September 10, 2009

Lose a Sale but Save the Customer

In Chapter Fifty-Two of my book I talk about how important it is to put a sale at risk if it means deepening the relationship you have with your customer. Sales heresy I suspect to sales advocates who believe getting the sale is worth whatever it takes - the product flogger and ‘one-sale wonder’ speaking.

Relationships are all you have in Sales, and it is absolutely critical you do whatever it takes to preserve and strengthen them. The absolute worse thing you can do is to erode your customer relationship by maintaining a product sale focus.

There are times when your solution doesn’t cut it. It perhaps doesn’t have the right functionality to do what the customer specifically wants. Or, it might not be available when the customer wants it. Or it might not meet the price expectations of the customer (in which case you should be adding value to the solution!).

In any of these circumstances you need to abandon your sales quest and walk away. Re-focus your efforts on ensuring the relationship is deepened even though you don’t have a solution that will work for the customer.

BE DiFFERENT Sales Principle #1 - Own the customer forever. The long term health of an organization depends on a healthy annuity revenue stream not on a series of ‘one-sale wonders’.

BE DiFFERENT Sales Principle #2 - Do whatever it takes to protect this position. Every action taken by Sales must reflect this directive and not be influenced by short term objectives.

I would love just once for a sales person to take time to work out a solution for me that involved one of their competitors because it was the right thing to do for our relationship. Trouble is they rarely do it. They sluff you off because there is no short term gain for them.

How about ‘Sorry we can’t help you at the moment, but I know XYZ Company in the mall carries exactly what you are looking for. If you would like, I will call them for you.’ Can you imagine! My positive feelings for the company would grow and would be back to them to give them more of my business not less if I were treated this way.

Finally, sales compensation needs to reflect relationship-building behavior. If it doesn’t we as consumers will continue to get stuff flogged at us in wild abandon.

Cheers, Roy Osing

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Posted 9.10.09 at 06:55 am by Roy Osing | Read Comments (0) | Leave a Comment