that your business is reliable - a trait that’s absolutely necessary for clients to refer you to others.
Read More: The Secret Sauce Behind Powerful Client Relationships
One of the most effective ways to turn customers who ordinarily wouldn’t talk about your company into brand evangelists is to take the time to listen to them and transform their feedback into product/service improvements.
Throughout your engagements with clients, have your account managers and/or account executives ask your clients how they’re enjoying your offering and see if there’s anything else they’d want from you.
If possible, immediately act on their feedback and show them the improvements your team is making. Doing so proves to your clients that you’re committed to their success and encourages them to share their positive experience with others.
Even if you’re a product company and can’t immediately implement customer feedback, you can still create goodwill by collecting feedback. The key is to create the results your clients want to see instead of the specific improvement they requested. For example, if they ask for a feature that your product team currently doesn’t have the bandwidth to develop, suggest workarounds that enable them to achieve similar results.
Read More: 4 Strategies to Ignite a Culture of Continuous Improvement
One of the companies that’s great at doing this is Lately. They’re a marketing management software company who is constantly improving their product based on customer feedback.
Every week, their customer success manager hosts webinars explaining how to use a product feature. At the end of it, they answer questions and invite customers to share their feedback about the service. If someone wants a feature that’s not currently available, they’ll share the idea with their development team and create it if possible.
Customers are loyal to Lately because they feel like the company truly cares about their success and is always improving their product.
Company culture plays a powerful role in the quality of service your B2B clients receive. Research from the Korn Ferry Institute found that companies who have a strong culture with highly engaged employees grow revenue twice as much as those with poor company cultures and disengaged employees.
They found that company culture has such a powerful impact on business success since highly engaged employees are:
Taking actions to keep your employees engaged ensures they deliver the positive experiences and exceptional results that drive clients to become evangelists for your brand.
According to Sujan Patel, Voila Norbert co-founder, you should always exceed your clients’ expectations. Here’s why:
"Exceed your clients expectations by smashing the KPI's you've set. You'll seamlessly turn your clients into company evangelists if your results are greater than what you had laid out at the start of the engagement."
To exceed your clients’ expectations, you need to do two things:
Here are a couple of ways to go above and beyond your clients’ expectations
Here’s an example:
Recently, we had a former client come back and they were scheduled to start service in the beginning of the following month. However, before their onboarding date, they had a backlog of expenses that needed to be done.
Though our contract with them hadn’t officially started, their former virtual assistant stepped up and worked overtime to file all of their expense reports by the deadline. Our client was super grateful and impressed that we got the work done on short notice. They’ve since referred us new clients.
Ultimately, the secret to turning your B2B clients into company evangelists is simple: provide an outstanding customer experience and deliver results that are so impactful that they’re eager to share their success with others in the industry.
About the Author: Emily formerly led Prialto's content production and distribution team with a special passion for helping people realize success. Her work and collaborations have appeared in Entrepreneur, Inc. and the Observer among others.