A sales friction test measures the friction in your business and benchmark you against your closest and furthest competitors.
Friction is any obstacle preventing a customer from making a buying decision. Friction has a quotient and can be measured. No matter how talented your people, the greater the friction, the more difficult it is for your business to make a customer.
Find friction points within your sales system and decide how to eliminate them.
Size up competitors based on what they deliver to customers, rather than what they claim.
Provide marketing a list of improvements which result in more sales.
We call them, message them, email them – in an effort to unveil the truth. A friction test pierces a competitor’s exterior and reveals the true nature of their sales system hidden within. It is crazy what the test can tell us about their management and business.
A friction test awards each competitor a friction score. Competitors can be ranked high to low according to friction score. The lower the score, the less friction. A report is produced and includes ideas on how to improve your friction score and become a market leader
Every sales system, no matter how well-designed, presents the customer with friction. Friction slows the customer from reaching their goal, and equally slows the sale.
Research shows friction accumulates. That’s because customers remember the friction they experience from one interaction to the next. The larger the number, the greater the friction.
Therefore a reduction of friction in a sales system will improve overall performance. A friction test finds and eliminates friction.
Count the number of ways a competitor starts a dialogue with a customer.
Assess search presence on Google, the number of verified customer reviews and the number of trusted associations.
Assess if the brand is a logo or a corporate identity, and whether customer interactions are branded.
Assess how easy FAQs are to understand and whether product knowledge is consistent across different channels.
Count the number of products available to a customer profile.
Assess how fast the customer is served, and how long it takes for a customer to reach their goal.
Assess whether the customer profile is served as claimed or blocked.
A friction test is the perfect tool for branding houses, marketing agencies, wordpress developers and sales coaches. Create more than a pretty website. Create a site your customer will rave about.
Do this before building a website, a brand or a sales process. Use empirical research to support your ideas.
The research is a fraction of the cost of building a new website, providing lots of return on investment.
Each report is subject to less bias because it was produced by a third party.
Each report presents action points, giving your team a chance to build a case for how the website should work.
Have an agent conduct a friction test and benchmark customer experience. Test the strength of your sales system and compare how you stack up against the competition.
Let’s tick a few boxes and make sure we are all on the same page. A friction test will give you deep insights but there are a few limits we want you to know.
We will collect a few preferences from you and ask you to define your customer and name a few competitors. Once you make a payment we will commence the test.
We accept debit and credit cards (Amex, Visa, and Mastercard) or PayPal.
It works precisely like a mystery shop. An agent makes contact in an effort to buy a product. After the experience, the agent completes a questionnaire. Questions include how long the interaction took, and non-verbal cues like how many different ways were available to them to start a dialogue.
Here’s the difference.
A friction test focuses on improving the sales system. Less emphasis is placed upon the salesperson who served the agent. Further, a friction test extends across both our clients and competitor websites, so we get a real-life comparison. So our report highlights improvements to the sales system that lead to an immediate lift in sales.
The minimum time is two weeks. The maximum time is 30 days. A forecast date is provided before we get started.
Any virtual or online channel you can think of including email, live chat, and messenger. To get a good picture of what is going on, we throw in telephony as well. What we don’t cover is physical walk-ins.
We provide a standard report. A standard report is delivered as a PDF and divided into three sections. An overview, a full version, and phased recommendations. The research includes phased recommendations on how to improve the sales system.
A sample is available upon request.
There is some customization, but the research is already designed so you don’t have to think about it. For example, one part you can customize is what competitors you’d like tested, what product category we should focus on and what customer profile you’d like tested.
As a best practice, nominate competitors that have been operating for the same length of time as your organization, plus or minus three years. That way the comparison is meaningful.
A custom report can be generated upon request. The custom report contains more charts and explanations. Custom reports are limited to the data set collected during a friction test. An additional fee is required before a custom report can be created.
No. Friction is not an absolute value. Rather, it is relative to the competition. However, we can compare one friction score to another friction score, when the test is carried out on the same sample and control (customer profile etc). This is provided as a custom report.
Today our standard reports do not support this feature. We expect to be able to compare historical data in 2021.
We host a free online Q+A session. The session is one hour. During the session, the host will take questions and showcase highlights.
If you have more questions after the session closes, you can purchase a friction tune-up. A single video presentation is provided if no Q+A session is available.
Yes. If this is a paid test, we throw in a free Q+A session and a free printed copy of the book when you buy your first friction test. The shipping of the paperback edition is free.
Free 30-day access to a production version of the book is available upon request. Access to our download resources is free.
We can perform a friction test on one customer profile at a time. If you have more than one target audience, we will ask you to purchase additional reports.
The same applies to products. If you have more than one product to survey, we will ask you to purchase additional reports.
During each test, we cover every interaction from the moment the customer arrives on the website, to the moment they make a payment. Transaction interactions are not included.
We test a maximum of five competitors per report. Our friction test is conducted in English. The reports are provided in English.
If you paid for the test, we keep the results of your test confidential. The report and datasets belong to you and we waive any rights of ownership over both assets. If we performed the test free, the report and datasets belongs to us.
