In today’s world, customers are knowledgeable than we may think. The advancement of technology has made everyone’s life more sophisticated. For a customer-centric and an enthusiastic consultant like me, the need to sell what the customer wants takes a front seat in this ever-competitive market. Businesses need to restructure their sales strategy. The focus should shift to building a long-lasting relationship than being a one-time affair.
My Experience
Let me share a recent, quite interesting incident that substantiates the above statements and also proves my point that Customer is my primary focus.
I was at this customer place for a software consultation. My job was to help them streamline their activities in tune with the value offered by the product, thereby easing out their daily IT operations. Quite a few minutes into the meeting, I was able to identify that there had been a mismatch in the product edition sold than what was actually needed. All they needed was the basic edition of the software, thanks to the Salesperson who was keen to fill only his bank balance with commissions, the highest edition of the software was sold to them.
For the last couple of years, they have never used the product to its fullest potential. Neither do they have any plans to use the additional features than what was available in the basic edition? After a few rounds s of meeting with the top management and consultation, I helped them with the right choice of the product.
Sales sold what they want
I couldn’t help stop the mockery here but wonder how the customer ended up purchasing a product which they really didn’t need. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone reading my experience points out that the Salesperson was the decision-maker than the customer himself.
This boils down to the next big thing – does the Salesperson stand a chance to sell anything better or bigger to the same customer? The answer is in the negative.
Sell what customers want and build a relationship
The salesperson would have won the customer for life had he/she not been greedy. All that was lacking here was a little bit of patience and deep knowledge of Customer Experience and Satisfaction. The initial trust and relationship built would have actually helped the salesperson earn more than enough in their lifetime than the commission they received for a one-time sale.
To summarise, Customers are looking for people who can don the dual role of problem-solver and project-planner rather than someone who is just keen to fill his bank balance. Therefore, sales should sell the customers what they need, not what you want.
I would like to reiterate the quote below from my previous blog.
“Make a sale, you’ll make a living. Build a relationship, you will create a fortune.”
By developing your relationship-selling skills, you’ll position yourself as a partner who sells value, which will make you stand out from those sales reps who just try to push products down their client’s throats.
In business, customer-facing professionals can have a friendly relationship with their customers, but they can’t really be friends.
When you deal with a long term customer, you will become more comfortable in each other’s presence and will start to feel relaxed. It is probably a good thing. The good feelings that result will change the dynamics of the relationship. But, it shouldn’t change the nature of the relationship.
The moment you forget the nature of your relationship, problems arise that can destroy not only your business relationship but also the good personal relationship you might have developed.
For example,your customers, will start asking for favors. They might want to play with pricing as per their demand or expect you to support them any time they want. If you don’t give it, their feelings will be hurt and will take offense. And once that has happened, it is almost impossible to get the relationship back on track.
During a recent customer interaction, I let the guard down. I was too friendly helping the customer in setting up a feature and in the progress, unknowingly, a mistake was made which could have costed them. Though the situation was handled on time, I was still too casual which irked his frustration and anger. On realization, I had to switch back to my professional mode but the damage was already done. Further interactions, weren’t the same way it used to be.
So, never let your guard down. No matter how comfortable you become with each other, your relationship is still that of buyer and seller. You can be friendly with customers, but not a friend
In customer success, NPS (Net Promoter Score) is one of the very important metrics that give you a heads up about the customers who could possibly churn out or become brand loyalists. Before deep-diving into the Promoters engagement strategy, know the calculation behind NPS.
There are 3 kinds of customers who contribute towards calculating the NPS.
Promoters
Passive Customers
Detractors
On a scale of 10,
The supremely happy customers are those who give your product and service a rating of 9 or 10. They are your Promoters.
Passive Customers are the ones who are neither unhappy nor very happy with your product or service. They are the ones who would rate it as 7 or 8.
Customers who rate your product and service between 0 and 6 are the Detractors. I call them the unhappy ones.
NPS = (Promoters — Detractors) / Total responses
It goes without saying that the detractors are the ones with the most attention, as the probability of them to churn out is very high. On the other hand, the passive customers and the promoters should not be ignored. Many times CSM’s assume that they would remain happy forever using your product or service.
A strategy designed to address the concerns of the detractors ignoring the promoters and passive customers can cost you a fortune as it won’t take them much of a time to become a detractor.
It is absolutely necessary that as a CSM, you do have a promoter engagement strategy to keep your happy customers engaged. So what are some of the ways through which you can keep them engaged? Come, let’s see them one by one.
Testimonials
Pitch your Promoters for a written or a video testimonial that can be published on the website. This is actually a win-win situation as it is a promotion for your brand and marketing for their business.
Market your Promoters and build the brand by publishing it across various mediums. By engaging them in this promotional activity, your customers would feel elated.
A few may not engage as much as you expected. In that case, request them to review your product on external apps like G2crowd, Capterra, etc.
Make them feel like family
Grab the opportunity when a new product or feature is ready for release.
Organizations may offer early access build for all its Promoters to join them in their testing and requesting for their opinion. For their feedbacks, appreciate their time and effort. If required you can go a step ahead to give some gifts.
Felicitate brand loyalists in user conferences, trade shows, etc. If willing, invite them to be a speaker for conferences and events.
Drive product value
As a CSM, you would be aware of the customer requirement and would have also been keeping a tab on their product usage. Based on that, you can ask the customers to try implementing other features of the product that they are not currently using which might add value to the current process they follow.
Reach out to the customers, when their expected feature made it to the release. Be genuinely happy and educate them about the feature. Make them feel valued.
Look for opportunities
Customers who are happy using your product are termed “Promoters” for a reason. They will be more than happy to spread the word about your product/service. You can identify opportunities within the customer’s organization where you can see your product solving a problem or adding value. Just identify the opportunity and position your product as to how it is going to solve the problem, your customers will take care of the rest.
All the efforts taken to keep a happy customer, happier, shouldn’t go unnoticed. It is important that you list out all the promoter engagement strategies and showcase their impact during the business reviews. This will let the customer know about the value you have added to them.
These are some of the plans that you can come up with to keep your Promoters engaged. If you can think of any other ways through which your customers can be made happier, please do drop them in the comments section.
Written By
Karthik Sheshadri
Handsome :P | Young | Introvert | Music Enthusiast | Budding Writer | Budding Photographer | Cricket Fanatic | Fashion Admirer | Thamizhan | தாய் பாசம் கொண்டவன் The original article was published in Medium
“Make a sale, you’ll make a living. Build a relationship, you will create a fortune.”
Sales are imperative for growing any business. Without sales, businesses struggle to survive in today’s competitive environment. However, traditional sales techniques like ‘Always be closing’, cause businesses to fall behind without a futuristic growth.
Before I share my opinions, I’m adding some stats from Hubspot on creating a positive sales experience, according to buyers.
Listen to their needs (69%)
Don’t be pushy (61%)
Provide relevant information (61%)
Respond in a timely manner (51%)
Sales techniques like ABC emphasize heavily to bulldoze through a sale. But, this increases the risk of losing the overall business as the requirements are not fully understood. The customer experience is quite dissatisfactory and this will cause a large impact on the reputation of the business.
“People don’t like to be sold, they love to buy” – Jeffrey Gitomer.
A Sales Superstar knows that a customer is for life. He takes mammoth efforts to build an ever-lasting relationship with the customer and that is what you call a positive Customer Experience. I have had the luckiest opportunity to work with many such Superstars. The conversation between them is quite interesting to observe as itfocuses more on the customer’s problems and interests rather than a forced sales pitch.
Experienced salesperson represents themselves as a knowledgeable person with solid domain expertise in the service they offer. Customers tend to listen to such an expert and this will make a huge impact on their purchasing decision and improve their outlook about the company. Trust and confidence are built forever before the deal is signed.
“After a positive experience, 83% of customers would be happy to provide a referral”(source).
Don’t jump the gun by pushing through a sale. Instead, tailor the sales process to create a sense of control thus making it easy for the customers to feel that they are purchasing an experience instead of a service.
Customer support is no more a cost center. It is actually a profit center.
I recently chanced upon an article comparing Customer Success to Support. The one that caught my attention in this article was “Customer success generates revenue while customer support is tagged as a Cost Center”. Traditionally, businesses have looked at customer support as an expensive division of the organization. It is considered a necessary evil. However, with more emphasis on Customer Experience(CX) these days, the tides are changing.
In today’s digital world, customers are empowered with technology than ever before. With a post, not more than 30 words, they either promote or destroy the brand. More than anyone else in the organization, they are constantly engaged with customer support. Hence, there is a need for businesses torealign their strategy. A couple of points to be considered during decision-making.
Focus to increase the customer satisfaction level
When problems reported by customers are effectively handled to their satisfaction, they tend to scale up your business more than those who haven’t reported a problem.
Customer problems are indeed opportunities.
The business has to look at customer problems as opportunities. It helps to narrow down and fix the services or products or business processes. It is an opportunity to increase customer experience and add revenue to the organization.
My experience
Having imbibed this quality of looking at every problem as an opportunity, I was assigned a difficult task to retain an unhappy customer. I had one last chance here to overturn the situation. From my discussion, I identified that the customer and his team were unaware of the complete capability of the service. After listening to their concerns, I empathized with their current situation and offered a two-day product level training. This training brought in the necessary product awareness which helped them realize the potential of the service. During the course of this interaction, flaws in business service were identified and fixed. This resulted in improving the overall experience of the service. As an addendum to the existing service, further opportunities were identified resulting in an upsell.
In conclusion, businesses have to come out of this old school thought that customer support is a cost center. This division is a treasure house as it holds critical data about your customer and their experience which provides immense value for your product, marketing and sales team – DIKW.
