How to Stop the Competition from Stealing Your Accounts

Kevin Davis
 Sales Trainer

Today's marketplace is becoming increasingly competitive. To maintain control of their bottom line your customers may not be as loyal to you as they once were. Customers are taking a closer look at all available alternatives, and are evaluating what you and your competition have to offer. Never before have your competitors been as strong, as fast, or as agile as they are today --- and they are apt to be even more formidable tomorrow.

Intensifying competition complicates your business, making it more intricate, difficult, and involved. You can no longer rely on doing the same things that once yielded success. To keep your best customers from defecting to the competition, you must master the new rules of the customer satisfaction game plan.

In response to heightened competition, leading companies such as IBM, Ameritech, Motorola, Sears, and BellSouth have made customer satisfaction and retention the cornerstone of their business strategy. These leaders realize that when tough competitors aggressively pursue their best customers, the value of each loyal customer goes up.

Getting Closer to the Customer
As a result, these companies, and thousands like them, are redefining the role salespeople play in achieving customer satisfaction. The days of hit and run selling --- closing the sale quickly and moving on --- are over. Salespeople must become "account managers," in charge of their company's relationship with the client, and should be judged and compensated on their ability to perform these new duties.

To meet this new challenge, you need to get closer to the customer, not just during the sale but after it as well. Customers have higher expectations and more buying power than ever before. So, the sales process cannot stop at the signing of the sales contract. To protect their territory and to dissuade buyers from looking elsewhere in the future, look at the signing of the sales contract as the beginning of the customer satisfaction contract. You must deliver more value, reassure customers that they made the right choice, and see to it that customer expectations are met.

The Salesperson as the Teacher
The key to creating a "customer for life" is assuming the role of a teacher --- salespeople must teach their customers how to achieve maximum value. This consists of setting realistic expectations and objectives, teaching the customer how to use the product, and testing to measure progress.

Step 1: Setting Realistic Expectations and Objectives
A school teacher preparing a lesson begins by identifying what students should be able to do at the end of the session. Objectives are clearly stated upfront so students' expectations about the course will be realistic and specific, and so they will have a clear understanding about the benefits they are to receive.

As a teacher who sees the sales process through the eyes of his buyer, you must see that realistic objectives and expectations are set. The key word is "realistic." A dissatisfied customer is one whose expectations are not met. Too often, buyers have difficulty distinguishing between what they need from the purchase and what they expect the impact of the purchase to be. It is your job to help the customer identify specifically what he expects to achieve from the product or service, and to determine if these objectives can be met. Asking the buyer two simple questions upfront will help alleviate confusion down the road:

"Six months from now, how will you know this purchase was a success?" "What things will be happening when the value you expect is being achieved?"

Asking these questions encourages your customer to tell you how he will know and see that your product or service is a success. Having this information is the key to setting yourself up to be a success. The answers give you the inside track to positioning your offering ahead of the competition --- you can draw a direct link between the benefits of your product or services and his objectives.

Step 2: Show, Then Help to Do
Customers who know little about the learning process associated with implementing a new product or service usually expect immediate value. In this case, you must walk a tightrope. You don't want to say something that might frighten the customer and potentially cost you the sale. By the same token, you must be honest about what typically happens ---both good and bad--- once your product or service is installed.

This is where post-selling techniques come into play. Immediately after the sale, you must show the buyer how to make the most of what your product or service has to offer and help them learn how to use it. Be sure to fill in the gap between what the buyer knows and what he needs to know. Show him how to operate the product or service, then gradually "let go of the reins" until you are confident he knows how to use it properly. Discuss key features and ask questions to make sure the customer fully understands all capabilities. It's also a good idea to leave buyers with a cheat sheet that highlights a few of the key tasks your customer will need to remember after you leave.

Above all else, when customers become frustrated --- and frustration in learning something new is normal --- you must provide support and encouragement. Because many times the user is not the person within the organization who made the purchase decision, he or she does not know why your offering was chosen. So, expect the user to get short-tempered when all does not go smoothly. Take the time to demonstrate the ins and outs of your product and how he or she will benefit from it. Then sit back, be patient, and be supportive. Let him take as much time as necessary learn how to use your product or service efficiently and effectively.

Step 3: Test to Measure Progress
The third step in the teaching process is to monitor your "student's" progress to find out if the objectives are being met and if your offering is adding value to the organization. How you test for value depends on the complexity of the sales process. For smaller-ticket items, testing for value may be a simple follow-up phone call two months after delivery. For multi-million dollar equipment, testing for value may involve months of tracking, analysis, and reporting. No matter what you sell, there are a number of simple ways to measure progress.

Try a Questionnaire: Create a questionnaire that can be completed quickly by your customer. To gather sufficient information, incorporate both open- and closed-ended questions. Summarize your findings and then go back to your customer with ideas for how to improve areas of concern. Also, it is advantageous to use this information to anticipate and plan for bottlenecks that may surface in the future. Being proactive by warding off problems before they occur is sure to satisfy even the toughest customer.

Share Best Practices: If your product or service is operated by many different people, some will get more out of it than others. Find out who uses your service the most and learn about how they use it. When you share best practices with your customers, you increase both your customers' return on investment and their level of satisfaction with you. One buyer's "best practice" is another buyer's new application.

Conduct Regular Account Reviews: Problems that go undetected or ignored can destroy a profitable relationship. Conducting account reviews helps salespeople test the customer's perception of the value of your product or service and spot early indications of satisfaction. Reviews cannot be done ad hoc. To help you stay close to the customer, they should be conducted at regular intervals, either quarterly or semi-annually. Some things to keep in mind when conducting a review include:

Continue to Learn About Your Customer: Even after the sale is closed, you should continue to study your customers' changing industries, competitors, problems, applications, etc. By doing so, you can provide the greatest value to their customers --- anticipating their customers' future needs. Salespeople who help their clients respond effectively to the increasing velocity of change rise above all other salespeople, and have truly mastered the "new rules of the game."

Making it a Win-Win Situation
Successful companies and salespeople have a common focus: customers. If you satisfy your customer, everybody wins. If you don't, he will find someone who will. Sure, testing the value of your product or service is scary. What happens if you don't find any? Remember though, your customer took a risk in buying from you so you need to take a risk to prove he made the right decision.

By becoming a "Teacher of selling" you help to minimize your risk because you are proactively helping the client use your offering effectively and efficiently. When you commit yourself in this fashion to exceeding your customers' expectations, you place service above self. You become more than just a salesperson, you become an invaluable asset to your customer's business.

About the author: Kevin Davis is a Danville, CA-based sales trainer. He is also the author of Getting Into Your Customer's Head: 8 Secret Roles of Selling Your Competitors Don't Know. Kevin can be reached directly at (510) 831-0922 or send him an e-mail at KDavisSell@aol.com.





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