Colleen’s Blog

Are you doing enough to build your current relationships? When you close a sale with a new client, you create a new relationship that needs to be nurtured. All too often, salespeople make a sale and then move to the next prospect. When a salesperson continues this trend long term, their client retention is going to fail...it’s inevitable! I hope you’re considering ways to increase your sales in 2015. But, as you know, client retention is just as important as client acquisition. Here are a few tips to help you maintain and build your current relationships in the New Year:

Are your client and prospect conversations often turning into a form of verbal combat? All too often salespeople get so wrapped up in being right that they completely forget to acknowledge their clients' feelings and opinions. Demonstrating acknowledgement is a key step in continuing a conversation instead of jumping straight into an argument! <-- Click To Tweet When you acknowledge your client’s opinion (even if it differs from your own) you demonstrate empathy to the way your buyer feels. This automatically puts them in a better, more relaxed state of mind because you’re showing your client that you understand their concerns and you’re willing to find a solution. You also show that you’re less concerned about being right and more concerned about being fair.

How often do you track your growth accounts? In order to be successful with your growth clients, you should be tracking them on a regular basis. More specifically, you should update yourself on their progress on a monthly basis. This may seem counterintuitive, especially because I recommend tracking key accounts on a quarterly basis. But, there are four big reasons that I suggest tracking your growth accounts more frequently.

Not all clients are created equal. Nor should you be compelled to treat them equally. There’s no law stating you must sell to everyone, or keep servicing clients that are the wrong fit for your business. It’s as fair to say that your business has outgrown some types of customers as it is to say that you have some customers that you should have never brought on in the first place. You know who they are! If you’re miserable working with a client that you know isn’t profitable for your company, you won’t be motivated to serve them well. And, if that client isn’t receiving the best treatment, they won’t hit their desired goals. By virtue of this predicament, you’ve created a lose-lose situation: You’re not helping the client reach their objectives and they’re not helping you reach yours. Besides the ones that are clearly not profitable for you, here are four other types of clients that must go immediately:

“How do I build the perfect sales cycle or the perfect sales process?” If you find yourself asking this question, you may be in for a dissapointment when you hear my answer. I’m often asked questions like this and while I wish I could provide better news, there’s no such thing as the perfect sales process. You simply can’t build or replicate a perfect system to unleash on your entire market and be guaranteed success. The truth is, the best advice for a salesperson who wants to create the “perfect” sales process is to simply make their processes more flexible. ← Click To Tweet As you know, every sale is different. Every client has their own needs and desires and each product has their own features and benefits. Because of this, there is no static sales process that can be used to accommodate the plethora of different requirements in your market. However, there are steps you can take to increase your chances for success with your sales processes:

You will often hear that the best way to maintain and grow your current client base is to ensure that you have the best product on the market, or the best customer service. While these factors surely contribute to client success and loyalty, they are hardly the most important factors. The best way to create client loyalty is by building and maintaining trust. ← Click To Tweet If you have average products and customer service yet you have built trust with your client, the likelihood is that they will still want to work with you. However, even with the best products on the market, you will be unable to maintain and grow your current client relationships if your clients do not trust you. There are two keys to building and maintaining trust with your clients. They are so simple, but they are often overlooked!

You did it. You made the sale. The paperwork has gone through and you’re ready to move on to the next prospect and close yet another deal. Little do you know, making the sale was the easy part, maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship with your new client is where things start to get messy. One of the biggest problems salespeople face is dealing with the amount of issues that come up with clients after the initial sale is made. Many clients can be high-maintenance, or can be difficult to please. The good news is you can take steps before the sale is made to ensure that you are drastically reducing the chances of such scenarios arising. 1) Don’t Sell To Everyone There is a certain amount of information you can gather about your prospect prior to making a sale. The problem is, salespeople get so wrapped up in trying to close a deal that they disregard their judgment as to whether or not the prospect will be a right fit. Don’t fall into this trap! Be confident enough in your own judgment and abilities to become selective with who you choose to work with. Think about it, if you make a sale with a client who wastes a considerable amount of time (you could be using to close more deals), is that initial sale even worth it?

Hands down there is nothing more frustrating than to have manufacturing or operations make a mistake on the very first customer order or interaction. Despite the effort and investment to attract a new client, it only takes a minor error to completely destroy the customers experience and erase and positive impressions they might have had. In business, individuals in marketing or selling have an outward focus placed on identifying and capitalizing on that which the customer values. Those in operations or manufacturing however have an inward focus centered on productivity and efficiency. Explained another way, the responsibility of Sales is to attract and close new customers while Operations delivers the customer’s product or service as fast and efficiently as possible, minimizing costs along the way. These opposing viewpoints result in what I call the Customer Value Disconnect, or C.V.D. for short. Fortunately to close the C.V.D. gap is not as difficult as you might think and is somewhat counterintuitive to conventional thinking. The key is in shifting Operational perspectives around what it is that customers value. There are a few critical questions that can support diminishing C.V.D. and bring about a broader perspective on what it means to satisfy customers. Here are the three most critical:

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is trying to sell to everyone that comes into your pipeline. I know, it’s intuitive as a salesperson to sell as much as possible, but effective salespeople know how to pick and choose which prospects to sell to. They know the good from the bad. The reality is, not every prospect is an ideal candidate for your product or service. The sooner you learn this important lesson, the sooner you can focus on the prospects that are ideal candidates for you to work with. By selling to anyone and everyone, you are setting yourself up for huge customer service problems in the future. ← Click To Tweet