What if I told you your team could cut their call volume in half and still boost sales? One client did just that by asking their customers a game-changing question. Ready to ditch the small talk and drive real results?
For more strategies like this, check out my sales tip video library on YouTube…
A client of mine recently is working to get his sales reps off the road, making courtesy calls or taking inventory or checking in with their customers.
And so we have this really interesting opportunity because one of his customers went on an extended leave, and he needed to manage those customers and also train a new sales rep in this territory.
So they went out and they started to make the calls just as the sales rep was doing it previously, except with this one change.
They sat down with the customers and they asked, tell us how best to service you? How often do you want to see us? What’s the best way to communicate you? What do you need from us? And time after time after time, customer said, oh man, I don’t have time to see you every week.
I don’t want to just chit chat.
I really want to communicate when you have something new to share.
Or I want you to come and sit down with me and tell me how we’re doing and communicate the KPIs that we shared.
I want you to give me a call once a month.
Teach me how to take inventory.
Well, in other words, the customers wanted the meetings to be a value, not just check in calls.
Not just courtesy calls, not just inventory calls.
And when they discovered this with their customers, they were able to reduce the amount of calls that they made every day and every week to about half.
They were able to take some of them on the phone.
They were able to take some of them on email.
And that opened up time for each of these sales reps to develop a more strategic approach with their current customers and to prospect for more business.
As a result, the business started to grow 15, after quarter simply because of the time that was freed up.
And you know what? None of those customers that stopped getting their weekly visits actually left or eroded in their business or went to the competition.
So when was the last time you sat down with your customers and had a real strategic conversation? When was the last time you checked in with them to find out how they wanted you to communicate with them? And when was the last time you actually taught them something new in a meeting, as opposed to just checking in and saying hi?
Don’t forget to check out: Afraid to Look in the Mirror?!