Want More Word-of-Mouth Sales? Start with Better Client Feedback (Ep#16)

If your clients aren’t buying again or raving about you to others, it’s not just bad luck—it’s a feedback problem.

Most business owners rely on testimonials and reviews to gauge how they’re doing, but those only tell you part of the story. The truth? Your happiest clients will shout about you, your unhappy ones might warn others, but the ones in the middle—the ones who could become loyal fans—often say nothing at all.

In this episode of The Upside-Up Marketing Podcast, I’m breaking down why the feedback you’re getting isn’t enough, the hidden signs your client experience isn’t as great as you think, and how to start collecting the kind of insights that turn okay clients into repeat buyers and raving fans.

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MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO: 
👉 You can get your hands on the questions I ask new clients when onboarding that get the feedback I need about the initial buying process whilst also getting them excited to start working with me by sending me a message on LinkedIn or comment "QUESTIONS" below this video
👉 If you would like me to create a resource to give you the questions you should be asking in your feedback forms, comment below or DM me on social media (links below) – if I get enough yes’s I’ll get it made and send you a copy!

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🧡 Enjoyed this episode? Why not share it to your social media and tag me @orangesheepkatie – here’s the link https://youtu.be/J2Dy4HQ7E4w 

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When you’re ready, here are three ways I can help you get faster results: 
SUBSCRIBE to "The Upside-Up Marketing Podcast here on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts 
DOWNLOAD your "Ideal Client Anti-Avatar" to help you focus on the things that DO matter, forget the things that don't - and how to tell which is which: www.orangesheepresearch.co.uk/anti 
WORK WITH ME: Check my LinkedIn profile for ways I can support you to connect more deeply with your ideal clients through your words www.linkedin.com/in/katie-spreadbury and send me a message for the details! 

***Please bear with me as I migrate systems and update the tech in my business! There will be straight-up links to everything soon but for now don't be afraid to send me a message on socials, I promise I won't bombard you with DMs trying to convince you to buy, or "just checking in to see if you've had any more thoughts..." - that's not my style. At all. ***** 

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Connect with me on socials: 
➡️LinkedIn (the best place to find me): https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-spreadbury 
➡️Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/orangesheepresearch 
➡️Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/orangesheepkatie 

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TIMESTAMPS ⏱️
00:00 Introduction
02:32 The Importance of Client Feedback
05:00 The Limitations of Testimonials and Reviews
07:30 Feedback form completion rates – why people don’t give feedback and why this is a problem
10:21 Overwhelming positivity
12:00 A lack of actionable detail (and a stat that will blow your mind)
14:01 Gathering Honest and Actionable Feedback
17:49 Conclusion

You can download your complimentary guide to "Three Techniques to Validate Your Offer Before You Launch" here: https://www.orangesheepresearch.co.uk/validate

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Transcript

0:00

Clients who love you buy more, buy more often, and rave about you to anyone who will listen. We all want more clients like that, don't we? But if you're relying on testimonials and reviews for your feedback to improve your services, you could be missing out on a goldmine of data that could turn a meh experience into a where can I buy more? For why this is and what you can do instead, I've made this podcast episode just for you. Using marketing to persuade people to buy your thing is hard, icky and not an effective use of your time. It's an upside down way of doing things. Introducing Upside Up Marketing. Helping you create offers people want to buy and share them in a way that feels good. All over a nice cup of tea. Hello and welcome to the Upside Up Marketing Podcast. I have been thinking a lot this week about client feedback and client reviews and things. I'm trying to systemize mine to make sure that I get feedback from everyone. and it's got me thinking right back to. Actually, to help me prepare for this episode, I look back at a Facebook live that I did in my Facebook group, which I had then, in 2020. It was one of my first ones. Oh my gosh, it was hilarious. But, you know, we've all got to start somewhere, haven't we? It was a bit cringe watching back of five years ago me, but yeah, very informative. And it was a really good live, actually. And so I'm bringing some of the points from it into today's podcast episode. Although, obviously, the world has moved on a lot in the last five years, so I am updating it accordingly. Anyway, I hope you've all had a great week. One thing that I've learned this week is when they tell you that there is no engagement on LinkedIn on a Sunday, do not listen to them. Because if you post something that's actually useful for people, which I did this Sunday, just Sunday afternoon, sitting there on the, on the, on the sofa, discovered something, thought I'd share it, 2000 percent more impressions than usual. So, you know, don't let people tell you that LinkedIn Doesn't have engagement on a Sunday. Same for any platform. If you put something that's actually useful on there, people want to know. Anyway, that's my week. And by the way, if you haven't met me yet, hello, my name is Katie Spreadbree and I'm here to help you move from having to work really hard for every sale, you know, long protracted conversations in the DMs, one to one conversations to selling effortlessly through your sales pages and content by helping you understand your ideal clients at such depth that you can. Get your written words to do the heavy lifting for you, so that, they'll click to buy without having to have that long conversation with you. This will help you scale, will help you bring more people on board, and also just make your marketing message more effective, so you can make more sales in less time for less effort. So why do we need client feedback? Okay, so I spent a lot of my time talking about the upfront marketing side of getting to know your ideal client, getting to know your customers and things like that. But now I'm talking about feedback from the people who are actually your clients. Why do we need that feedback? I mean, they've already bought, isn't that job done? Well, it is, now I can't remember the exact stat and I can't find where I've got it written down, but it's something like 10 times easier to sell more to a current client than it is to attract a new one. And. Like I said at the beginning, clients who love us, they buy more, they buy more often, and critically, they tell everyone they know about it. Anyone that will listen, anyone that's looking for anything like you do, anyone who isn't, they will shout about you from the rooftops. So we want more clients like that. And to do that, we need to know how we're coming across, and we need to know if we're making that extra special experience for everybody. We need to know if our brand is coming across the same way we think it is. You know, we think we're really fun and exciting, but if they just pick up like bored monotony from us, that's not coming across the way we thought. What's the buying experience like? You know, is there any points? It's actually really hard and they had to work really hard to make that purchase because someone who is not as tenacious will just drop out at that moment. Are we as awesome to work with as we think we are? Of course we all design our service packages. To be the best experience for the client, but when you're sitting at this end of it the same way It's very hard to put yourself. I always say it's very hard to put yourself in your ideal client shoes when it comes to understanding where they're at with the problems they're having and the solutions they need and things like that It's very hard to experience your own customer experience from The delivery side of the desk of the computer of whatever is it as clear as we think it is? Is it a good experience as we think it is? Do they feel special? Do they feel supported? Do they feel inspired? And so on. And it's really, really important to know what our weaknesses are and what our strengths are. So that we can develop our weaknesses and improve on them or bring in external help to do that for us. And we can build on our strengths and make sure we are putting those in our marketing and shouting about them from the rooftops. So people know how great we are to work with. We can only do that if we actually know what they are. Because we want to turn every client experience into one they want to repeat and one they want to tell everyone else about. But when I'm talking to other business owners, asking them what client feedback they gather they most commonly say, yes, I gather feedback. And then they talk about reviews and testimonials and feedback forms that are set up purely to get testimonials. Now, testimonials and reviews are critical for your business. Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying don't collect them. I'm not saying don't have them. We all know that. When we're making a purchase decision, you always check the reviews, don't you, to make sure especially if you're investing a lot, you want to see that other people have had a good experience, have got results, you want to see that people like you have got results, to give you the confidence that you're making a good decision. So they are an important thing to be collecting. They're also great for an ego boost, aren't they? You know, you get someone telling you how great you are. That's fantastic and it makes you inspired to go out there and do it more and get through, you know, the difficult parts of business because it's worth it when people tell you how great you are and how happy they are with you. So yeah, keep collecting them and if you're not, start collecting them, please start collecting them because they're a really really important thing to have in your business. But they will never tell the whole story. The signs people are less than delighted with you will be more subtle, but if you're finding A lot of people are never quite getting round to doing that testimonial for you. If you're finding people aren't taking you up on your upsells or purchasing extensions to their to their program or the membership churn is quite high. If the feedback you are getting is quite vague and focused on what a lovely person you are and how nice it was to work with you and not. The difference you made to their lives and the transformation you provided. They're all signs that maybe the client experience isn't as good as it could be and there are things that you need to work on. But without the feedback, you don't know what these things are. So that's signs that people aren't happy. The reason that going and asking, like sending your testimonial form, isn't enough to get that feedback. Even if you include things like, you might be thinking, Oh, no it's fine, I always have a question in there, what could have been improved? There are still a few problems with that, and let me just go through a few reasons why testimonials and reviews and that, the sort of feedback form that's geared towards getting those. isn't ideal for getting the actual feedback you need to actually improve the experience. Not just to go out there and market it to other people, but to improve it and, you know, always be improving, always be getting better. So the first one is, loads of people don't complete them. Loads of people don't complete them. If you've worked closely one to one with someone, you'll probably have a higher completion rate than the average. But for buying You know, courses that sign up hundreds of people at a time or even tens of people at a time, you know, the, in general, the more clients you have and the more Distant your relationship the harder you will find it to get people to actually fill in the Testimonials and the feedback for you partly. It's an effort thing having to think of think back to the whole time they've had with you and type it all out like that takes effort and time from people and A lot of people aren't going to do that partly it's a time thing, you know, people, they intend to do it, they just don't have time, they forget. And that reminds me, I've got someone I need to write a testimonial for that I've promised that I just haven't done yet because I've just been swamped with other things. But it is important so I'm going to go and do that after this, after I've recorded this, I promise I will. Another thing is some people are worried about privacy, and they don't want it shared online that they've worked with you. Maybe they feel like it's Their clients will judge them if they have had to get help in this area. Maybe it's an area that they help other people with and they've needed to get support. So if they're a business coach getting business coaching, they might not feel that they can talk about that or they might just not feel comfortable with having their feedback published. But they might also not feel comfortable telling you, they don't feel comfortable about that, if you know what I mean. So they might just, you know, sort of stand back and just. Hope the problem will go away if they just ignore it and so I just not do it the problem of people lots of people not fitting in feedback forms and testimonials would be Fine if it was a like random who did and who didn't but the fact is it's not it's usually the people in the middle That don't fit it in the people who have had an all right experience. It's been so so it's not been exceptional But it's not been terrible. If it's been exceptional, they'll be excited to give you a review. They will, you know, go out there and make sure they do it because they'll be so delighted that they want to tell everyone about it and they want to make sure everyone gets the benefit of working with you. If it's terrible, if they've had an awful time, they'll want to go out there and warn people not to sign up with you. Let's hope you don't get any of those. But for the people it was like, yeah, it was okay. They're the least likely to fill it in, but they're the ones you most need the feedback from, because they're the ones who have the most potential to turn them into an, from an okay experience to an exceptional experience that they love, that they want to repeat, that they want to tell everyone about. But you can't do that if you don't know why it was only okay, because we know okay isn't good enough. You want to give all your clients an exceptional experience. So, that's the first one. The second problem is that In these situations people are overwhelmingly positive, I mean. I don't know if you've heard of the concept of review inflation, but, you know, if you're rating something now, your takeaway, your Uber driver, whatever. Anything less than five star. You know, if something's all right and as expected, you give it five stars because anything less implies there was something wrong. And we all know what an impact that can have on someone's business. If they haven't got straight five star reviews. People are like, Oh, well, why is that? What went wrong? And it can have a real impact on the business. And people know that. And you know, they like you. They want you to be successful. So they won't ever. Talk it down, because they don't want to have that impact on you. Maybe they don't want to hurt that feelings, your feelings, you know, if they've enjoyed working with you, they'll have put up with the things like the clunky, portal that they had to use, or they never knew which link to click on because it wasn't in any place that was easy to find it. They'll put up with that because they liked you, and if they liked you, they don't want to hurt your feelings as well, so they might be More positive than they would have been otherwise. A lot of people are really awkward having those conversations. They don't like to say anything negative. They want to avoid that conflict. And also they want you to like them. Especially if, you're sort of hanging around in the same circles online. They want you to like them. So, there are lots and lots of reasons why people won't give their negative feedback to you. And it's really, really important that you understand that and understand that therefore, if you're only getting positive stuff, it doesn't mean there is only positive stuff. It might mean there's only positive stuff, but you can't be sure unless you have given them the opportunity, a safe opportunity to share the negative stuff, and I'll come on to that in a minute. The third reason that reviews and testimonials are not reliable as client feedback is that they are, they rarely contain useful actionable information in them. They rarely contain the nitty gritty of what could be improved, what little bits they found annoying what would have elevated the experience from okay to excellent, what didn't live up to expectations. They rarely, rarely include that sort of information. 97 percent of unhappy customers don't complain, they just don't buy again. I mean, think about situations where that's been the case for you. You walk into a store and you get, a really miserable sales assistant who's rude to you, you might not complain, but you're not going back in that store. So, you know, people in general won't make a complaint. They just won't come again. And that's a problem for your business. Because like I said, it's so much easier to sell more to a happy client than it is to attract a new one. So, It's a real problem if they're going away and not buying again but not telling you why. And also, people talk. I mean, they might not put it out in the open if, unless they're, unless you've really, really, really pissed them off, they probably won't post about it in the open. But when they're talking to people at networking in a coffee chat, in anything like that and, oh, you work with so and so, I've been looking, I've been looking at working with her, what's it like? They'll be like, well, to be honest, it's that the other, it wasn't as great as I thought it was. You don't want people to be saying that. But, if you haven't asked them for their feedback, you might not know that they would even have the potential to say that, because you might not know that they feel like you've let them down, if you see what I mean. So, you really, really want to know. What was brilliant what you can build on and also what wasn't so great and it could be hard to hear that feedback it's really Vulnerable to open yourself up to that and say look, I really want to know what could have been better but it's really really important that you do because something that was even if it's something that they think is quite minor not minor and was a bit of a niggle to them and they barely think Is worth sharing That might be enough to stop someone else from buying, or it might be enough to just put them off from buying from you again. And it will dent your confidence if you see the energy draining from them as they go through your program and they're not getting the results. But equally, it might also affect whether they're willing to give you that glowing testimonial that you need. So what do we do instead? What can we do to get this actual real feedback as well as the feedback that we want about what an impact we've had on them and how great we were for our testimonials. So here are four things you can do to ensure you are collecting open and honest feedback from your clients and customers to make sure you have the information you need to make your services the best they can be. The first one Is to ask for feedback openly and often and create a culture of them seeing that you are open to feedback You are open to constructive criticism and you actively want that feedback so you can make things better Okay, don't let your ego get in the way. Don't be protective of this Ask them Often and make sure they know that it is expected, you know, it's normal and it's Not going to be you know, they're not going to seem rude. It's normal It's what you want If they are giving you feedback ask them when they first sign up that sets the tone right from the start ask them Key milestones along the journey with you, you know, maybe when you complete a certain Part of the course ask them at the end, ask them after they're finished, and you can even go back to them later on to find out, you know, looking back. Now they've had time to put everything into context, into action in their business, was there anything that didn't quite fit, didn't quite work for them. So, you know, regularly be asking for this sort of feedback and set that as the culture. The second way you can make sure you're always getting open and reliable customer feedback is to allow them to leave feedback anonymously. Remember what I was saying about how they want you to like them and they don't want to be the one that hurts your feelings. If you, if they can have a way that they can leave feedback anonymously, so maybe through a survey or a, even a simple Google form that isn't tied back to their account and their email address, then this is much more likely to help them be open and mention things that they think, Oh, I didn't really want to say this, but it would be useful for you to know this. So yeah, allow them to leave feedback anonymously. The third way you can make sure you are getting open and honest customer feedback so you can actually use it to improve your services is If you're sending them a form with questions, like a survey or similar Don't require them to type essays. Make it easy for them. Please make it easy for them. Give them questions that they can pick, you know, an answer on a scale. So, you know, a satisfied scale or a rating from 1 to 10, and give them questions that ask about specifics, so rather than just saying were you happy with the way I communicated with you, ask them, Was there sufficient communication that you always knew where and when you had to be at sessions? Ask them, did you find the portal easy or difficult to use and, you know, let them choose a rating and then give them the option to type in more if they want to. Because it will allow them to give a rating and move on if they're in a hurry, or if they actually, it prompts an idea in their head they can tell you exactly why they gave that rating. So make it easy for them, but give them space to share as much information as they want. The final tip I would have for making sure you are collecting good quality customer feedback to actually help you improve your offers is consider outsourcing it. If you are outsourcing it, then there is no barrier to them being honest because they know that before the information is, like, given back to you, it will be amalgamated with everyone else's, the key things will be pulled out, it will be presented in a constructive way, and you know, they're not going to be hurting your feelings because they know that you have it. Actually invested in getting feedback. So yeah, consider asking someone else to administer the survey for you, or even to have one to one conversations with people to get that more depth of how the experience actually was. By the way, this is something I do. Send me a message if you, if you want to do that. And we can look at what that would look like for you. But overall, just whatever you do, make sure you are doing something to get this honest, open feedback from your clients, where they are free and open to be critical, as well as be glowing from. So you still want to be getting that amazing glowing feedback that makes you feel good and you can use in your marketing But if you actually want to improve your client retention if you actually want to improve your word of mouth marketing you need to be making sure every client is having an excellent experience and the way to do that is to find out how your current clients are finding the experience and Get that feedback so you can make the improvements that will actually make a difference if you're not sure what to ask I've got a couple of resources for you. I'm going to pop a link in the show notes to the five questions that I ask all my clients the moment they sign up. Sometimes in the exact moment on the thank you page, you might, you might want to ask these or in a conversation within the first week or so of them signing up to get their feedback on. the process of purchasing, why they signed up and everything like that. And I'm also thinking about creating a resource for the questions you should be asking in your feedback survey. So if that is something that you would find useful, just pop me a message, either if you're listening on audio, there's a send me a message link in the show notes. Pop me a message on there. Bear in mind that unless you leave me your email address in that message I will not know who you are and be able to reply directly, but It will give me an idea of how many people want this or if you're on YouTube drop me a comment or connect with me On any of my socials and send me a message if you'd like a copy or if you'd like me to create that resource Of the questions to be asking in your client feedback surveys then send me a message if I get enough responses I will create that resource and share it with you. Thank you very much for listening today Remember, keep questioning everything, especially your assumptions, and I will see you next time for the next episode of the Upside Up Marketing Podcast. Cheerio!