When buyers are choosing between two similar products, they don’t always go with the one that costs less. They will usually go with the product whose sales rep can bring more to the table.
This thought has allowed many a mediocre sales reps to make astronomical sales, not because they were superstar salespeople, but because they were superstar PEOPLE.
Service is the wild card that will help you win. The problem is many reps are not sure what service really is. I have been with reps that have told me that they are going to a customer for a “Service Call”. They make a differentiation between selling and servicing. I contend that selling IS servicing.
A good sales rep is always showing their customer’s ways to either decrease costs, increase productivity, save time, or raise quality by using the products or services they offer. By this definition a sales call IS a service call and vice versa. The trick is to have sales reps embrace this concept.
Why is this idea such a hard task for reps to accept? Simple, many reps view this as extra work for themselves. They feel that if they are making a sales call they should sell and if they are making a service call they should service and if they make a service/sales call it is double duty. NOTHING could be further from the truth. In fact, by making every call a service/sales call a rep can actually call on customers less and deliver more to the customer.
If every time a rep makes a call they look for areas where the customer can best benefit from the product or service they sell, a few things will happen. First, the customer will see that the rep is constantly looking for ways to help them. Second, the rep will learn more about the customers business. Third, because most “service calls” are made without much interaction between the customer and rep a combined call will allow the customer and rep to get to know each other better. Fourth, as the customer brings in more and more of the reps products or services, the rep will become a more important part of the customers business. Fifth, because the rep is servicing the customer more often there will be less chance of problems between calls. Sixth, and this brings us back to the original thought, when the customer has a choice to make you will have the added value of SERVICE on your side.
I know that this isn’t WOW information. It isn’t even new to most of you. This is simply GOOD information, TRUE information, USEFUL information and the best of all, information that will help reps WIN more often.
I have had sales reps tell me their companies didn’t want them to do any servicing of their accounts. Every time I hear this from a rep I ask what the company means by service. In most cases there is a very high level of mechanical service that is involved. The company doesn’t want the rep doing work that may require professional service people. I don’t believe there is a company anywhere that has ever intended to tell a rep not to perform sales related service to a customer. In some cases the rep may know how to do the mechanical servicing but the company wants their focus to be on sales, and rightfully so. No matter how you look at it, sales drives revenues and profits, having your sales force well focused is the best thing to do. However, a rep doing the tasks that build sales through service is the perfect solution for everyone.
Lorin
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