Sales through Service
It’s the only way!! Listen here
While every business strives for increased sales, often with heavily incentivized staff, what happens once the sale has been done?
Sadly, some organisations take a very short sighted approach, and when phone lines are busy, prioritize sales over service…yet many of the enquiries are just that, an enquiry, whereas your existing customers may become customers for life, leading to repeat business and incremental sales!
The dichotomy for business!
There are also different models when shopping in the supermarket! At the budget end, staff are targeted on the number of items scanned per hour…At the premium end, it’s more about making the customer feel special, with some friendly conversation…The transaction may take a few short seconds longer, but which will you remember?
A well-used statistic is that it is seven times more expensive to acquire new business than to retain a customer! Once you have the customer, look after them, and don’t ignore them! Even when things go wrong, providing you bust a gut to put it right…no problem!
One of the highest renewal retention blocks within the insurance industry are customers who made a complaint…Providing you went the extra mile to rectify, the retention rate for those is higher than the standard renewal block!
In a price sensitive world, the way someone made you feel, will be long remembered once the few pence saved has been forgotten!
Some thirty years ago, I was taken around the First Direct Business Centre in Leeds. Being one of the pioneers of direct banking, they were getting many new customers…and yet, once they recognized that the back end staff were in need of additional personnel to satisfy the growth in new acquisition, they would halt all marketing activities, until additional people were recruited!
More enlightened organisations started to link performance targets between sales and service teams…ensuring that the right sales ethos was present and that service levels were high for the lifetime of the customer…How much more profit could you make if every customer was a happy customer for life!
“You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be too easily duplicated. But a strong customer service culture cannot be copied.” Jerry Fritz