Typical sales pros are excited (and a little relieved) whenever they close a deal. Highly successful sales professionals are usually just as glad, but they understand something that a lot of less successful sales pros don’t realize: closing the deal is simply one step along the road to even greater success if they will only stay committed to following through with this customer.
Highly successful sales professionals spend 10% of their resources educating the universe, promoting the business to the community at large. They spend 30% of their time cultivating relationships with prospective customers. But they spend a whopping 60% of their time and creative energy continuing to cultivate trust and explore opportunities with existing customers. According to the Harvard Business Review, it costs five times as much to sell a new customer as it does to make the same sale to an existing customer. Also, typically, the 10th purchase from an existing customer is 80% larger than the first purchase. For this reason, successful sales professionals will stay in regular contact with their existing customers to make sure that the solution they bought is working well, and to quickly address any questions or problems that arise. They treat customers more like friends than as sources of revenue.
The question then becomes a fairly simple one: What can sales professionals do to consistently model commitment to their customers in a way that will reinforce trust and credibility, and create more opportunities to drive revenue going forward. Sales teams often deploy a variety of strategies in hopes of accomplishing this goal, often with limited effectiveness. When all else fails, it never hurts to ask your customers how they view this idea of commitment and what they value in a vendor relationship. A few years ago, a major Fortune 500 company actually took the proactive step of asking their customers these questions, and they were surprised by the depth and the honesty of the answers they received. They distilled the responses down to five major behaviors customers look for in vendors that demonstrate commitment and help build trust:
1. Anticipating potential problems and acting to avert them – Customers depend on account representatives to be their eyes, ears, and advocates to monitor issues related to their account – anything from billing to fulfillment to delivery – and make sure that any issues are dealt with quickly and equitably. Customer do not like surprises, and they expect for their account reps to take care of them, rather than disappearing after the contract is signed and only surfacing again when it is time to renew.
2. Keeping the customer informed of trends and issues that are relevant to his or her business – It is certainly true that the customer has a significant responsibility to monitor trends and issues in the market place that could impact their business. However, in these days where markets and public policies can shift almost overnight, it is extremely difficult for a customer who is totally consumed with running his business to stay on top of everything. Customers always appreciate it when the sales professional contacts them with timely information that could either protect their business or help them take advantage of emerging opportunities and solutions.
3. Planning with the customer in order to meet his or her business objectives – Sales professionals are uniquely positioned to provide insights and strategic advice to their customers, based on the fact that the sales professional has a broad range of industry experience and can draw on insights and ideas gleaned from working with a variety of customers. This wealth of information makes the sales professional an invaluable resource to a customer who is trying to refine goals and create strategies to move forward and solve for critical business objectives. Even though it might not result in immediate new business, a sales professional who is willing to sit down and lend his expertise to a customer in a way that results in clarity and provides tangible benefits to the customer is demonstrating the type of commitment that always pays off in the long run.
4. Offering the customer innovative ideas and solutions –A surprising number of sales professionals are too often content to simply offer standard, out-of-the-box solutions to customers, based on whatever is in the catalogue or on sale at the time. In the new economic paradigm, customers are more sophisticated, more informed, and more demanding. They are no longer content to passively accept whatever the sales professional has to offer. Instead, customers expect – and often demand – that sales professionals work with them to create unique solutions tailored to help them achieve the exact business outcomes they require. When a sales professional demonstrates that level of creativity, collaborative initiative, and patience, the customer reads that as an indicator of the sales professional’s level of commitment to help him succeed, instead of simply being interested in making a sale.
5. Adapting products and services to meet the customer's specific needs – In some ways, this is an extension of the previous behavior, with one important addition. Once the customer and the sales professional have collaborated to develop an innovative new solution, the sales professional may then have to go back to his company and advocate for this unique solution with his manager and possibly even senior executives. While sales professionals must be careful not to promise solutions they can’t deliver, they must also be willing to engage with the home office and create buy-in for solutions that are possible, even though they might require others to think outside of the box, too. Nothing says commitment to a customer like a sales professional who is willing to “go to the mat” for them back home.
When sales professionals demonstrate this kind of committed behavior with customers, it is almost certain to enhance credibility, cement trust, create more and larger opportunities, and drive new revenues. Given the higher rate of return on these types of customer relationships, it is absolutely essential for sales professionals to devote significant time and energy to the commitment-building process. The challenge, though, is that not all of these behaviors are going to immediately lead to revenue opportunities. They are important for preserving and strengthening the relationship, but it will not always put something in the pipeline for this quarter. So, while you are staying engaged at all levels with existing customers, it is also important to continue prospecting and developing new accounts.
This is where things start to bog down. In the urgent pursuit of new accounts, the sales professional may tend to “back burner” any activities with existing customers that don’t have the potential to drive immediate revenue, and over time his commitment level, along with the customer’s trust level, will begin to diminish. For this reason, sales professionals must PLAN commitment activities for all their key accounts, even if these activities aren’t mapped to an immediate income opportunity. Remember, highly successful sales professionals spend 60% of their time cultivating existing relationships, because that is where the big money is.
A few suggested best practices to keep you focused in this area include:
• Build time into your regular cadence of activities to review your relationship with your key accounts
• Be on the lookout for any issues or trends in the marketplace that could have impact on the success of your key accounts
• Plan regular check-in visits with each of these customers. Have an agenda of questions to ask or issues to discuss that can help identify issues within the account relationship or within the market space that could have an impact on the customer’s success or the health of the account.
• Map all of these activities in your CRM so that they are regularly tracked and updated. Don’t trust your success with these accounts to your memory, your good intentions, or notes you scribble down on the back of an envelope.
• Be focused and intentional to demonstrate commitment to these accounts at all times. Don’t make excuses, don’t hope for the best; be present and proactive and it will result in greater success for the customer and for you.
Review all of the above best practices and make sure they are all implemented in your regular account activities.
Walter Rogers is the President and CEO of Baker Communications. Baker Communications is a sales training and development company specializing in helping client companies increase their sales and management effectiveness. He can be reached at 713-627-7700.
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