How to Use Customer Feedback as a Sales Tool
We’ve all heard the term “customer-centric” in the context of running a successful business, but what does it really mean?
From one perspective, it’s about creating value for customers, delivering an effective product at a good price. But what if we flip the dynamic on its head? What if your customers could help actively improve your experience, rather than the other way around?
This is where customer feedback for sales comes into play.
Customer feedback is one of the most valuable tools a business has at its disposal, but it’s often under-utilized. How hard are you working the following methods for customer insight collection?
- CES (Customer Effort Score) surveys
- In-person interviews
- Customer reviews
- Usability testing
- In-app usage analytics
… But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Let’s rewind a moment to set the stage for an effective customer feedback strategy, before looking at some specific, practical tactics for actioning customer insights into your long-term product roadmap.
3 benefits of a customer feedback strategy
The how of deploying a customer feedback strategy isn’t hard to uncover, but what about the why?
With so many brands not taking advantage of customer feedback to boost sales, it’s possible the benefits of such an approach aren’t well understood.
So let’s do something about that. Here are 3 reasons to give this strategy a shot, starting today.
1. It’ll make your product better
Let’s start with the most obvious benefit of deploying a customer feedback strategy: it’ll make your product better. No ifs, no buts. Failing to ask your existing customers what they like (and don’t like) about your product or service is like running your product roadmap blindfolded.
Customer feedback insights will help your product team prioritize, make improvements, and achieve long-term goals.
2. It will build trust in your product and brand
Very few products rely on a single purchase alone. So if you want to keep customers with your brand, leveraging their feedback (and making them aware that they’ve had an impact) can go a long way. For example in the world of SaaS, this can be the fast-track to improved retention, higher MRR, and less churn.
3. It’ll help you discover your product evangelists
In a world of paid influencer deals, it can be tough to remember that, sometimes, customers just love your product for what it is — and that they’ll sing it from the rooftops if given the chance. With an effective customer feedback strategy, you can discover these individuals and potentially engage them as brand ambassadors elsewhere.
Using customer feedback for sales success: A winning combination?
Now that you’re more familiar with both the feedback mechanisms and the reasons you might consider trying them, let’s talk about sales.
In real, practical terms, how do you leverage customer feedback to help supercharge your sales team to deliver better results? There are plenty of ways to achieve this, but here are a few of our favorites.
Use it to fuel your content strategy
Positive feedback, sometimes referred to as social proof, can be a compelling marketing tool when deployed in just the right way. If your business is regularly connecting with customers via social media, email newsletters, and other communication channels, this is a great opportunity to share positive feedback. Even better, you actually create a positive feedback loop, because other customers see that you’re actively acting on feedback, and may volunteer some of their own.
Give your sales team some empathetic insight
Understanding key rebuttals and objections is an essential part of closing a sale, so customer feedback can be a useful tool in sourcing this information. By taking negative (or “constructive”) feedback on board, then feeding it back to your sales team, they’ll be able to develop strategies to address these concerns in advance. Even if that’s simply, “Our product team is already working on a fix”, it’ll reassure prospects.
Adapt common pain points into your long-term roadmap
Improving sales isn’t just about adapting to in-the-moment conversations with prospects, it’s also about delivering a better product long-term. After all, if a salesperson is making promises your roadmap doesn’t back up, that’s a recipe for disaster down the road. Instead, leverage the insights coming from your customer feedback strategy to evolve your product roadmap and ensure fixes for the most common and frustrating issues are locked in early.
Build case studies with your brand cheerleaders
The customers who give you the very best feedback — the cheerleaders we mentioned earlier — can turn out to be lucrative assets for any product business. If you’re finding positive feedback coming from a particular customer, why not engage them to create a case study with you? After all, who better to sing your praises than a customer you already know loves the product? Case studies like these can inspire confidence in prospects, address concerns, and build trust in your product from the off.
Want to learn more about leveraging customer feedback for growth?
We hope this quick look into customer feedback for sales has helped you better understand how it can be a tool for long-term, sustainable growth. But it doesn’t end here. There’s plenty more to learn — and we’ve packaged it all up in an easy-to-digest ebook format.
Download your free copy of “How To Use Customer Feedback for Business Growth” today and take your first steps into a more customer-centric, data-driven, world.
This is a guest post from airfocus.
