Sales and Sales Management Blog

January 18, 2012

October 7, 2011

A Simple Way to Distance Yourself From Your Competition

Filed under: Client Relationships,Customer Service,marketing,Personal Marketing,sales,selling,small business — Paul McCord @ 1:05 pm
Tags: , , , , ,

Every seller, no matter the product or service they sell, is looking for ways to demonstrate how they differ from their competition.  Most of us will go to great lengths to try to make our prospects and clients recognize how unique we are and how fortunate they are to be working with us.

In order to create that sought after difference we’ll talk up how great our customer service is, some will give out cute or useful freebies, others will bring in other vendors to help create the perfect comprehensive solution to their prospect’s or client’s issues.

Certainly we should be giving exceptional customer service.  The problem is every one of our competitors is claiming to have the best customer service also.

And by all means we should be doing everything in our power—including partnering with other vendors if necessary—to give the best and most comprehensive solution possible.  The problem is most of the time our prospects and clients don’t really grasp the true extent of our solution until after the product or service is delivered and has been in place for awhile.

But there is a much simpler way to not only demonstrate a real difference between yourself and your competition, but to give your client a very different experience than what your competition would give.  Furthermore, this strategy is so seldom used that it really stands out to the client.

What, pray tell, is the fabulous strategy that is simple yet can make such an impact on your client?

It is simply giving the client the purchasing experience they want rather than the one you think they want.

So simple, yet so few sellers do it because frankly they have no idea what their clients want to happen during the purchase because they simply don’t ask.

Yep, that’s it; couldn’t be simpler.

Most sellers mistakenly think they know what their clients want to happen during the course of the sale.  Ask a seller what their client wants and they’ll rattle off a number of things such as on time delivery, prompt service, a quality product at a fair price, a seller they can trust, and a number of other “expectations.”

These are so general that they are almost useless in defining what a client’s purchasing expectations are. 

What does “on time delivery” really mean?  Does it mean the same thing to each and every customer?

What does prompt service mean?  To one customer it may mean that a phone call is returned within 24 hours, to another it may mean the call should be returned within an hour.  To another client a phone call might be totally out of the question as they prefer to communicate only through email.

The fact is that no two of our clients have the same expectations but we treat them all the same because we assume we know what they want.

We never ask the most basic and simple customer service question—“What can we do to make this the exact purchasing experience you want?”

That question is asked so infrequently (some customers have never been asked that question) that many customers won’t know how to respond; they really won’t understand the question.

In that case you’ll have to ask some follow-up questions such as: “How do you prefer to be contacted, phone or email?”  “If something comes up and I really need to speak with you, is there an emergency number that I can reach you at?”  “Do you want me to keep you posted daily or weekly, or would you rather I only contact you if there is an issue or question that needs to be dealt with?”

Obviously the number and type of purchasing experience questions you need to ask will depend on the particular product or service being purchased. 

And a great side benefit is you can find out upfront if your client has an unrealistic expectation, and if they do, you can deal with it before it becomes an issue later in the sale.

If you want to really make a quick impact on a client and put yourself in a different category from your competition, quit forcing them to live through the purchasing experience you want to give them and begin giving them the purchasing experience they want.

It’s simple—just ask them, they’ll tell you—and then all you have to do is give them the exact experience they wan—and  that no one else can give them.  You’ll be a hero—and all you had to do was ask a few questions that you should have been asking every client anyway.

August 6, 2010

Guest Article: “Managing Your Most Valuable Asset . . . And You’ll Be Surprised At What It Is!”, by The Brooks Group

Filed under: Customer Service,sales,Sales Management,selling — Paul McCord @ 1:37 pm
Tags: , , , ,

Managing Your Most Valuable Asset… And You’ll Be Surprised At What It Is!
by The Brooks Group

Did you know that the chances of making a sale to an existing customer are seven times greater than the chances of making a sale to a new prospect?  This issue, we’ll give you the tools you need to help your sales team manage and maximize this most valuable asset.

After watching some of the hard-fought races in the recent midterm election, it’s easy to forget that the real work of a politician begins after the votes are counted. It’s not the campaigning that’s most difficult – it’s delivering what you say you’ll deliver after the election. It’s one thing to crank out campaign ads and stump speeches, but as Lyndon Johnson once pointed out, “It’s easier to throw a grenade than to catch it.”

The same can be said of sales. In many cases, the most grueling and demanding part of dealing with customers is not in the sales process. It’s after the sale is made. And that’s when the hard work really begins.

How do you and your sales team manage accounts after they’re sold? Let’s take a look at some fundamental ideas that are essential to maintaining your accounts for the long haul. First of all, why do you need to do it in the first place? The answer to that is simple and straightforward:

  • Selling more to existing customers is easier than always having to find new ones.
  • Selling to existing customers is less expensive than constantly finding new ones.
  • Selling to existing customers creates more predictable income, known margins and cash flow.

Again, the analogy of the politician is helpful here. Generally speaking, the effort and resources that incumbents need to win an election are a fraction of what challengers need – especially if the incumbent has delivered on their promises while in office.

It’s the same in sales. In fact, according to Peter Drucker:

  • Your chances of making a sale to a new prospect are 1 in 14
  • Your chances of making a sale to someone who’s not currently a customer, but has bought from you in the past, are 1 in 4
  • Your chances of making a sale to a current customer are 1 in 2

Clearly for your sales team, customers are the absolute best prospects. It only makes sense to ensure your sales team does their best to hold onto them. let’s take a look at some strategies to help successfully maintain the customers you earn.

Here are 10 Principles for Managing and Maximizing Your Existing Customers:

  1. Fully buy into the concept that the hard work begins after the sale is made. Celebrating a sale is great – but execution and implementation are ultimately more essential than celebration.
  2. Work to establish an expectation that is reasonable to achieve and possible to surpass. Failing to meet your new customer’s expectations will probably kill your relationship quickly. Failing to exceed them could be detrimental down the road – especially when competitors are doing their best to lure your customers away from you.
  3. Never take any customer for granted. Go the extra mile and work to understand their dynamics, needs and demands. let them know they matter… they are important to you no matter who they are or the size of their account.
  4. Manage the details. These are the issues that, if not handled correctly, can first disrupt and then totally destroy the entire account.
  5. Master an understanding of how things really work within the account. Who are the power players? Are you being relegated to lower levels? How do you ensure that you and your organization continue to receive “top billing?”
  6. Anticipate issues. You should never be blind-sided in an account. There should be no surprises. If you have delivery or quality problems, you should know about them and deal with them before they ever have a chance to become an issue.
  7. Be proactive but not pushy. Look for opportunities and additional ways to make life easier, solve more problems or create more value for your customer.
  8. Stay on top of billing. Work with your accounts receivable department to ensure invoices are correct and forwarded on a timely basis. Check to ensure your customer is paying on time. Anticipate payment problems and solve them.
  9. Understand that things do change. Your relationship, value, profitability and long-term viability with the account can be enhanced or diminished by personnel or organizational change within the account. Anticipate it and do your best to position yourself as solidly and deeply as you can within the account.
  10. Make sure your assets don’t become detriments. Don’t fall prey to bending too much for the customer. Remember that providing extra free service or discounted products only establishes an expectation that will continue to spiral downward to the point that the entire account may be unprofitable and not worth pursuing. Try to identify opportunities within the account that either better position you or generate more revenue for you.

What’s the bottom line? Prospecting is short term. The sales process is longer. But maintaining the account, continually meeting your commitments and exceeding expectations is the long-haul way to limitless success.

This is the area where there is a fine line between selling and servicing. the most successful sales organizations understand that selling and servicing are not independent variables or strict “one or the other” situations. Instead, they are two sides of the same coin — one drives the other and each is of equal importance.

Remember this: your sales team has to work hard to earn the right to sell to their customers. Then they have to continue to work hard to earn the right to sell them more and ultimately use them as positive, productive referral sources. How valuable are they? They’re clearly the most valuable commodity that your organization has. So treat them right.

The Brooks Group is a leading sales and sales management training firm, home of the IMPACT Selling System, offers public workshops as well as in-house training for your team.  Visit their website.

February 24, 2010

Create a Powerful, Effective Follow-up Communication Campaign–A Free Webinar on March 23

Filed under: business,Communication,Customer Service,marketing,sales,selling,small business — Paul McCord @ 9:16 am
Tags: , , , , , ,

Are you teaching your prospects and clients to pay attention to you–or to ignore you?

What do your follow-up communciations with your prospects and clients say about you and your value to them?

Every time you communicate with your prospects and clients, whether a phone call, a newsletter, an email, or direct mail piece, you’re teaching them to pay attention to you because you bring value to them or to ignore you because all you do is waste their time.

Join me on Tuesday, March 23 at 1PM Central for a FREE 1 hour webinar to learn how to make networking work.

You’ll Learn:
” Why your communications define who you are and what you’re worth
” Why you must have a formal, disciplined follow-up communication program
” Why you have to have several different ways to communicate
” Why you must NEVER send a canned, commercial newsletter
” How to create valuable communications that increase your value to your prospect or client

This isn’t a come-on to sell products or coaching. You’ll learn real strategies that produce results.

LIMITED SEATING

The webinar will be recorded, so if you miss it live, you won’t miss a thing.

Register HERE

January 19, 2010

Guest Article: “Why Customer Service Destroys Salespeople,” by Mark Hunter

Filed under: Customer Service,sales,selling — Paul McCord @ 10:30 am
Tags: , , ,

Why Customer Service Destroys Salespeople
by Mark Hunter

One position that has not been impacted by the economy is sales.  Ask any CEO and you will hear that one of their biggest issues is finding and retaining good salespeople. Something happened on the way to a sour economy: Too many companies learned the hard way that their salespeople didn’t know how to sell. Instead, their salespeople were good at taking orders and providing customer service.  There is nothing wrong with this approach, as long as the marketplace is always going to serve up new customers and keep current customers in business. Does that kind of marketplace always exist? Unfortunately, no.

As a sales consultant who works with a wide number of companies, I am not surprised with the current state of sales.  In the past 20 years, books and soothsayers have inundated us with advice saying that the best way to grow your company is through great customer service. (Think of companies like Disney, Marriott and Honda, just to name a few).  These are certainly great companies, and I’m personally an avid customer of each one.  However, if great customer service is all that is needed to win, then why is each of these companies struggling in today’s economy?

I don’t offer up this example to generate an in-depth discussion on economics and market share.  Rather, I put it out there to say that customer service alone is not going to help a company achieve its growth targets.  It is essential for salespeople to be focused on selling as their first priority and providing customer service as their second priority.

Selling is about digging in and working with customers to help them see needs they didn’t realize they had.  It’s about helping customers see how the solution for which they are looking can be found in what you are offering.  Selling is not about sitting back and taking orders based on what the customer wants.  If that’s selling, then there really is no need for a salesperson.  The entire process could be done on the internet or over the phone.  I know that observation just hit a sore spot to many of you reading this. Possibly, you’ve watched your industry be decimated by the power of the web. Nowadays, many customers can get what they want, when they want it and how they want it, all through their computer.

If your job was lost because of the internet, then let me share something that you may not like to hear, but is simply true: you weren’t selling; you were merely taking orders.  I am not putting myself on a pedestal, because one of my first sales jobs I thought I was a salesperson (at least, that’s what my business card said). In reality, I was doing nothing more than going around to grocery stores and taking orders from store managers.  I wasn’t selling. I was conveying information and providing customer service.

Today’s economy is crying out for salespeople. Are you someone who is willing to be assertive in making phone calls, meeting with customers, and spending time doing what I refer as the “deep-dive” with high-potential prospects to secure the really big business.  If a salesperson is not willing to go face-to -face with a customer, then they have absolutely no right to be in sales.  The only thing they are doing is hurting themselves and their employer.  The fastest test I know to measure a person’s aptitude towards selling is to ask them to explain in detail how they develop leads and handle cold calls.

When a company looks to outsource the lead generation process, or spend so heavily in advertising to try to create enough leads for everyone, then they are setting themselves up to fail.  Over time they will wind up with a sales team focused on capturing the easy sales. They do this by making everything a customer service moment.  This is akin to a pro-athlete thinking because they are a professional, they no longer need to stick to a physical workout program.   When a pro-athlete stops their conditioning program, they may not experience a falloff in performance immediately. Over time, however, the decline will be evident. The same is true for salespeople who are not routinely in the game of prospecting and developing new customers. They will lose their edge. The decline will be so slow that they won’t realize it is happening, let alone why it is happening.

Each client with whom I have the privilege to work hears this message:  The responsibility of finding and retaining new customers is the responsibility of every employee.  Salespeople by the very nature of their position must take the lead and be assigned weekly, monthly and quarterly goals of prospecting calls they must make.  Management owes them the tools that encompass an effective sales process. This process must include employees outside of sales whose primary responsibility it is to provide customer service. After all, salespeople should focus first on selling.  They need the time to achieve this realistic expectation.

Mark Hunter, “The Sales Hunter,” is a sales expert who speaks to thousands each year on how to increase their sales profitability.  For more information, to receive a free weekly email sales tip, or to read his Sales Motivation Blog, visit www.TheSalesHunter.com.

October 2, 2009

Guest Article: “Client Service, Not Client Servility,” by Charles H Green

Filed under: Client Relationships,Customer Service,trust — Paul McCord @ 1:52 pm
Tags: , ,

Client Service, Not Client Servility
By Charles H. Green

Most client-serving organizations I know make a pretty big deal about client service. For consulting, law, HR, IT, accounting, software, and salespeople in complex businesses—client service is right at the top of their list of virtues. And rightly so.

But—sometimes, things can get a little twisted.

What do you make of:

The administrative assistant who picks up the Officer’s laundered shirts and delivers them to him at the airport at 9PM. Regularly.

The project manager who hauls the whole team in on Sunday to re-work the slide deck. Regularly.

The senior officer who drops in on the staff meeting to “send a message about how much leadership cares,” but leaves early because “when the client calls, you know…” Regularly.

The salesperson who cuts price at the drop of the hat when the client demands. Regularly.

The VP who cancels his end-of-day wrap-up meeting with the new hire candidate on the final interview round because “I had no choice, the client changed our meeting date.” Regularly.

The manager who joins the training session late and slips out to take calls between blackberry-checks, because “we’re in the middle of a really tough client issue.” Regularly.

(The presidential candidate who, in mid-speech, stops to take a phone call from his wife on his cellphone from the podium. More than once.)

The key word is, of course, regularly. Any one of those examples can be held up as a case of client heroism. If, that is, it’s an isolated event. The problems come when it’s not isolated.

That’s when client service gets perverted into client servitude. And when we become servile, three things happen:

We continue to insist that we are in fact meeting the highest standards of service;

The client (or team, or associate) no longer respects us.

When respect is gone, our ability to be trusted advisors is quickly compromised.

Client Service Is Not Client Servitude

Great client service is doing things above and beyond; behaving in unusual ways when faced with unusual situations; and doing so selflessly, for the sake of the client.

An act of client service is an act freely chosen. In the long run, we do it because we believe in it as a way of doing business. But in the short term, in those cases where we might be better self-served by doing something else, and we still choose client service—that is true service.

Being servile is quite another thing. It means seeking out options to give faux service, so we can get credit. It means doing things not for their own sake, but for the credit it may garner us in the eyes of the client. It means getting our priorities wrong—seeing things as how we can help ourselves, not one’s clients or partners.

Synonyms for servile include sycophant, brown-noser, suck-up, flatterer, lickspittle and toady. Adjectives we use to describe the servile include obsequious, smarmy, devious, slimy, flattering and fawning.

We suspect those who are servile of dishonesty—of speaking falsely in an attempt at self-aggrandizement. Their motives are therefore bad. And ironically, their servility costs them in terms of respect from the very people they are most trying to impress. We don’t trust such people. And we don’t respect them.

We don’t respect them because they seem to have a low estimation of their own worth. They seem to need the approval of others to feel good about themselves. And if someone doesn’t value himself highly, then they could be wrong either about their worth—or wrong in their estimation. Neither is good.

What client takes advice from someone who doesn’t respect the worth of his own advice? What team member believes a senior who always subordinates all other value-adding activities to servility, calling it “client service?”

Clients take our advice for various reasons, but basically because they believe in our expertise, and they believe we have their best interests at heart. Being servile destroys both of those: because it is clearly self-motivated, it draws into question even our competence. After all, if our motive is client approval, might we not shade the data?

Most clients don’t want servants, they want partners. They want professionals who have self-respect, who have the courage of their own convictions, who can be trusted to speak the truth because it is the truth, not because it will get them approval.

It’s not that client service is unselfish. If I’m honest, there’s always a tiny touch of servility lurking around the edges of most client service I perform. It’s hard to be unaware of the value of being perceived as client-serving

The trick is to not be overcome by a need for recognition as one who serves clients. If we become slave to that recognition, then we have to that extent abandoned client service.

To be client service oriented is to do the next right thing, and to be detached from the outcome; particularly whatever benefit might accrue to me from doing the right thing.

This is the heart of it, I think. Client service is doing good for the client. We are not surprised when we get credit for doing it. But expecting good from it is Station One on the slippery slope, where the End-Station is doing it only in order to get credit for doing it.

Charles H. Green is founder and CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates. The author of Trust-based Selling and co-author of The Trusted Advisor, he has spoken to, consulted for or done seminars about trusted relationships in business for a wide and global range of industries and functions.  Centering on the theme of trust in business relationships, Charles works with complex organizations to improve trust in sales, internal trust between organizations, and trusted advisor relationships with external clients and customers.

September 21, 2009

Guest Article: “Why Customer Service Destorys Salespeople,” by Mark Hunter

Filed under: Customer Service,sales,Sales Failure,selling — Paul McCord @ 9:40 am
Tags: , , , ,

Why Customer Service Destroys Salespeople
by Mark Hunter

One position that has not been impacted by the economy is sales.  Ask any CEO and you will hear that one of their biggest issues is finding and retaining good salespeople. Something happened on the way to a sour economy: Too many companies learned the hard way that their salespeople didn’t know how to sell. Instead, their salespeople were good at taking orders and providing customer service.  There is nothing wrong with this approach, as long as the marketplace is always going to serve up new customers and keep current customers in business. Does that kind of marketplace always exist? Unfortunately, no.

As a sales consultant who works with a wide number of companies, I am not surprised with the current state of sales.  In the past 20 years, books and soothsayers have inundated us with advice saying that the best way to grow your company is through great customer service. (Think of companies like Disney, Marriott and Honda, just to name a few).  These are certainly great companies, and I’m personally an avid customer of each one.  However, if great customer service is all that is needed to win, then why is each of these companies struggling in today’s economy?

I don’t offer up this example to generate an in-depth discussion on economics and market share.  Rather, I put it out there to say that customer service alone is not going to help a company achieve its growth targets.  It is essential for salespeople to be focused on selling as their first priority and providing customer service as their second priority.

Selling is about digging in and working with customers to help them see needs they didn’t realize they had.  It’s about helping customers see how the solution for which they are looking can be found in what you are offering.  Selling is not about sitting back and taking orders based on what the customer wants.  If that’s selling, then there really is no need for a salesperson.  The entire process could be done on the internet or over the phone.  I know that observation just hit a sore spot to many of you reading this. Possibly, you’ve watched your industry be decimated by the power of the web. Nowadays, many customers can get what they want, when they want it and how they want it, all through their computer.

If your job was lost because of the internet, then let me share something that you may not like to hear, but is simply true: you weren’t selling; you were merely taking orders.  I am not putting myself on a pedestal, because one of my first sales jobs I thought I was a salesperson (at least, that’s what my business card said). In reality, I was doing nothing more than going around to grocery stores and taking orders from store managers.  I wasn’t selling. I was conveying information and providing customer service.

Today’s economy is crying out for salespeople. Are you someone who is willing to be assertive in making phone calls, meeting with customers, and spending time doing what I refer as the “deep-dive” with high-potential prospects to secure the really big business.  If a salesperson is not willing to go face-to -face with a customer, then they have absolutely no right to be in sales.  The only thing they are doing is hurting themselves and their employer.  The fastest test I know to measure a person’s aptitude towards selling is to ask them to explain in detail how they develop leads and handle cold calls.

When a company looks to outsource the lead generation process, or spend so heavily in advertising to try to create enough leads for everyone, then they are setting themselves up to fail.  Over time they will wind up with a sales team focused on capturing the easy sales. They do this by making everything a customer service moment.  This is akin to a pro-athlete thinking because they are a professional, they no longer need to stick to a physical workout program.   When a pro-athlete stops their conditioning program, they may not experience a falloff in performance immediately. Over time, however, the decline will be evident. The same is true for salespeople who are not routinely in the game of prospecting and developing new customers. They will lose their edge. The decline will be so slow that they won’t realize it is happening, let alone why it is happening.

Each client with whom I have the privilege to work hears this message:  The responsibility of finding and retaining new customers is the responsibility of every employee.  Salespeople by the very nature of their position must take the lead and be assigned weekly, monthly and quarterly goals of prospecting calls they must make.  Management owes them the tools that encompass an effective sales process. This process must include employees outside of sales whose primary responsibility it is to provide customer service. After all, salespeople should focus first on selling.  They need the time to achieve this realistic expectation.

Mark Hunter, “The Sales Hunter,” is a sales expert who speaks to thousands each year on how to increase their sales profitability.  For more information, to receive a free weekly email sales tip, or to read his Sales Motivation Blog, visit www.TheSalesHunter.com.

August 26, 2009

A Bad Customer Service Department Doesn’t Have to Kill Your Client Relationships

Filed under: Customer Service,sales,selling — Paul McCord @ 8:42 am
Tags: , ,

We struggle to make a sale and then, after we finally succeed, our new customer runs into a problem and calls—oh, my God, they call Customer Service instead of us!  Panic.  Fear.  Our life flashes before our eyes.  Death would be a kinder fate than having a customer call Customer Service.

Hopefully your Customer Service department isn’t this bad.  If you’re really lucky, your company’s Customer Service department is great.  Unfortunately, if you’re selling anywhere in the tech industry, there’s a good possibility that your company’s Customer Service has a long way to go just to be adequate–and by no means is bad customer service only a problem with tech firms.

Two recent encounters have me thinking about how we as sellers must deal with the inevitable customer service issues that arise and especially how we must deal with them if our company’s Customer Service department is something to be avoided.

The first encounter was with a seller who has been through a couple of my training programs and is a subscriber to my newsletter.  He sent me an email asking my advice on how to deal with his clients when they have customer service issues. 

Dale sells for a well known company selling accounting and payroll software to small and mid-size businesses.  His complaint is that when clients have customer service issues they generally have a difficult time getting timely service.  Although the company has a phone number clients can call for customer service, the time on hold is excessive and few customers will stay on the line that long.  They then must go to the website and fill out a trouble ticket.

Response time for trouble tickets is typically 18 to 36 hours.  Typically the initial response from the support tech will not be an answer but more questions.  Once the client answers the questions the support tech has asked, they must wait another 8 to 16 hours for a response which may be an answer or possibly more questions.

Not surprisingly, clients aren’t impressed with this process.  Dale’s frustration is that no matter how much he complains, the company’s response is that they are no worse than most of their competitors and they can’t afford to invest more money in customer support.

The second encounter was with a software company that I was considering buying software from to build a new website for McCord Training.  Over the years we’ve used a number of programs and we’ve never been truly happy with any of the programs we’ve used.  I decided to search out another program for this build.  With a bit of research I found a program that I thought would work well and downloaded the 21 day trail version.

The trial version was touted as having all of the features of the purchased version as well as access to the Customer Support department.  I figured that we could quickly evaluate whether the program would meet our needs in terms of its capabilities and ease of use.

Over the course of a week or so we made significant progress in developing a new site—and invested a great many hours into the new site using the program.  Then a problem arose.  We had problems integrating one of the other programs we use within our website with the software.  We tried a number of solutions and nothing worked.  We had no choice but to turn in a Trouble Ticket to the manufacturer.  A day later we received the response—it was an unsupported question so we’d have to go to the forum and ask other users if they knew how to integrate the two programs.

Off to the forum we went only to find that there didn’t seem to be a way to ask a question.

Another Trouble Ticket inquiring as to how to ask a question in the forum.

A day later the answer—since we hadn’t purchased the software yet we weren’t allowed to ask a question because the technicians thought that opening the forum up to non-purchasers resulted in them having to spend too much time cleaning up SPAM in the forum.

So we can evaluate the software but if we have an issue the technicians won’t answer then we have no way to determine whether the software can work for us because the technicians have decided it takes too much time to clean up the forum if non-purchasers can have access to the forum.

Now, that may seem like a stupid stance for any company, but that’s the way this particular company’s Customer Support department works.  I sent them a Trouble Ticket letting them know that I thought that from a customer service stand point it was an idiotic position to take leaving me with no choice bot to make a decision to pay for the software because we had invested so much time and money building the site with it and hoping we could make it work or we’d just have to scrap everything and move on to another program.

The head of Customer Support for the company said he’d have a support person call me on my cell phone at a particular time.  At the appointed time I was on the phone with one of our clients.  I allowed voice mail to take the call knowing that I’d be off the phone within a minute or two.  Within a minute I was off the phone and retrieved the voice mail.  The technician from the software company informed me that I had committed to taking their call at X time, I didn’t answer so my appointment was cancelled, not to try to call him, and that if I needed further assistance to turn in another Trouble Ticket.  I then got a followup email from the tech letting me know that by not answering the phone I was being discourteous to him and other customers and that his time was far too valuable to be wasting on an unanswered phone call.  I could call and reschedule a phone appointment for a fee of $36.

This was just the beginning of my experience with the Customer Support department of this software vendor.  Although it continued to get worse, in many ways they were no worse than many other tech firms. 

The central issue with Dale’s customer service issues and the software company above is that the companies have no real concept of what customer service is.  Instead of service they view themselves as providing their customers a favor.  Some seem to view their customers as being much too stupid to use the product.  At the very least they view themselves as having the upper hand in the client/company relationship as demonstrated by one of Dale’s customer support techs who told him not to ”worry about your customers, they need us too much so no matter how upset they get, they’ll always be back.”

In both instances above the Customer Support department is headed and staffed by technicians, not customer service professionals.  In many instances the technicians are individuals barely trained in the product themselves.  The focus of the department is on what makes life easy for them, not what makes life easy for the customer.  Case in point: preventing someone who is evaluating the software from asking questions in the forum because by allowing non-purchasers access to the forum, the technicians have to spend some time cleaning up SPAM entries.

So how do we as sellers deal with these situations?  How can we prevent these self-centered Customer Service departments from destroying our relationships with clients?

By being proactive and taking responsibility for being the go-between between our client and the support department.

I’ve had Dale redirect all of his client’s customer support issues directly to him.  He has found that if he gets the issue first he can often answer the question on the spot.  If he can’t, he can deal with Customer Support directly and usually get a resolution to the issue hours or days earlier than if the client had simply turned in a Trouble Ticket.  Most importantly, he saves his client aggravation.

Taking on the customer service issues of his clients is costing Dale time.  He has to become a better time manager in order to deal with clients and continue to bring in new business.  But a good bit of the time he is now devoting to helping clients resolve issues was previously spent listening to their complaints about the company’s lack of customer service.  Most importantly, his clients are happier.

The ideal is for your company to provide first class customer service.  But if they don’t—and there are a great many companies that don’t—take matters into your own hands.  These are your clients.  These are your future.  Be proactive in resolving their issues even if that means you have to become the go-between.  You’ll either spend your time fixing the problem upfront to insure a happy client or you’ll spend the time later getting chewed out by your client.  Take actions to fix your client’s issues—it’s the right thing for your client and for you.

February 12, 2009

Don’t Let Communication Lapses Kill Your Sales

Filed under: business,Client Relationships,Communication,Customer Service,sales,selling — Paul McCord @ 10:02 am
Tags: , ,

Until recently we’ve had the luxury of selling in a strong economy.  People and companies were buying, credit was easy to come by, and many companies found it difficult to keep up with demand.  Things were moving so quickly that many companies found it difficult to maintain open lines of communication between departments, resulting in some delays in filling orders, customers not being kept informed of the status of their order, salespeople relaying wrong information, and other such issues that caused problems and irritated customers, but in the long run didn’t cause a hit on the company’s bottom-line. 

Although that was just yesterday, those days are long gone now.

In today’s economy with scarce potential buyers, no one can afford to allow poor interdepartmental communication destroy relationships with prospects and clients.  We no longer live in an economy where prospects and customers can be easily replaced.

During the past few years when business was great and the pace hectic, many of us lost our sense of urgency in relaying customer information.  We were busy, things slipped, an order got lost in the shuffle, another order took its place.   Yes, we regretted it, but we just didn’t have the time to coddle every customer and every order, as we would want.

You weren’t informed of a missed shipping date.  Finance called your sales manager instead of you to say they needed additional information on a customer-and your manager forgot to relay the request to you.  Accounting forgot to let you  know that the refund for the overcharge to one of your customers didn’t go out as promised.  Manufacturing failed to let you know that a critical part to fill an order has been backordered and the order will not be filled by the promised date.

All of the above, along with a warehouse full of others, were-and still are-problems encountered on a daily basis by many salespeople. 

Shipping, finance, manufacturing, accounting and all the other departments may not think these communication lapses are that big a deal.  Sure, they may reason, it causes a problem, but not anything that a phone call won’t fix.  Often a phone call will fix it.  Many times it won’t.  But each time you make one of these phone calls to a customer, you-and the company-are losing credibility, credibility that took a great deal of effort to build.

As salespeople, we have to recognize that ultimately these communication breakdowns come back to us-we’re the ones with the relationship with the customer or prospect.  We’re the ones who must deal with problems, save the deal, smooth ruffled feathers, and even resell the deal.

We can moan and groan about how it was shipping, finance, or accounting’s fault-but we have to deal with the mess.  We can hope the other departments will live up to their responsibility to relay critical information to us.  Unfortunately, hope doesn’t produce results.

Unless your business is still operating in an environment where you have far more prospects than you can possibly handle, you must take it upon your shoulders to make sure these communication issues don’t arise. You have to become proactive in soliciting information about every aspect of your sales.   

You can, of course, set up an elaborate system to help you track each and every aspect of each sale.  Or you can set up a weekly meeting with each department that touches your sale.  In the course of a 10 or 15 minute meeting with each department, you can review the status of each of your sales, making sure you don’t get a surprise phone call or email concerning an unexpected issue.  More than likely you’ll have to invest less than 2 hours a week in order to make sure your customers and prospects don’t get blindsided with bad news.  Not only will you save yourself a good deal of grief, but once each department understands that you will be checking on the status of each of your sales, you’ll find that they’ll contact you as soon as they see a possible issue on the horizon-and if they have to make a decision as to whether to allocate resources to your sales or to the sales of a salesperson who isn’t holding them accountable, who do you think will get the resources?

You can’t afford to let communication issues negatively impact your sales.  Be proactive.  It only takes a little time and effort, but it can save not sales but an entire relationships.

January 27, 2009

How to Sell–and Not Sell–a Consumer Commodity

Filed under: Customer Service,sales,selling — Paul McCord @ 6:58 pm
Tags: , ,

My wife and I moved over the weekend.  Like every move, some parts went very smoothly; others, well, not so much.

One of my primary jobs in regards to the move was acquiring all of the various utilities.  I had expected this to be a relatively quick job once I had worked my way through the automated receptionist with each company.  It was.

Then came the day when the various utility service providers were to install or turn on their services.  We arranged for Debbie, my wife, to spend the entire day at the house, waiting for the two companies that had to come into the house, the cable company and the gas company, and doing preparations for our move the next day.

How these two companies performed during the initial request for service phone call and the actual instillation is a demonstration in how one company can thrive through superior service while another’s success is tied to lack of competition.

The cable company we chose (we have a choice of two) is SuddenLink Cable.  Suddenlink is a fairly small cable provider when compared with the really big boys, but unlike their big competitors, they don’t rely on size to sell.  Instead, they rely on service.  And that’s exactly what I received when I called to order cable and internet service.  I had heard nothing but good things from my friends who had the service.

The Suddenlink rep seemed genuinely concerned that I get the best, most cost effective package.  He also went out of his way to schedule instillation at my convenience, not Suddenlink’s.   The rep informed me that the installer would be at the house between 12:30 and 2:30 on Friday and that he’d call prior to arriving.  I figured that like most service providers, that meant he’d show up sometime before 5 and might even call before he came-or he might not.

At 12:30 sharp Debbie received a call from the installer who said he’d be at the house at 1:30.  He showed up 5 minutes early, was finished within 45 minutes, cleaned up his mess, and gave Debbie a detailed presentation on how to use Suddenlink’s recording feature.

The only hitch we experienced was with the internet service.  When I hooked up my laptop on Sunday-no internet.  I called Suddenlink’s customer service, worked my way through the automated receptionist (makes one wonder if these companies have any idea how angry these systems make their customers), was put on hold, and reached a technician within 3 minutes.  Unlike with my previous service providers, this technician was more than willing to spend as much time on the line with me as needed to both fix the issue and to make sure there were no other issues that might cause an issue.  Rather than getting me off the phone as quickly as possible, he was interested in making sure my system was working as it should.

The company lived up to its reputation and insured itself of another customer who will gladly recommend the company to anyone in their service area needing cable or internet service.

The gas company was a totally different story.  We have several choices of gas providers.  When I asked friends about their experiences with their supplier, not one person recommended the company they used.  Complaints ranged from pricing to lack of service to billing errors.

For gas service, I was on my own.  I chose Atmos Energy.  I don’t know what the others are like since I have only used one of the available choices in the past, but I believe Atmos is a strong candidate for worst company in existence.

Rather than call to establish service as I had done with Suddenlink, I applied for gas service on-line.  I should have known then it might be a rocky road as it took them 3 days to process the order.

But process it they did.  They sent me an email confirming my instillation date as Friday, Jan 23rd.  They said a technician would call prior to going to the house-and that a $23.50 hook-up charge would be added to my first bill.

Since I didn’t want the installation charge added to the bill, I called Atmos to pay the fee with a credit card.  Of course, when I called I had to wade through the automatic receptionist and was then put on hold for the next available customer service rep.  Within 60 seconds I was connected with a representative who gladly took my payment and then very courteously asked if I’d like to be put on the automatic payment plan.  When I told her ‘no’ she thanked me for my payment and reminded me that the technician would be calling on Friday prior to coming to the house.

Friday afternoon at around 3, my wife called me and asked if I’d heard from the gas company.  Not a good sign.  I immediately called Atmos’ customer service and was given a number of options by the automated system.  I chose to speak with a customer service rep regarding a scheduled instillation.  I was put on hold-for an hour and fifteen minutes.  While on hold I heard a continuous loop of messages from Atmos.  Four rotating messages played over and over-one on tips to reduce heating costs and three on the easiest way to make payments-the Atmos automatic payment plan.  They didn’t seem too interested in helping their customers, but seemed very interested in getting paid.

When I finally had the opportunity to speak to a customer service rep, I was told that the technician had called and no one answered, he then went by the house, no one was home, and he left a tag on the door stating he had been by.  I responded that I had my cell phone with me all day and had not received a phone call from Atmos and that Debbie had been at the house all day and although the electric and cable companies had come by, no one from Atmos had been by.  The customer service rep told me that the technician had noted that he had been by the house at 10:33 and had left a note and that both Debbie and I were either mistaken or misrepresenting what happened.

I asked to speak to a supervisor.

Upon explaining the situation to the supervisor, he told me that I had to be mistaken because the technician had noted in his log that he had been by the house at 12:30 and left a tag informing us that he had been by and could not turn on the gas because no one was home.

When I asked what had happened to the notation in his log that he had been by at 10:33, not 12:30, the supervisor simply said that he had been by and we had missed our appointment, but that he would personally arrange to have someone there the next day, Saturday, to turn on the gas and since the house was empty to just leave the door unlocked and the technician would take care of everything without having to have one of us at the house.

Saturday came and went.  Atmos Energy didn’t.

I called the Atmos customer service department Sunday morning.  It must have been a slow day as I only had to wait on hold for about 40 minutes.  The customer service rep informed me that no one had been by the house the day before, but we were scheduled to be hooked up Monday morning and someone had to be at the house since it was now occupied.

Monday, 11:40 PM.  I call Atmos customer service once again to find out where the technician was.  For almost an hour and half I listen to the loop of four Atmos messages-the one about how to save on heating bills and three telling me that I need to sign up for their automatic payment plan.

While on hold I receive a phone call from the Atmos technician asking if I am supposed to have my gas turned on.  When I answer ‘yes,’ he tells me he’s about 10 minutes away from the house and if no one is home he’ll have to leave and I’ll not get service turned on that day.  Fortunately, I’m at the house.  He shows up about four minutes later.  He turns on the gas, checks the water heater and furnace and is gone in less than 10 minutes.

In four days I’ve spent almost three hours on hold for an Atmos customer service rep, have been told that I either don’t know what I’m talking about or am a liar, and have been advised maybe 150 to 200 times to sign up for their automatic payment plan.  But I have found out that if I’m calling to make a payment I can reach a human willing to take my money in less than a minute.

I’ve had Atmos Energy as my gas provider for less than 24 hours.  I’m looking for a new provider.

One move.  Two very different experiences with service providers.  One I’ll let everyone who asks know how great they are.  They other I’ll let everyone I know know how lousy they are.

Both have limited competition.  One is a necessity, the other a ‘necessary’ luxury.  One company is growing due to its great service; the other is growing as their website indicates, because they are buying other natural gas providers and assets.

One earns their success, the other buys their success.

If, like Suddenlink, you don’t have the resources to buy your way to success, you’ll have to take the Suddenlink route and earn it by providing exceptional service.  And since, like Suddenlink’s, most of your competitors are probably little better than Atmos Energy at customer service, you’ll quickly stand out from the crowd.

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