A fundamental change in purchasing decision behaviour is taking place - are you ready?

We all worry about what other people think. It's in our nature. We are concerned that other people might have a better insight or appreciation of a given situation and none of us like to find out after the event when it's too late.

The internet ensures we don't have to rely on salespeople to sell us goods and services until we want to buy them, but that means we are now faced with having to make our purchase decisions on our own.

And the truth is we're not very good at it.

No reviews or testimonials tells a very negative story

This has led to the critically important "review".

If your goods or services have no reviews or third party testimonials then you are in big trouble.

Forget all the rubbish you read of tracking the customers journey and enticing them with enriched content. If at the point of purchase there are no reviews or testimonials then I can guarantee the best you're going to get is a call to find out more - and in the majority of cases you're just going to be ignored.

If what you sell is crap then stop selling it. You can no longer polish a turd and expect it to outshine the competition.

Encourage reviews, ask for them when you feel it appropriate, have a reviews system built into your post sales communications process.

If you get a bad one - deal with it in real time and for all to see. Prospective customers understand that things go wrong sometimes and that problems crop up. If they can see you have dealt with the issue quickly and resolved the issue it builds confidence.

Bottom line is NO Reviews No Sales!

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net