Sack the salesman! BY SOULAIMA GOURANI ON JUNE 6, 2012
Do you hear yourself using terms such as “customers,” “salespeople,” “sales departments,” “frontline staff,” and “sales campaigns”? Continue reading to discover why these functions, terms, and disciplines are undergoing changes. Learn how to create loyal fans and build strong relationships with your customers so that they will not replace you with a competitor. Look into the customer’s reptilian brain In these days of post crisis (with a new crisis luring around the corner), the consumers seem to have changed how they consume, from whom they want to buy, thus the way WE have to go about selling. How come? Well, the reason is that we see a change in the way that customers gain status and give recognition to others. A person’s status is no longer directly coupled with material wealth and expensive objects. Mental stability, happiness, good deeds, thoughtfulness, and passion are the new status symbols. THAT seriously challenges 98 percent of all businesses and strategy plans. Are you on the winning team? In the future, the winners will be those entrepreneurs who really understand how to adapt their organization and processes to match the customers’ needs in such a way that both structure and attitude (particularly your attitude) match the customers’ changed patterns of consumption. The problem (yes, not challenge—THE PROBLEM) is just that many entrepreneurs do not know enough about what the customers want. My first piece of advice to my fellow entrepreneurs is to consider how to revitalize our approach to the customers, our sales departments, and the way we measure and reward employee performance. Do you “only” reward with salary? That just won’t cut it! Well, I will have to write more about that another time! The point is that we must have the courage to open up and involve the customers much more.
The customers are bleeding The price of your products and your credibility, responsibility, and positive attitude toward the customers must coexist with profit and revenue. Products must be priced fairly, be of good quality, and be delivered with love and respect for the customer and the society. Financial results indicate that many companies are on the right path. The crisis cure has helped. Many companies have trimmed operations and are looking at better times ahead, maybe as good as back in 2007, when only the sky was the limit. Many companies believe in continued financial prosperity even though many companies’ positive results are derived from cost reductions and not from increased sales. And many of the customers out there are bleeding. They have been cheated and abused, and many of them are on the lookout for real
alternatives—you can attract those customers, if you are willing to invest in developing your relationship with them!
Do you want your company to grow? If you want growth and improved financial results, then your company must appeal to the customers in a new way. The customers have changed the way they consume, having made purchasing decisions during the last two to three years. The customers will never again do business the way they did before the financial crisis kicked in. Today, customers receive appreciation from people in their network if they consume in a responsible way, for example, by buying a small environmentally friendly car, by not going abroad on vacation, by serving vegetarian food, by riding a bicycle, by taking public transportation, by keeping the streets free of litter, and by working less and even earning less. Thoughtfulness has become trendy. It is no longer acceptable to just consume like there is no tomorrow. Is your company or shop ready for this focus?
Are you ready to deliver an emotional punch? Credibility and loyalty are created as results of a consistent emotional imprint. If your company wants to achieve success in this market segment, it must operate within these three dimensions:
Impression, which is the first thing customers experience when they meet the company
Imprint, which is what you leave behind at conversations/meetings
Expression, which is what everybody says about the company and should correspond with the individual customer’s experience
In short, your corporate branding has melded together with personal branding, and everything is about emotions. All of your employees (including yourself) have a personal brand that must be in harmony with the company’s brand and vice versa.
London Business School has done research on consumer behavior that supports that emotions, to a very high degree, control our purchasing decisions. London Business School refers to twenty emotions that either control or destroy our perception and desire to buy a company’s products. Thus, there is a direct link between a company’s ability to build emotional ties and its ability to earn money. Do the customers like you? You and your employees have to be personalities. You and your employees must be capable of creating a warm and fuzzy feeling with the customers. It is not enough that you are skilled in what you do—you must also know how to interact positively with your customers. The company’s ability to create positive feelings in the customers is called the emotional quotient. If you want to become successful,
you should get inspiration from others about how you can “meld” together with the customers. It’s a good idea to look at other industries for inspiration to avoid reproduction of old knowledge.
The emotional quotient is low in many companies because many people do not accept that success isn’t about professional skills, price, or availability. Those parameters are just the ticket to get in the door. The new weapon in the battle for the customers’ money is the company’s combined ability to leave a positive, authentic, and emotional imprint. All companies leave impressions, imprints, and expressions. But the big question is whether you know how the customers react to them. The company should have an overview of what you do well and what you can improve. If you want to reduce the risk of your customer switching to the competition, even if the competitor happens to offer lower prices, then put the customer first and make sure that all employees are “cast” to match your customers’ expectations. Today, many established companies are of the opinion that their surroundings view them as a success while people actually have started saying the opposite about them.
To give is to receive! If you don’t want to be the one that the customers warn others about, then everybody in your organization must be able to give instead of taking. All employees must be trained to think about stakeholders before they think about satisfying the shareholders. In other words, think about the
customers before you think about collecting your paycheck! If you satisfy the customers’ needs, the money will come, while the opposite focus might very well scare off the customers. It is all about offering value before taking value (money) from the customer. Offer the customer experiences, knowledge, and your time. Customers can no longer be bought with fancy dinners or very expensive trips. You can still hold VIP events, but they have just changed. Get your customers involved in your “green” initiatives. Skip the usual lunch and invite your customers to participate in activities supporting the environment. Give them something that will help them grow as humans and individuals. Focus on creating credibility, transparency, solidarity, and involvement. Do keep in mind that you should not take something from the customers until they are in “debt” to you. You must give first and receive later. Avoid thinking of customers as customers. Think of them as co-owners, colleagues, members, or some other terminology that emphasizes that the customers are not “they,” but a part of the term “we.”
Are you ready for “slow sales”? Gone forever are the frontline staff and the salespeople. These belong to a dying breed if their purpose is only to be the connector between the company’s various departments and the customer as the single point of contact or if their purpose is only to sell.
Customer-oriented job descriptions need to be upgraded so that the employee becomes the customer’s true value-creating sparring partner. You must have the will to allow relationships to develop, and for that, we need to focus on more than just the commercial and transaction aspects. Try to think about the differences between fast and slow food. Fast food is like fast sales. Fast food makes you full, but only for a short while. Relatively quickly, the company will need to attract new clients again to satisfy the hunger. The customers rarely come back, and if they do, they rarely recommend the products to others. On the other hand, if you eat slow food, the focus is on quality, and the entire food preparation process—not only the actual eating—is valued. In slow sales, you take the time to really get to know the customers so that you can offer them individual treatment in accordance with their expectations. Does that sound expensive? You cannot afford anything else . . . When you apply the slow sales approach, you don’t need big marketing budgets. When you follow the slow sales strategy, you actually don’t want to launch large marketing campaigns because they send out the signal that the company wants the customers to contact them instead of the other way around. You are sending the signal that you are ready to answer the phone and receive the customers’ orders. You become an order-handling machine instead of a customer-involving partner. Many companies perceive marketing efforts as a way to stimulate and attract new customers. However, new customers are not really attractive. Your existing customers will help you attract new customers if you deserve it— the concept is called co-recommendation, and in the future, it will become the most effective way to establish and defend a market position.
Does your company have loyal fans? Many people don’t really know how loyal their customers are. We might have a high customer retention rate, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the customers are loyal. Maybe the customers are just waiting for the introduction of an alternative to your services. You know that you have a loyal customer if the customer
overlooks minor errors,
is not inclined to switch to another supplier even if they can get the same work done at a lower price,
recommends you to other companies,
buys your product again and again, and
takes time to provide you with feedback on your performance.
Go for the heart You should service all customers as if they were VIP customers. They should be handled personally and effectively. It costs companies a lot of money in lost revenue not having a strategy for how to
manage customers—this also includes unsatisfied customers. You should train all employees in building relationships with customers to make sure that they keep doing business with you. Consider replacing the term “customer” with terms such as “members,” “partners,” and “colleagues” to emphasize that we are not talking about them and us—the focus should be on we. Train your employees in getting on with the customers in writing, during meetings, at receptions, on the phone, in blogs, etc. Train everybody in handling customers, and see problems transformed into opportunities and stronger bonds. Let your employees have time to discuss and share knowledge about their good and bad customer experiences. Sack the salesman! Train everybody in the organization mapping, nurturing, and growing relationships with the customers who are right for your company. In short, make the shift from reluctant customers
to voluntary fans. Have fun!