January 24, 2011

Back to School for Sales

Secrets to ReMARKABILITY and UnFORGETTABILITY 
Bonding is In; Flogging is Out 
Three Elements of BE DiFFERENT Marketing 

Long term success is based on intimate relationships you have with your customers. Its not about transactions based on pushing products and services. You have heard this rant from me before.

So, how does an organization move from a Flogger to one that believes in a healthy dose of humanity to take itself to the next level of performance? It’s all very well to SAY that sales should be focused on developing deep customer relationships; it’s another thing to put the tools in place to ensure that it happens.

Sales is driven by their Compensation Plan, so we need to re-vector the plan to measure Relationship-Building Behaviors.

What does the measurement tool look like? I have had amazing success introducing what I call The Customer Report Card (CRC) as the vehicle to determine the extent to which Sales exhibited the behavior necessary to bond the customer to the company.

The CRC consists of not more than six relationship-building behaviors that you consider critical. The rating scale for each behavior is ‘A’ - Excellent (exceeds expectations); ‘B’ - Good (meets expectations) and ‘D’ - Poor, Unacceptable (falls below expectations). You can also include a Comments Section to get added information from the customer to explain their rating.

The Customer does the rating of the salesperson every month. Active engagement of the customer quite often sends the sales individual into therapy when they are suddenly confronted with the truth about their ability to get intimate with their Fans.

To get you started, here are twelve potential Relationship-Building Behaviors to consider in developing your CRC:
- listens actively to what I say; asks questions to clarify her understanding of what I have said;
- is genuinely interested in my problems and issues I am dealing with;
- always returns my calls or e-mails promptly;
- takes the time to get to know me personally;
- never breaks a promise made to me;
- talks to me in common language rather than using internal jargon;
- actively participates in helping to solve the problems in my organization;
- pro-actively send me unsolicited information on solutions that I should consider to my problems;
- says “I’m sorry” when he screws up;
- acts like my partner in business;
- takes ownership of me inside her organization. There is no question that she is my Champion inside her company;
- is a Service Recovery Addict. When his organization has made a Service blunder with me, he takes total responsibility for the matter and will stop at nothing to get the matter resolved FAST and to my satisfaction.

One other benefit of the CRC: the act of having your customer engaged will bring them closer to you. They will love you for asking them to be involved and they will tell others how HUMANE you are.

Give it a shot. You have everything to gain.

Cheers,
Roy


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Posted 1.24.11 at 05:00 am by Roy Osing | Read Comments (4) | Leave a Comment