Posts tagged "emotions"

Advice Inspiration Sales

There is no Failure only Feedback

2 Comments read

“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” Dale Carnegie

If there are 6 words which have truly helped me in my journey as an entrepreneur to date, they are, “There is no Failure only Feedback”. They have allowed me to flip just about any situation when things are not doing well and I begin to doubt myself. The process of doubt starts with losing a sale when you were relatively close to finalising it.  The world seems to come crashing down at this point . You start to wonder about your future as an entrepreneur or in sales, next, you start to doubt the viability of what you are selling. You begin to blame all sorts of external circumstances for the situation you are in and, motivation, productivity and optimism take a nose dive.

During my second start company which was in the Import/Export business I experienced this situation at the beginning. Disillusioned at this, because of the success of my prior company I began to wonder what was happening and I started blaming everyone apart from myself. At this point a close friend who has done very well for himself in the same line of work, gave me some much needed advice. When I explained the situation to him, he reaffirmed my share of bad luck but helped me understand that my attitude towards failure was the real culprit. I had begun to take it too personally and it began to blur everything around me to a point where I was unable to put myself in a position to close that sale. He left me with the advice to use each one of my failures as feedback to refine my approach in the future.

At first it was confusing, I was not being given any apparent reason when I missed an opportunity. How was I supposed to get feedback? That is when the lightbulb went off in my head. I started asking myself the right questions which then led us to develop customer feedback forms on marketing material, presentations, quality, price and overall satisfaction. I started to listen to what my customers wanted and how we could position ourselves to fulfilling these requests. That was a turnaround for me in my journey and now, when I speak to, listen or read about successful entrepreneurs there is a common thread “Failures are pillars to your success”, we have to respond to them in the correct manner to make sure that we learn, adapt and provide what the market truly wants.

If you haven’t had success in closing your first deal yet, break down your current sales process from start to the finish. Get feedback, talk to individuals who have had success in that area, survey your target segment and figure out ‘Why your customers are not buying from you ?’. Then, use that information to adjust your sales process to get the results you want!

Advice Sales

The Key to Success

0 Comment read

“Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow – that is patience.” Anonymous

During the tizzy of making a prospect list, calling potential clients and fanatically focusing on closing that first deal we forget a fundamental concept which will in turn be a fundamental component in your final sale,  that is, “Patience”. Earlier on, we established the need to set SMART deadlines to reach our goal. Setting that goal does not mean however that you immediately make a dash for it in a 400m race. If you do, by mid race you will run out of steam, and that will drastically impact the probability of closing a deal within your specified time frame.

From the word ‘go’ roadblocks will be encountered along the way, unless these are faced with patience it will be difficult to reach your goal. It is definitely not fun when you make 4 calls without generating any interest, I know the feeling . However it is usually a later call where you actually hit something. If we lose patience, it directly impacts our ability to move forward effectively and in a positive and persistent manner.

During the next couple of stages in the sales process whether it is pitching, negotiating or managing a client as sales individuals or entrepreneurs, patience is definitive for productivity. Rushing in and giving too many discounts, negotiating too quickly or getting fed up with a clients constant complaining will lead to leaving money on the table and not building the sort of relationships which will be based on an equal footing in the future.

Sales is a challenging process and securing that first deal seems almost impossible at times. You need to remember to pace yourself during the process, pay attention to details without rushing through the process. This will not only be a more satisfying process, I have found it provides you with a level of inner peace and calmness which helps you focus and eventually get that sale a lot more efficiently, effectively and often at a quicker pace. If you want to succeed at anything in life remember,  “Patience” is going to be a critical success factor. Best of luck!

Advice Sales Strategy

Ask and you shall receive

0 Comment read
“To solve any problem, here are three questions to ask yourself: First, what could I do? Second, what could I read? And third, who could I ask?” Jim Rohn

You have got a sales appointment to meet the decision maker. The initiatives which you took in the last step are paying dividends. The sales pitch goes off well, there is excitement in the room and after a few words at the end of the meeting you are told they will be in touch. Feeling good about the pitch and thinking that the probability of securing the client is high, you are disappointed when there is no follow up from the client and after a while, the lead goes dead. This happened several times at the start of my journey and I always wondered what went wrong. I was really happy when I learned the answer to this conundrum.

An experienced entrepreneur I spoke to asked me whether I had been “Asking for the sale?”. Initially the question was confusing, but when I started to put the pieces together it made a lot more sense. I realised that whenever I was pitching to clients and enthusiasm was generated, I did not focus on closing the deal. I never asked the client for the sale! Psychologically I was avoiding being the pushy salesman, afraid the client would say the dreaded word ‘NO’. As a result I was repeatedly leaving money on the table by not asking the right questions.

Armed with this advice I went back to my script and practiced closing strategies for sales pitches. There are many interesting articles and training courses out there on closing strategies. I have taken the Neuro Linguistic Programming which has helped me tremendously. I have since formulated a way to subtly and politely ask the client for their business at the end of the presentation. Initially it felt strange and I was not  confident about asking, however, over time I have honed my skills. Now ,it has become second nature for me to go into a presentation and confidently, politely and subtly ask the client for their business.

The next time you are making a client presentation, make sure you formulate a strategy to ask the client to give you their business. You will not always win the business, however, through this process you will learn what you could be doing differently and then go back and ask for it again which should win you the contract!

Sales Strategy

Be Proactive

1 Comment read

 

“You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.” Anthony Robbins

You have developed your product/service, have your pitch ready, and are ready to go. Unfortunately, customers don’t usually start banging on your door as soon as you announce your product/service to the world. If you are serious about getting that first sale, and more importantly getting it soon, you need to put yourself out there. Take the initiative to set a target, get a list together and start making those calls and visits to prospects. This is the only way you are going to see momentum in your business. Don’t worry about refining it to perfection, you need to go out there and see what the market thinks about it. Writing story boards and doing research from the comfort of your office is important, but you need to start taking action if you are want to see results. Listed below are a couple of pointers to get you started:

1. Set SMART targets: To get to any destination, you first need to know where you are going, what route to follow and an approximate lenght of time to get there. Charting the course of your first sale works pretty much in the same manner. Set yourself aggressive goals which are time bound. Specific targets keep you more focused and create a greater urgency to get things accomplished within stipulated time frames.

2. Put a list together: Do an industry analysis and select an industry in which you believe your product/service will have the greatest uptake. This will lead naturally to the next step, which is creating a list of prospective companies you can visit in this industry. After the completion of this list of companies, chart out references or friends you may leverage on to approach these companies. This step creates a greater degree of focus and increases the likelihood of closing a deal at a faster pace.

3. Start making those calls: Pick up the phone and start making calls to references, friends or directly to the company to get appointments or even sales. At this stage, you really kick it up a gear as you are now in direct contact with target customers. The impressions you make at this stage will be critical, especially if you are a new company. Have a scripted pitch which should not sound too rehearsed, be very polite and execute it all with the utmost professionalism. Follow each call with standardized follow up emails and start  building connections to get closer to closing that first deal.

4. Network Endlessly: If you are not selling, you should be networking. Use tools such as linkedin to help expand your current professional network. This expansion helps you get more qualified leads, greater access to a much wider net of companies and the opportunity to get your product/service known in the market without spending too much on advertising. The next time you get an invitation to mixers or industry specific conferences, use these opportunities to go out there and get known in the market place.

Use this list to get started. This is not the time to procrastinate. If you want success, you need to be willing to go out there are start looking for it. There is no better time than now to start your sales campaign!

Related Articles:

– SMART Goal Setting

– Industry Identification

Inspiration Sales

Envision It!

1 Comment read

“Envisioning the end is enough to put the means in motion.” Dorthea Brande

You call up the 4th prospect on your list and rattle off the perfectly rehearsed pitch you have been using for the last few months, day after day. All of a sudden, the prospect starts to show interest in what you are saying….you seem to have hit a chord somewhere and the best part is, you can sense it. The phone call ends on a positive note and more information is requested via email. An hour after you have the sent the mail the client, the large multinational, says they would like to speak with you in greater detail. Its an eerie feeling, the realization that you may actually have hit home and the butterflies let loose.

You arrive at the customers office, adrenaline is rushing through your body, however, you are willing yourself to be calm and confident as you have given this pitch many a time. You meet the team you are presenting to and straight off the bat you can feel the chemistry. The presentation goes well and all the verbal and non verbal cues confirm your initial vibes. During the question and answer session you face the standard questions, you have the answers, backed by much hard work and research. You close the meeting, with the client asking for time to make their decision. For a split second you think, will this end up like all the other dead ends, or was it truly different. You then make  a conscious decision to stay positive on this one.

The next morning you have an email waiting for you from the client requesting a quotation. Negotiations move quickly through the course of the day and you feel like you are on cloud nine. All those days where you were frustrated, angry and even demotivated, are already a distant memory. By the day’s end, you get the email you have been waiting for….a confirmation to move forward and a signed agreement. Sitting there , looking at the computer screen you are in a momentary daze that seems to last forever. A million thoughts are firing off in your mind relating to steps for moving forward, the realization that you have done it and a euphoric sense of happiness. You let go and for the first time in months there is a feeling of…..freedom.

Congratulations, you have cleared one of the steepest hurdles in your initial journey as an entrepreneur. This is the beginning of many more and now you know a bit more on how to get there. For those of you who have not reached this milestone yet and are working towards it, stop whatever you are doing right now. Close your eyes and envision closing your first sale in detail, start from the beginning and go through the entire sales process. Identify all the emotions, the verbal and non verbal cues, once the image is clear, hold it, you now have a roadmap to get to where you want to be ! Best of luck in your journey!

Communication Customer Service Sales

Exceeding Expectations

0 Comment read

“There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” Roger Staubach

My first company had the tag line “Exceeding your every expectation”. It was printed on everyone of our name cards and it pushed us to go the extra mile many a time. It is only after some years that I have realized, it does not take much to exceed customer expectation. They do not need elaborate gestures to make them feel special, all they need is to be treated honestly and fairly, to be provided with significant value for their purchase and to have all this done in a convenient and efficient manner.

From personal experience I know that there are many service providers I go to even though they may not be the cheapest, biggest or more convenient in the market. For example, all my computer needs and requirements are dealt with at a small shop I have been visiting for years. You may well ask why anyone would do this, in this day and  age of online ordering and convenience ? It comes down to the relationship I have with the owners of the store. It is good to walk into a store where everyone knows you by name and where you know you will always get that extra attention and exemplary customer service, whenever you walk in and need it.

As part of a startup , you need to identify areas where you can add greater value to your clients. You need to show them that you care about their success as much as they do. These are some of the ways I have used to go that extra mile :

1. Remember your customer’s birthdays and make sure you send out either an ecard or an actual card to show that they matter to your business.

2. Gather as much personal data regarding the customer as possible, such as hobbies, interests, family and  other information that may help you with future conversations as well as personalizing services.

3. Remember to thank the customer at the point of purchase and to follow it up with a note via email or mail, thanking them for their business.

4. Leave extra room for you to exceed their expectations. If you promised 5 days delivery time and deliver in three days, that goes a long way. Remember to leave yourself some wiggle room.

5. Put yourself in the customers shoes and ask yourself what you can do, to make the entire process more personable and enjoyable? Treat your customers the way you would like to be treated.

Going the extra mile is a defining and differentiating factor between good and great companies. Building such a culture from the start will provide you with clear competitive advantages. 

Do you have a special story of how you were wowed by a particular vendor?

Related Posts:

Sales and Relationships

 

Communication Customer Service Strategy

Learning from Experience

0 Comment read

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Bill Gates

We have all been exposed to bad customer experiences. For those of us in the business or corporate world, we have also been on the receiving end when things didn’t work out as expected. That is part of life. Trying to please every customer to their complete satisfaction is a gargantuan and uphill task. However, it is essential to learn deeply from every complaint and put into place systems, which will take care of such incidents in the future. Listed below are a few pointers which should help expedite the learning process:

1. Refrain from pushing the blame onto external circumstances. Sometimes your supply chain gets delayed, it could be a mix up which your delivery system made or bad weather which resulted in your receiving a mouthful from your client. Accept the blame rather than pushing it onto someone else in the organization because that is the last thing an angry customer wants to hear. Once you have accepted the mistake you can go about resolving the issue in a more efficient and effective manner.

2. Extensively document the mistake. This will force you to think and put into a process the actual course of events and why they occurred. I have found the discovery process extremely interesting because you are forced to map out where the entire process started, who was responsible for what, at which stage and most importantly where we need to focus to ensure that the problem doesn’t happen again. It creates ownership in a business and a team constantly striving to deliver their best.

3. Finding the most efficient and effective solution. Once the mistake has been clearly identified the team should reach a collective decision regarding how to avoid a similar issue in the future. Control measures must be put into place and ensuring responsibility for its proper execution is essential. This is a critical step which should be documented and circulated to all team members to show that a decision has been taken.

Such experiences provide a great learning opportunity for the entire team. Once a mistake has been committed there is nothing we can to do to undo it, however , we can set into motion a series of actions which will alter the way we respond to them in the future. With a fanatical focus on ensuring that you cater to your customers every need and make the experience of doing business with you as seamless and comfortable as possible, will garner massive long term benefits.

What was your last customer experience horror story and did your organization do anything about it?

 

Communication Customer Service Technology

Integrate Technology

0 Comment read

“The purpose of a business is to create a mutually beneficial relationship between itself and those that it serves. When it does that well, it will be around tomorrow to do it some more.” John Woods

With escalating costs and the need to constantly maintain bottom line numbers, many companies are switching over to handling customer support services via technology platforms. Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Self Service Kiosks and online knowledge banks have greatly reduced costs for organizations, but, has an over reliance on these technologies resulted in a decrease in overall customer satisfaction?

Like most things in life, balance needs to be kept, so it is with integration of technology into your customer service function. The telco I was dealing with has an IVR service which you need to dial out from your mobile, since my phone was not able to make any outgoing calls the system directed me to another number which did not work either. At this point, I switched to the next logical source for information which was the website. The website did not have any knowledge banks relating to the issue at hand and did not even list the call center number I could call from a land line. In this day and age of web technologies this was disturbing. I ended up having to google several keywords to finally find the number.

The lesson to be learnt is, that focusing all your energy on just one touch point, such as a contact center is not the best of strategies, specially when deploying other web based and self service options are not as expensive. It is true that return on investment is marginal for these strategies, however, they lay the foundation for a much more holistic and comprehensive customer service solution for the future. Leveraging on tools for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) such as Salesforce, ZohoCRM, HighriseHQ can also be effective ways to keep track and even develop metrics around your customer service function.

Either way, as a startup organization you need to develop strategic roadmaps to help you handle customer service requests as you begin to scale. These will involve a number of technology solutions, what needs to be remembered when integrating is:

1. Keep a balance between technology and the human element.

2. Leverage on your website to provide detailed knowledge banks on prior complaints & questions.

3. Develop strategies to store and easily refer to archived customer interactions and data.

4. The ability to escalate complaints which have a higher level of priority.

5. Doing all of this while keeping it simple for the customer.

 

Advice Communication Customer Service Teams

Hiring the Right Individual

1 Comment read

“As far as customers are concerned you are the company. This is not a burden, but the core of your job. You hold in your hands the power to keep customers coming back – perhaps even to make or break the company.” Anonymous

My extensive interaction with the telcos’ customer service department brought to the fore, the job vs responsibility concept which I have talked about briefly in previous posts. The concept is simple . When you are in hiring or partnering, you should look for individuals who are problem solvers and have it in them to go further than just completing the task at hand in a hierarchial manner. Those who willingly take the initiative to do more than is asked of them for the organization.

Customer service revolves around making all the touch points within your organization as simple, reliable and efficient as possible. Most of the time these touch points will result in a direct connection between customers and the employees of the organization. This is a critical connection, one upon which your business relies on heavily. It is therefore essential, when hiring individuals for this function, that you place relevant emphasis on the personality and temperament of these individuals. Bypassing this process because it has a high upfront cost and no apparent tangible return on investment is shortsighted. In the case of this particular telco, it has over 20m subscribers and a massive network of contact centers. At this point, to re-structure their hiring policies and procedures will be prohibitively costly. This is why a culture for superior customer service must be put in place from the start.

In essence if you are looking to develop world class customer service capabilities, you should hire individuals who:

1. Know the difference between a Job vs Responsibility.

2. Are truly passionate about helping others and problem solving .

3. Believe in the service/product that your organization provides.

These qualities may appear to be simple, yet many companies do not even factor them into the hiring process. Hiring the right kind of people for the job will give your organization the competitive advantage to help the customer choose you!

Communication Culture Customer Service

Creating a Culture

2 Comments read

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.” Max DePree

Building an organization where you want exemplary customer service requires senior management to build a culture from the top down. If you are a new startup this should be an area which needs to be emphasized right from the beginning to help you create a culture which will permeate throughout the organization when you scale. So how do you go about creating a culture for customer service?

1. Make customer service as objective and tangible as possible. Place benchmarks on just about everything which relates to the customer from the time it takes for you to reply to an email, send out a quotation to delivering the product. Customer satisfaction surveys should be in place to help you assess how satisfied the customer was with the product/service, how you are doing with trouble shooting over the phone and email and what needs to be done to increase the customer’s level of satisfaction.

2. Once certain procedures and benchmarks are in place, training to optimize the level of customer service must be provided on these processes. This will equip your employees to better understand, perform and serve customers. It also reflects how serious the organization is about this function. A lot of great companies such as Disney, Starbucks and Commerce Bank are prime examples of how intense training from the time you are hired has created a world class customer service culture.

3. Showcase and reward staff who display outstanding customer service. Employee recognition sends a message through the organization and creates personal benchmarks for everyone to achieve. It motivates them to perform at their highest level and this sets a much higher standard in the organization.

4. If you do hire an employee who ends up not sharing the same core values relating to customer service, as senior management, you should let those employees go as soon as possible. This shows how important senior management takes this function and their level of dedication to delivering the highest levels of service.

During the 30 hour period while I was disconnected I probably spoke to approximately 20 representatives at the organization. I went to their office, talked with them on the phone and exchanged emails. All three contact points gave me a completely different experience. I came across different types of individuals some who took their jobs seriously and others who simply couldn’t care less.

Being entrepreneurs and individuals responsible for the direction our companies take we need to establish a culture for superior customer service from the start. This will ensure that when we eventually scale, these values will be deeply embedded and scaled likewise as well.