Are you being a Caretaker?
By Dr. Gregory Stebbins
Traditionally a caretaker is the individual responsible for responsibility of looking after buildings and the smooth running of an estate making sure the heating is working; cleaning; moving furniture; doing repairs, ordering materials, etc. Often these jobs are held for life and the caretaker has a very personal relationship with the owner of the property.
So it is with sales professionals that take on the role of caretaker with their customers. To accomplish this, the professional needs to move past seeing the customer as an adversary. Listen to the language of many sales people and you’ll hear combat metaphors that might be more appropriate in a military boot camp environment.
Today, it’s very easy to accidentally slip away from being a caretaker. Technology — internet, cell phones, faxes and voice mail — have allowed us to respond instantly to our client requests, without really getting to know them as a human being. In many ways we miss the little things that tell us who the person is, their concerns, their fears, what makes them happy and more.
What are some simple ways that we can start being a customer caretaker and build deeper relationships with our clients?
1. Communicate personally. Take some time to meet personally with the customer. Leave the sales agenda in the office and just treat them as a very important person. Listen to their story. People often ask, “What’s their story.” Generally people want to share their story, sometimes just to get it off their chest. As a sales professional it’s too easy to look at everything as a sales situation. Sometimes the best way to sell is to “not sell,” at least in the classical way everyone expects.
2. Help them without asking. Listen for things that you can do to assist them, without asking them, “How can I help you?” Just the fact that you took time to be with them and did not try to sell them will change how they see you. Delivering something special that wasn’t asked for, but nevertheless was desired will cause them to feel taken care of.
3. Show them the love. This tip might be hard for some sales people to swallow. Think first of someone you love unconditionally. What would you do to help that person? What do you do to make their life better? Are they that different from most of your customers? I’ll admit that there are some people in my life that I choose to love unconditionally — from a distance. If your customer knows that you care very deeply for their welfare as a human being, the errors that show up in any business relationship are easily forgiven.
A responsible caretaker knows his or her responsibilities so well that things that might break never do. The reason is they fix it before it breaks. Relationships with customers are the same. If you’re constantly looking for the next customer and never take care of your current customers the churn might eventually bankrupt you.
Dr. Stebbins is President of PeopleSavvy and an internationally recognized authority on Sales Psychology. He is a master at improving the greatest asset of any business—its people. With more than 30 years of business experience, he applies a wealth of knowledge, street smarts, and high impact ideas to the challenges his clients have. As a trainer, Greg has designed and delivered numerous corporate sales, management and human resource development programs. Over 20,000 sales professionals have benefited from Greg’s expertise and training. He has consulted on strategic planning, leadership development and organizational culture for dozens of organizations, large and small, profit and not-for-profit.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Like What You See Here?
If you like what you see on the Sales and Sales Management Blog, I encourage you to either:
Save it to your RSS Reader
or
Subscribe to my POWER SELLING newsletter where twice each month you’ll get a full length article designed to help you increase your and/or your sales team’s sales. Just shoot me an email at pmccord@mccordandassociates.com with “subscribe” in the subject line and your name and email address in the body and I’ll get you subcribed, and since I hate SPAM as much as you do, I’ll never sell, lease, rent or give your information to anyone—EVER.
