Do your sales and customer service functions meet 911 expectations?
When you dial 911, you may not necessarily think of what is happening behind the scenes, you only know that you need the services that 911 provides and you need it fast. Your focus remains on the reason you dialed number in the first place and then a series of events happen that are out of your control….hopefully with a great outcome.
Why does dialing 911 work? First of all, people know to dial 911 because the message has obviously been promoted well. Secondly, before the number existed, countless hours were spent on planning and training to make sure execution would be performed flawlessly to deliver their “product” once they were called. Not to diminish the responsive and important role 911 plays in our lives, but what happens when one of your customers dials your company phone number and has a need for something you offer?
With proper planning and training, your company can implement the same standards to be just as responsive:
- People: Do you have the right amount of people to service your customers? Do you have the right people to service your customers? As the relationship between the organization and the customer becomes more involved, most companies have more than one person involved in the delivery of their product.
- Positions: Do you have the right people in the right positions? People have different skill sets and matching those skills to job function is essential for an organization to ensure the delivery of their product to their customer.
- Procedures: Anything that is able to be duplicated has a well defined procedure in place that is able to be replicated with the same result. This holds true for organizations that want to increase their customer retention and revenue per client. Any deviation from a well defined procedure could end with very bad consequences.
No one ever wants to plan on calling 911 but hopefully your marketing has been effective enough that customers plan on calling you when they have a need. By having the right people in the right positions with the right procedures, you can deliver your product as flawlessly to your customers as 911 professionals do when their product is needed.
Learn more about how your company can maximize their sales function at www.salestechnik.com
Reverse engineering of your sales goals
When a prospect told me they wanted to sell more but did not have a plan other than imploring their sales team to make more calls, I took a sheet of paper and showed them how I have been able to help my customers meet their sales goals.
Most plans, directions, and instructions are developed and read from the left to right -or- from the top to bottom, I have always started at the bottom and worked up. Why you ask? Because most sales people just focus on the next opportunity and don’t take the time to really think about how they won the last sale.
It is very simple. Write down your current sales goal and your past ten selling successes with the activities and actions that led to those successes on a sheet of paper. Additionally, write down what you might have done better and sooner in the relationship that could improve your sales cycle next time. Ask yourself: What made the customer decide to buy? What activities did you do to get in front of that customer? What information did you give to that customer and when did you speak or meet with them. Who introduced you to that company and how did you meet them? What was the trigger that made that prospect interested?
On a second sheet of paper, write down your sales goal at the bottom of the page and draw a target around it. Now in reverse chronological order, list the activities and actions that must be done in order to achieve the goal.
Congratulations! You now have a road map of what activities and what actions you need to replicate over and over in order to meet your goal.
Are you a selling organization?
If your company is a typical company, you have a series of sales people that you expect to operate autonomously and efficiently in the best interest of the company to help increase revenues. Is that the best practice to move you forward in the future?
Have your sales increases kept up with the market increases? Are you bringing as much new money to the bottom line as you are to the top? Are you retaining all the new clients that are closing? Do all of the other departments know who your clients are?
If you answered yes to all of the above questions, then congratulations, you do not need to have a learning session about where you want to be three years from now. However, if you did not answer yes, then there is a great opportunity before you.
In today’s economy, companies have to sell smarter as well as make sure that they are 110% successful in executing delivery and customer service in the manner that the customer expects. By making sure companies have the right people in the right positions with the right procedures, companies can sell their extra capacity and position themselves for further growth.
What got you here won’t get you there……
As companies have built new production capacity through the implementation of LEAN principles over the past few years, their weakest link is now the sales process that is still being managed by principles from the 1950’s. “Outside” sales people are only selling 20% of the time because of the way the organization is designed. If a company is serious about growth, they need to evolve their company to a customer orientated model that allows more sales to happen. Placing the right people in the right positions with the right procedures will allow a company to increase their customer retention and maximize their selling opportunities.
I hope these thoughts and philosophies help you increase your opportunities.
Peter C. Rathmann 