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Help! My main contact left, and I’m panicked!

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Letter from a fan:

Dear Jeffrey, I sell copiers in NYC, and this year I finished as the number one rep in the nation. I truly believe that would not have been possible had it not been for your Little Red Book of Selling. I do have a question and would greatly appreciate your advice. Recently I have been noticing a high turnover of people (including executives) at my accounts. When this happens it’s almost like the reset button has been pressed and the replacements have no allegiance to me or my service and are usually unaware as to how hard I’ve worked to earn their company’s business. How should I conduct myself when I know there is a new person in a company I have to work with? Is there a specific process I should follow? Thank you in advance. Dan

Common problem. Uncommon answer to follow.

Loss of key contact (the person that buys from you) happens often in business, and most salespeople (not you of course) are totally unprepared for it.

There are two variations to this scenario:
1. Someone is promoted from within. If you’ve done your homework, built multiple relationships within your customer’s company, and you know the replacement,then you should be fine. If you don’t know him, you have to scramble and start over.
2. Someone was hired from the outside. This is basically a start over situation and all the answers you need are stated below.

There are 5.5 specific things you can do to prevent a total tragedy. NONE OF THEM are options.
1. Start with prevention. This is a major point of understanding: You have to ask yourself, “What would happen, what would I do, if all my prime contacts left tomorrow?” Begin to plan and act from there.
2. Then ask yourself…

How is the purchase made? Discover the chain of purchase, and know everyone who impacts purchase. Add them to your CRM notes.
Who’s the boss? Get to know the boss and make sure they know your value.
Who are the users? Talk to and meet with the people that USE your product or service. They are not the ones who purchase, but they can play a major role in the decision to purchase. And they tell the real story of quality and service response.
Who else is influenced by or involved with your product? When you meet, add others from the inside. Get to know co-workers.

 
3. Meet the key decision-maker outside the office AT LEAST monthly. Coffee at 7:30 AM will build the personal relationship.
4. Get known and recognized. Your weekly email about office productivity, communication, and morale will get passed around if it’s valuable – even forwarded to other professionals in other companies. And when you visit the customer, they’ll recognize you as “you’re the guy who…” smiling as they say it!
5. Build reputation across the company. Know everyone, but more important, have everyone know you – not just know you as a person, but as a person of value.
5.5 Gather video comments after every service call and delivery. Post them where anyone can view them. Your blog, YouTube channel, Facebook business page and weekly e-zine are a great start.

If all of this seems like hard work, it pales by comparison to the work you’ll have to do if you’re unprepared after the fact.

Okay, so the new person starts. Did the departing person tell you or was it a surprise? If the old person told you in advance, that’s a sign your relationship was strong. If the relationship was really strong, the departing person will put you on a preferred list of recommended vendors. If you’re blind-sided by the news, that’s a report card, too.

Let’s take worst-case scenario – new person, no history with you, bringing HIS or HER contacts, connections, and vendors:
1. Introduce yourself and offer help acclimating. Gain access.
2. Have coffee with them ASAP – get the personal relationship in gear. Share the history. Ask for their wisdom, their experience, and their goals.
3. Print your CRM history and present it to the new person so they can see your relationship and your value. (All of a sudden, CRM diligence can have an impact.)
4. Enlist others to speak on your behalf.
5. Follow ALL the ideas above.
5.5 Find the person who left. They represent the best possible NEW customer.

The key to having a new person in charge of your future sales is to be ready. It’s a simple rule of ‘the more the more.’

The more mature and solid a value-based relationship has been built with the key contact AND the rest of the company, the more likely it will be that the new person will continue doing business with you.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

A new way to look at questions and engagement: emotionally

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When you’re asking an existing or prospective customer a question, the object is to get them to think and respond emotionally.

To most salespeople this strategy sounds like a foreign language.

START YOUR THINKING HERE: The sale is made emotionally and justified logically. Once you understand that fact, it makes perfect sense to engage the customer emotionally to set the tone for them to decide to buy.

Most salespeople are taught the difference between open-ended and closed-ended questions. A closed-ended question is one that results in a yes or no answer. An open-ended question is one that begins to create dialogue from the customer. Open-ended questions are good, but they don’t necessarily breed emotion. This process is necessary to understand, but at its core is passé.

Here’s a new way of thinking about your questioning strategy: logic-based questions vs. emotion-based questions.

This thought process and strategy will give you a new awakening about how customers think and decide. And by using emotion-based questions, you can get them to decide on you.

CAUTION and CHALLENGE: This is insight to a new questioning process that will help you formulate emotionally engaging questions. I’ll give you phrases to use, and a few sample questions. Your job is to understand the process and create your own questions based on your product, service, customer needs, and customer’s desired outcome. Questions that draw out their emotion, and keep focus away from logic – AKA price.

Logic-based questions center around the old-world ‘qualifying’ questions. These are questions that both annoy and aggravate the customer. Logic-based questions basically ask for money information so the salesperson can begin to salivate. “What’s your present payment?” or “What have you paid in the past?” or “What’s your budget?” or “Do you want to lease or buy?” These are questions fall under the category of ‘none of your business.’

KEY CONCEPT: Do not qualify the buyer, let them qualify themselves because you’re so friendly, engaging, and genuinely interested.

The late, great Dale Carnegie said, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people, than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

Emotion-based questions ask about their life and use, not their money. Prior to beginning your ‘presentation,’ ask the customer emotion-based questions that begin with the words, “How long have you been thinking about…” or “What were you hoping for…”

Get the customer to paint their vision of outcome.
Get the customer to paint their picture of ‘after they buy.’

During the purchase, ask emotion-based questions such as, “Is this what you had in mind?” or “How do you see this serving your purpose?” or “How do you see your family enjoying this?” Or take it even deeper with, “What do you think Bobby will say when he sees this?”

Emotion-based questions draw out feelings – feelings that will lead to true engagement and honest answers about how your product or service will affect their expected outcome.

When you can get the customer to visualize outcome, you also have them visualizing ownership – otherwise known to you as ‘purchase.’

MAJOR POINT OF UNDERSTANDING: People don’t actually come to purchase. They come to purchase because they want to USE. What happens AFTER the purchase is way more important to the customer than the actual purchasing process. Drawing out their emotion during the process is the key to getting them to take ownership.

So, during the sales presentation you might want to ask questions that begin with phrases like, “What are you hoping to achieve?” or “How will you use this in your business?” or “How do you envision this will add to your productivity?” or “How do you believe this will affect your profit?”

Whether you are selling to a consumer or a business, whether you are selling on the phone or face-to-face, the process and the emotional involvement are the same. Someone wants to take ownership, and your job is to get them to visualize it, be engaged by you, agree with you, believe you, have confidence in you, trust you, accept your price, and pull the trigger.

The key to this is emotional involvement. No manipulation, no pressure, no old world sales techniques, no NLP, just friendly and genuine emotional engagement that touches the heart and the mind simultaneously.

“Jeffrey, I’ve been taught to ‘find the pain.’ Is that emotional?” Yes, but in a negative way. A very negative way. Pain is a negative emotion – or as I call it, a ‘none-of-your-business emotion.’ Dumb questions like, “What keeps you up at night?” create an uneasy, uncomfortable atmosphere between you and the customer. And most of the time, if you’re asking a negative-based question the customer will not give you a real answer.

AHA! Don’t find the pain. Find the pleasure.

Pleasure evokes positive emotion. “Tell me about your vacation.” “How is Morgan following your passion for fashion?” “How is Henry following your passion for golf?” “Where was your biking trip this year?”

Find their pleasure, find their purpose, find their expected outcome, uncover their true emotional motives – and you will find their wallet.

Now that’s pleasure.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

The Secret of Lousy Service and How to Fix It

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Last week I promised the answers to why lousy service occurs and how to fix it. If you didn’t read part one, stop now, and go here.

The answer revolves around four words you already know: positive attitude and personal pride.

Let’s start with a little background…

Here are the reasons or feelings that negatively affect your attitude, and reduce or eliminate the power of your ability to serve at a superior level:

  • My boss is a jerk.
  • I hate my job.
  • I hate my coworkers.
  • I’m too good for this.
  • They don’t pay me enough.
  • They don’t understand me.
  • Benefits suck here.
  • I have my resume in five other places.
  • I can’t wait to get out of here.

ANSWER ONE: There’s a two-word secret to service response: positive attitude.

  • Positive attitude, defined as the way you dedicated yourself to the way you think, is the beginning point of service.
  • Positive attitude is not what happens to you. It’s what you do, and how you respond to what happens to you. That is the essence of service.
  • Positive attitude must be the first part of any training program, or the rest of training will fall on deaf ears – or worse – existing negative attitudes.

ANSWER TWO: There’s a two-word secret to the service process: personal pride.

  • It’s not how you feel about the customer, it’s not how do you feel about the circumstance. It’s all about how you feel about yourself. Your personal pride.
  • Personal pride should give you the incentive to be at your best, respond at your best, and serve at your best at all times.
  • You’re not doing this for other people, you’re doing it for yourself. Once you understand that, great service not only becomes easy, it actually becomes fun.

Here are a few guidelines to make personal pride more easily understood:

  • Personal pride must be more powerful than feelings about boss or company
  • Personal pride must be more powerful than pay
  • Personal pride must be more powerful than existing job

REALITY: If positive attitude and personal pride are present, then service, even great service, is possible. And vice versa.

MAJOR POINT OF UNDERSTANDING: It’s not a job, it’s an opportunity. And your attitude, combined with your personal pride, will determine your short-term and long-term fate.

Yes, I realize there may be extenuating, outside circumstances that affect attitude, pride, and even performance. There are too many possible issues to deal with in this short piece, but I do want to acknowledge it’s not always work related.

KEY POINT OF UNDERSTANDING: It’s likely that most people reading this will not be in the same job five years from today. But between now and then, the thoughts you have, the personal pride you build and display, and your level of performance will dictate the quality of job, or advancement, you’re likely to secure.

Why would you risk lousy performance at your present job, thinking you’re going to get a better job based on resume or desire? It doesn’t make sense. And it’s a fantasy with an unhappy ending.

KEY POINT OF UNDERSTANDING: Once you understand that you’re serving for yourself, once you understand that your attitude will determine your communication excellence, and once you understand your personal pride will dictate your actions – at once you see your possibilities, and will have the ability to better improve your performance.

Don’t be mad at the world, don’t be mad at your customers, don’t be mad at your boss, don’t be mad at your coworkers – be happy about yourself.

NOTE WELL: If you’re the boss, or you’re in HR, or you’re the trainer, stop training a bunch a crap about your company and how to fill out the silly papers, stop telling me all about how great the company is, how you have a great reputation, and that I should be happy to work here. That’s a bunch of baloney! You can email me that.

START YOUR TRAINING SESSIONS LIKE THIS: Here are two things most people don’t know about themselves AND their success.

HR REALITY: Train me about me. My attitude, my personal pride, my happiness, my opportunity. Information I can use NOW and LATER. Information that applies to ME.
BIGGER HR REALITY: Most employees disdain training, they just want a paycheck.
BIGGEST HR REALITY: The more you help the employee succeed, the more they will set the standard you’re hoping for. They will have a better attitude and serve with pride because you helped them.

That’s not just a challenge, HR – that’s YOUR opportunity.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

The Secret of Lousy Service and Why it Happens

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QUESTION: Why does lousy service occur?
ANSWER: Lousy service happens because (big) companies don’t understand people OR training.

I am amazed at how many times someone in a service environment delivers lousy service. And it’s often not just lousy – add rude, offensive, abrasive, defensive, maddening, and most of all disappointing.

GREAT NEWS: It doesn’t have to be like that.

If I take the time to complain, which I rarely do anymore, the manager will always ask, “Did you get the name of the person?” Somehow getting the name of the person is important to the manager. But it is unimportant to me. I never get their name.

The manager is looking to blame someone. I’m looking for someone to accept responsibility. The manager is NEVER the one who takes it.

I have found poor service is a reflection of the company and its leaders, not just the person who delivered it.

MY REALITY: When a manager asks me for the person’s name who delivered lousy service, I reply, “Don’t yell at the person who gave me lousy service. Yell at the person who trained them.” The person delivering poor service is most likely to have been poorly trained or ill trained, or both. They’re doing what they were trained to do, and say what they were trained to say.

Or the employee will ‘modify training’ and make statements based on their ‘at the moment’ feelings:

  • Sorry about that…
  • That’s our policy…
  • I’m just doing my job…
  • They don’t pay me to think…
  • I’m just a peon…

Or worse, they become defensive, even rude, when a customer expresses frustration or anger as a reaction to what happened. Employees do that because someone TAUGHT THEM they don’t have to take gruff from a customer. (REALITY: The customer provides the money for their paycheck).

Ever get poor service at an airline? Of course you have, EVERYONE HAS. It happens because the people who work at the airlines are undertrained, poorly managed, feel put upon by their management and their leadership, underpaid, rarely if ever praised, and are exposed to constant customer complaints. They don’t like their job, they don’t like or respect their leader, they don’t like their company, and they don’t like the people they serve. Not good.

Now granted, this is a generalization, but I’m in the air enough to make the comment based on 20 years of flying experience. I get an occasional nice person. I have an occasional pleasant experience. But they are so rare that I actually go up to the person and thank them for being nice, for being happy, and for being friendly.

So let’s get back to the question at hand. Why does lousy service exist?

Who is responsible to make great service possible?
Who is responsible to make great service happen?

I always ask people in service positions, “How’s it going?” Most people respond in some negative fashion. Statements like, “Well, tomorrow is Friday!” or “I’ll let you know in two hours when I get off.” or “You’re kidding, right?”

These are losing, self-defeating statements. Statements made by people who fail to understand that doing their best, having a great attitude, and having a high sense of personal pride have nothing to do with the job. They have everything to do with who you are as a person.

Most of the front-line servers are in low-paying positions. When you combine that with our “feeling of entitlement” workforce and with training that’s all about the company, with a smattering of, “smile, greet the customer, thank the customer,” you have a perfect setting for mediocre or lousy service to occur most of the time.

About now, you want answers to this dilemma. I have them. They revolve around four words you already know: positive attitude and personal pride. But there is way more to these four words than your known definition.

Positive attitude and personal pride hold the key to your success, and they will be discussed in-depth next week.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

Recommended Resources – The Welcomer Edge

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The Welcomer Edge: Unlocking the Secrets to Repeat Business
by Richard Shapiro

About the Book

The Welcomer Edge by Richard Shapiro explores the customer experience that converts first time customers into repeat buyers. Richard characterizes four types of sales persons; highlighting the advantage ‘welcomers’ have over others not so personally engaging.

  • Welcomers draw new customers to a business and keep them by establishing a relationship with their clients.
  • Robots go through the motions in their client interactions and do not create a personal connection.
  • Indifferent employees overtly communicate a lack of caring to their customers; rarely saying ‘hello’ and ‘thank you.’
  • Hostiles do not want to be at work and make this sentiment obvious to their customers.

Robert goes on to reveal how those who are not currently welcomers can work to develop the key mindsets and approaches to embody this approach; thereby increasing customer satisfaction and sales.

Benefits of Using this Book

StrategyDriven Contributors like The Welcomers Edge for its highly insightful, example filled examination of the various degrees of one-on-one customer relationship management. We appreciate the detailed personality descriptions that enable managers to identify the approach type of their front-line employees as well as the prescription for developing individual’s welcomer abilities.

If we had one criticism of the book it would be that Richard uses too many examples; going a bit beyond what is needed to effectively make a point. But then again, can one really have too many examples?

The Welcomer Edge provides business leaders with the crucial insight needed to ensure they have the best client facing people, individuals who will convert and retain potential customers. For its actionable, example rich insights driving organizational goal achievement, The Welcomer Edge is a StrategyDriven recommended read.