Sales success comes from really listening to your clients
By Jacqui Sakowski
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In recent coaching sessions and Selling ExtraNet group meetings, I have been asking clients to share successes, as part of a goal to get people focused on positive outcomes. When everywhere you turn you meet pessimists and doom-mongering pundits, it can be extremely difficult to believe that good prospects are on the horizon.
Last week in one group meeting one participant said that his business was up 50 percent compared to 2007 and another said hers was up by 25 percent year on year. Great improvement in any business year. Outstanding in this particular year!
In another meeting a client had won the biggest piece of business in his company’s 10-year history. And within days he had won another contract of similar significance; meaning he will be hiring extra staff to help manage the workload.
I share these tales not to boast about my successful clients, (although I’m very proud of them) but to demonstrate that even in this challenging economy opportunity exists for smart, hard working, creative professionals. That is not to deny the real and serious challenges that our economy is facing, but rather to offer encouragement that no matter how negative the news in general, there is reason to keep working hard to grasp the future.
As I explored successes with trainees and company owners I heard some very consistent themes:
-- They reviewed data related to how they do business, and learned what it is they do that actually connects them to opportunity. And then did more of that.
-- They reviewed data concerning with whom they do business, and learned which categories of clients generated the most profitability. And then found more similar clients.
-- They reviewed the side conversations that they had with their clients. And they saw opportunities to adapt their offerings to take advantage of some of the more peripheral issues that their clients faced. They developed new products to meet those needs.
What these sales people did was truly pay attention to what’s happening in their world, and then took the risk of adapting to take advantage of the opportunities they spotted. They did this without undermining their brand or cheapening their offer. They retained their value by focusing their efforts where they could have the most significant impact and captured increased revenues as a result.
InTimeTools, the Web application division of Kitson Marketing Inc., is such a business. As the name implies, they help their clients accomplish business tasks in a timely fashion. As they reviewed the impact of the products that they provide to their clients, they saw an opportunity to create a new version of their product that will bring increased efficiency to smaller businesses that are frantically trying to increase their effectiveness, while reducing costs in a world of ravaged margins.
Shared Robyn Kitson, company president, “The new product was developed after a business associate shared his concerns with me recently. He needed to increase sales and at the same time take better care of his customers without increasing his staff. ‘I don’t want to feel like things are slipping through the cracks,’ he confided. He was using a national CRM off-the-shelf product to help his company to stay organized but found it wasn’t intuitive. It wasn’t customized to his business, and his staff wouldn’t use it. After trying to talk with the national firm’s customer support, only to sit on hold again, he called us. We set his firm up with their own CRM system, customized for their business, and are offering ongoing support and training. We see much scope for this product in the current economy, as companies are forced by circumstances to improve effectiveness.”
Sales professionals cannot necessarily develop new products, design new delivery systems or change service offerings but they can bring information back to the company from the people they meet in their territories.
They are the eyes and ears of the company. They can create the base of data from which these important strategic decisions can be made.
By asking great questions, encouraging candid discussions with clients, and keeping track of all that happens, they can help to generate the ideas that will be the foundation of future success.
Billions, if not trillions, of dollars of business are done every year because a sales professional listened when a client said, “If only it/you could do…” What are your clients wishing you or your products could do? And how can you respond?
