T
BY DAVE K AHLE
hat’s right. Serving, not selling. I know you are concerned with sales. It’s easy to determine how well your people are selling to your customers. That’s what sales reports are for. But your customers are more concerned with how well they are being served by your salespeople.
I have yet to meet a salesperson who did not believe that he/she provided excellent service to their customers. Every salesperson perceives that they are doing a good job. Not once has a salesperson taken me off to the side at a break in a seminar I was teaching, and confide in me, “You know, Dave, I really do a poor job of serving my customers.”
Why is that important? Because you are in it for the long run. You don’t want to just sell something to a customer, you want to build a relationship that lasts over time and results in years of sales. In one sense, your business is not really a sales business, it’s a relationship-building business.
So, on one hand, we have vague and general definitions of what it means to provide good service to the customer, and on the other, we have the often-inaccurate perceptions of the salespeople. The result? Inconsistent service, and lots of unmet expectations on the part of the customers.
And when it comes to developing long-lasting profitable relationships, it is not how well your salespeople present features and benefits and overcome objections that counts, it is how well they serve the customers’ needs.
I recently worked with one of my clients to gain a deeper understanding of what service means by, of all things, asking the customers! We gathered six of this client’s brightest and most insightful customers together for a half-day focus group. I facilitated the videotaped discussion, and the client viewed the tape later. What did we discover?
Which brings us to a couple of questions. First, what does it mean for a salesperson to serve the customer? And second, how do you know that it is happening effectively? SALESPEOPLE SERVING THE CUSTOMER? Clearly, you know what it means for your company to serve your customer. On-time deliveries, competitive prices, reliable service, competent CSRs, etc. But, what do your customers want from your outside salespeople? Ask each salesperson what it means to serve the customer, and you can expect to hear a variety of answers. Some define service as picking up purchase orders, others will define it as taking inventory, some will propose that following up on back orders or short shipments is part of it, while others will say that it involves visiting the customer on a predictable basis. That’s the problem. Few companies have any consistent description of what it really means to serve the customer. Generally, salespeople are left to figure it out on their own, create their own definitions, and develop their own standards. 38
SURFACEANDPANEL.COM
HOW CUSTOMERS DEFINE GOOD SERVICE. Here’s how those customers defined “good service” from the outside sales force. 1. DON’T WASTE THEIR TIME. If there was one theme that popped up over and over throughout the day it was this: We have less time to do our job than ever before, so you better not waste any part of it. In other words, don’t come into my business unprepared. Have something of value to share or don’t come.
They need to see some value in the time they share with your salespeople, every time they see them, or they won’t see them. Don’t waste their time with idle chit-chat, don’t take longer to do something than you need to, don’t be unprepared, and don’t waste their employees’ time. If you don’t have something important to do or something valuable to bring, don’t visit. And when you do visit, make sure you have all the answers. Know what the product does
©ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/ RATTANKUN-THONGBUN
How Well Are Your Salespeople Serving Your Customers?
