[Posted a week later, but internet access is spotty here in Duri, Indonesia. --Rob]
“Please, if you ever have a situation where a consultant is unable to be there and you need someone, give me a call …”
One of our key clients is an international training firm that specializes in safety leadership within the oil and natural gas industries. We have partnered with them for about 6 years, serving most frequently as workshop facilitators to deliver their material to their clients. Over those six years, it’s been good business from a financial sense, and I can say that we have grown to genuinely appreciate the people within this organization. They stand for excellence, they care for their customers and suppliers, they believe that they can help people be smarter and safer, and they sponsor positive change within their client organizations.
Not to be presumptuous, but I also think that they have grown to appreciate our commitment to excellence
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A friend and I were discussing auto sales in preparation for a presentation he will be delivering tomorrow on that topic. It got me to thinking … are salesman, at least in some industries, an anachronism? Those who do survive and succeed will, I am certain, have a markedly different mindset than what they have known before, and they will use a different skill set: that of purposeful and insightful questioning.
In my comments, I reference “GREAT questions.” In Choice Analysis, our proprietary decision-making training, we teach the questions that decision makers need to ask and answer in order to choose wisely. These same questions can be used to facilitate another’s decision process to truly help them get what will best satisfy their needs.
This knowledge, employed by a TOTALLY customer-focused “purchasing advisor” (my suggestion to replace the title “salesman”), sets the stage for valuable information exchange, increasing trust and, ultimately, more sales. In fact, this framework would assist anyone involved in “consultative sales.”
What are your thoughts on the state of sales? How would you advise those who are in the business of pushing commodities to reinvent themselves in the face of the information onslaught that is the Internet?
We were recently asked to provide our thoughts on how to turn an unhappy customer into a loyal supporter, and we posted some of our ideas in an earlier blog entry. While we were pleased to have been asked to contribute, we believe that this is really the wrong question for most businesses. Once you have created an unhappy customer, you are “fighting uphill,” so to speak. The right question is how do you create “raving fans” from their first encounter with you?
[A follow-up to the Bishop's first article on How to Lose Customers.]
My wife and I took our first cruise a few weeks ago. We were going to take a cruise on our 25th wedding anniversary back in 1996 but we took the money and started a church instead. We happened to wind up using the Princess Cruise Lines. It was not what I expected. In fact, it was much better than I anticipated—especially when it came to the care and treatment of passengers. Princess, which started in 1965 with one ship cruising to Mexico, was rocketed to fame in 1977 when it became the ship of the TV series, “The Love Boat.”
From the time we deplaned until we received our bags at the airport for our return flight, Princess personnel were everywhere making sure that our trip was excellent. Every employee, without exception, acted as though
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Your company’s customer service may be the KEY differentiator as the economy slowly limps into recovery. With many still perceiving a financial “pinch,” consumers are more particular. If your product is as good as your competitors’, then World Class Service will yield more customers. Guaranteed. And the essence of World Class Service is convincing the customer, deep down in his soul, that you really care. About him. About what he cares about. About more than his money.
In the most recent edition of our weekly newsletter, I contributed “Musings about Customer Service,” in which I shared an example of very good (but not perfect) customer service. Two more examples, from just this morning:
Example 1
City Cafe, in beautiful downtown Fayetteville, GA, has some of the most unbelievable pastries around.
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[Bishop David Epps' recent experience of air travel woe. The airlines should pay attention here. They really *can* lose customers ...]
“How was your flight?” someone asked. “Well, we didn’t crash,” I replied, “Other than that, I’m not sure it could have gotten much worse.” It had been a while since I had flown on this particular airline. The first problem was that we didn’t go where I thought we were going—not immediately anyway. The travel agent indicated that our flight was direct from Atlanta to Anchorage. Apparently, “direct” does not mean “direct.” Our flight would stop in Minneapolis. Note to self…clarify details with travel agents.
Upon arriving at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, our flight was scheduled to take off from the T Concourse. At the very last moment,
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We were recently asked to contribute to an upcoming publication on how to turn disgruntled customers into raving fans. It’s simple:
Understand — Own Up — Make Good
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It’s sometimes instructive to see obvious examples of what NOT to do. You would think that the company that owned the market for small business accounting software would pay a bit more attention to the purchase experience its customers have. And then, I guess if you own the market, you don’t have to be nice. At least not yet …
