When you are trying to make a sale and ask someone to fill out a credit application and new account form, do your potential customers turn around and run to the competition?

Author Michelle Dunn, in her new book Become the Squeaky Wheel, explains how you can avoid scaring customers away and keep them coming back. First, find out what your competition is doing, do they have a credit policy? If they do, what is included? What does their credit application look like? How many forms do new customers have to fill out? Do they have good paying customers? Look online, a lot of business website will have their credit applications available online.

I am amazed at how much stuff people will jam onto their credit applications and new account forms. This alone can scare a potential customer away, especially if they can go down the road and fill out one easy form and have their product or service. Says Dunn.

Consumers get distracted by long forms, especially ones that ask for to much information or are full of legal jargon or long technical terms. Keep your form, short and to the point. Keep the language easy to understand and in laymen terms.