Business Success - The New Trend Toward Selling Service

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The New Trend Toward Selling Service

Chris Lytle, CSP, Author of The Accidental Salesperson

Companies looking to increase sales are paying more attention to better customer service.

In the sales business, new clients instantly become your competitors' best prospects. Salespeople tend to quit wooing their clients the minute the order is signed. But this is precisely the time the new client needs the most reassurance. It's also the time when everyone else increases the amount of wooing.

Companies nationwide report being frustrated by doing the work to land a new account just to have it stolen away by a competitor. As competition increases, it often becomes easier to sell a new account than to keep it. Sales experts in many industries agree that the first sale is the least profitable. It may take six or seven calls to land a big account. Add to that time invested by management, production people and support staff and the importance of renewing accounts, not just selling them, becomes evident.

In The Marketing Imagination, Theodore Levitt writes about the problems of selling and servicing intangibles. Levitt writes, "Thus, while in getting customers for intangibles, it becomes important to create surrogates or metaphors for tangibility-how we dress, how we speak, write, design, and present proposals, work with prospects, respond to inquiries, initiate ideas, show how well we understand the prospect's business-in keeping customers for intangibles it becomes important regularly to remind the customers of what they're regularly getting. If that's not done, the customers will not know. They only know when they are not getting what they bought.

A new definition of client "service" might be "the process of making clients aware of what they are getting." This goes beyond the "typical" kind of service calls. Service oriented clients are no longer comfortable with a salesperson that "services" a client by dropping by to chat about how things are going. Each service call needs to be preplanned to achieve another favorable impression. One local sales manager constantly reminds his sales team to "make the client feel we want to keep his business as much as wanted to get it in the first place."

Top salespeople know that it is vital to resell to the client while things are going well instead of waiting until something goes wrong to get to the client. Often, customers don't see the salesperson again until after the bill has arrived.

Experts warn that the client must have several service contacts between the time the sale is made and the day the bill arrives.

Many industries selling intangibles are beginning to institutionalize the service function. Institutionalizing is not left to chance. Instead, once an order is received, a series of preplanned activities occur to insure that the client feels welcome and reassured.

Below is a partial checklist of service ideas from companies across the U. S. and Canada. To institutionalize your service function, you may want to select several of these ideas and add a few of your own. The important thing is that when a new account is signed, the service functions you choose are "programmed" into the routine of the salesperson who made the sale. They become part of the job, not just something you do if there's time at the end of the week. These service options were chosen because they make intangibles more tangible to the buyer and because they are relatively inexpensive and easy to perform.

1. When you make a written presentation, leave it behind, preferably in a desktop easel. This acts as a tangible reminder of your presentation and keeps you and your company in front of the client even when he/ she is talking with your competitors.

2. Sign a service contract. Many companies are reprinting their contracts to show service dates along with stop and start dates. Salespeople can use the service contract as a selling point. "We don't leave service to chance. Along with this schedule you get three service calls to check results, make adjustments, and to plan for the future."

3. The sales person sends a thank you letter. (This is a common courtesy)

4. The sales manager or general manager sends a thank you letter. (This makes it look like the company has its act together and that there is communication throughout the station.)

5. Conduct a company tour that shows the client that he/she did not buy just a product but an organization. Clients want to know that there are people who are concerned about their business.

6. Consider a monthly company newsletter, which can be filled with tips on running a business, financial news, etc. This communicates to the client that the company is aware of the problems of their clients.

7. When the client pays their first bill, bring the client a gift-something small and inexpensive. This gift tells the client that he/she got more from your company than just a product.

This news arrived on: 04/11/2007

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