With the age of information comes a significant shift in how organisations and individuals do business. As a result, a customer’s perception of a company starts long before any initial contact is made. We only have to take a look at just a few of the reasons our high streets are struggling to recover from the recession to see how technology has had a part to play.
Consumers now view may department stores as a place to ‘try-before-you-buy’, before going on-line to make their purchases. Impulse buying is becoming a thing of the past, as key purchasing decisions are made only after trial periods or reading reviews by other consumers.
We are now seeing this method of enterprise purchasing spilling over into the business-to-business world. Big Data and the Social Cloud, make it even easier for enterprises to do their research. So what impact does this have on how we sell our services and products?
The theory, is that companies are no longer geared towards ‘hard sales’, but instead are building their teams around delivering good quality customer services at all stages of the sales process. Leveraging relationships and delivering a quality service, is much more important than making a quick win. With this in mind, we have put together our top tips of what to embrace in your ‘soft sales’ approach:
1. Ensure customer service quality comes naturally to employees, by providing them with the right training from day one.
2. User Adoption is key to making sure that your employees are utilising the systems around them in order to provide a better quality of service.
3. Reward employees on the level of service they provide, as well as the revenue they bring in.
4. Allow your team the freedom to collaborate and come up with their own ideas for improving your services. If they believe in it…they will want to make it happen!
5. Accept that not every contact needs to be converted into a sale. Sometimes potential customers just need to do their research before making a decision. Make sure you provide the best answers for their individual requirements. Going that extra mile, will often lead to a more success sale at a later date and referrals.
6. The sales process does not stop at the transaction point. We all know the importance of after sales support, but often this only comes when issues are raised, at which point tools like Big Data step in. However, the ability to get to concerns before they become issues, is the quest of the modern business. Giving customers access to the right people to answer any concerns, along with regular reviews is always going to help win the fight for customer retention, and service satisfaction.
Remember, that customer services should form the very roots of your organisation. Building your company ethics and culture on delivering first rate customer services is a sure-fire way of achieving good sales results.