I was going about my day on the internet the other day when suddenly I lost the connection. There was no warning. Boom, gone! So of course, since that had not happened for the first time, I immediately went through all the steps and procedures to get it back again. Nothing!

The next step was to call our internet provider. My husband usually does that, because he’s the techie in the family. After the usual recorded instructions we finally got a live voice. But as it turns out even the nice customer service lady couldn’t help us out. Just shooting back the signal did not work this time. Somebody had to come out and check things out on location. The earliest appointment we could get was the next morning.

Wonderful, 24 hours without my beloved internet.  How will I ever survive?

Can you imagine what it feels like not to have internet access for one whole day? I bet you can. Painful, isn’t it? Especially if your professional life depends on it. Both my husband and I rely on the internet to earn an income. He’s a mortgage broker and I am an Internet marketer.

Later that night I thought I could enjoy watching some TV without feeling guilty. You know the saying …”There’s no PV in TV.”

Surprise! There was nothing than a grey screen. No picture at all.

“Honey, did you pay the cable bill?” I got an affirmative answer. Honey did.

What’s wrong then I wondered. No internet. No TV. Gosh, we are so used to technology we don’t know what to do with ourselves without it anymore.

Well, matters could have been much worse. We could have had no power either. At least we had that.

Fast forward, 24 hours. The nice cable guy arrived right when he was supposed to. Between 9:00AM and 11:00AM. Of course make that as close to 11:00AM as possible.

So what was the problem?

Disconnect. Literally! Our service was totally disconnected. Someone from the cable company had come to our backyard at about 10:30AM the day before and physically disconnected our cable service. Only, whoever did that disconnected the WRONG address. OUCH! (It would have been nice if that person would have at least rung our doorbell to let us know he was going into our backyard to disconnect our cable. That whole mess could have been total prevented.)

So why did I tell you this story and what, if anything, has this got to do with business?

Have you ever heard of “The Pain of Disconnect?”

When we find value in something and get used to having it, because it either entertains us, helps us grow our business, educates us, etc., then we really hate to give it up. In fact we do everything possible to keep it.

My husband and I depend on the internet we absolutely need it. It makes our professional lives a lot easier. So even if we have to put up with waiting 24 hours to get reconnected, we do that because the pain of having no internet at all is much greater. And of course we’d pay whatever the cost, to have internet access.

As long as the “Pain of Disconnect” is greater, we would do whatever it takes.

Another example: My husband subscribes to a couple of mortgage training programs. They are quite expensive, but chuck-full of value and they help him grow his business. So he would do anything in his power to keep the subscriptions because the pain of disconnect is greater than the few hundred dollars a month he has to pay for the programs.

Well, let me give you yet another example:

I am a member of MLSP. My Lead System Pro provides excellent training for network marketers. I have been in the industry for over 10 years and you would think I’d know it all by now. Not so, because technology and the internet are constantly changing. And changing very fast!

I pick up new techniques and strategies from top income earners in the industry through MLSP all the time. I don’t want to be without all of this top-notch training. To me, the small monthly fee pales in comparison to the pain of disconnect.

You can check out MLSP here for under $10 for a Risk-Free Two Week Trial.

Takeaway:

Give your customer great value and he will stay with you for as long as the pain of disconnect is greater than what he has to do to keep your service.

To Your Success,

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

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Refer Business to Competition

Reading that headline you might think, “Gosh, has she gone nuts? Why would I want to refer business to my competition? Why would I deliberately want to lose a sale?”

But, I’m telling you, referring business to your companies competition, might actually be a good thing.  And like any “act of giving” it might come back to you manifold.

In my nutritional business I sometimes ran into customers who had an issue with the price of the flagship product of our company. They thought it was too high and told me that they could get the “same” thing for half the price at COSCO.

Perceived value versus price.

Since I often felt their objection most likely had more to do with perceived value than it did with the price, and since I was familiar with the product at COSCO I explained that our product was very different from theirs. I went on an explained the superior quality of our product and pointed out the extensive science behind it.

If all that didn’t help, I politely told them to go on and try COSCO’s product and if they didn’t see the results they wanted, I would be very happy to sell them ours.

Referring my (potential) customer to the competition showed…

1) That I cared more about satisfying their needs than making a quick sale.

2) That I had confidence in myself and in my product.

3) It was a polite way of saying (without actually saying it out loud), “If you want the cheaper, inferior product go there. And if it doesn’t bring you the desired results come back”.

You might be thinking, “well, did anyone ever come back and bought your product?” The answer is a resounding “YES!”  To this day, I still have former COSCO customers.

My husband does the same thing in his home mortgage business.

Sometimes he comes across clients who “shop around”. They think they can get a better rate elsewhere.

Randy is very knowledgeable. He knows what’s going on in the mortgage industry. He keeps a close watch on rates and knows when they go up or down. He is also very confident on what he can do for his clients and delivers great value on a continuous basis, (even after the loan is closed).

So if someone tells him, they can get a better deal elsewhere he knows if that’s true or not. And he will encourage his clients to go check it out and therefore refer business to his competition. After all, he only wants the best for his clients.

On numerous occasions clients came back to him after shopping around and even referred their friends and family to him after they closed on their loans.

Unfortunately it also happened that he lost some clients to what they thought was the better deal…But, they came back to him when it was time to refinance their home again.

So it pays to refer business to your competition. Don’t be worried that you would lose a sale, because more times than not you DON’T. On the contrary, you gain a loyal customer who knows that you provide value and that you care more about their needs than you care about yourself. And you also might gain some really great referrals.

To your success,

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

P.S. If you found this article helpful, please share it with your friends on Facebook or Twitter. Thank You!

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