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Anyone who has worked in a sales capacity, whether it is in acquisition, sales, support, service, leadership or elsewhere knows that time, money and effort goes into generating a lead. The investment of resources, especially on bigger ticket product or services, can be daunting, especially if the prospect is a perfect fit. When that sale fails to convert into a customer, it can be downright frustrating.

Then there is the customer that you have worked with for years, who suddenly starts doing business with a competitor. You wonder what happened. What went wrong?

These two scenarios represent golden opportunities to gather the insight you need to retain customers and win new ones for years to come.

Gather and Quantify Feedback

Feedback can be extremely valuable. However, it is only valuable if people listen with open minds, if necessary changes are made and if egos don’t get in the way.

Surveys, customer exit interviews, customer reviews, customer complaints, recommendations and feedback from both co-workers and customers can prove highly beneficial. Ideas to dig deeper into feedback include:

  • Review support calls and/or transcripts to see how employees are interacting with customers and/or sales or support queries.
    • How long does it take to get correct answers?
    • Are customers and visitors being treated with respect?
    • Do employees understand how to interact with customers based on that person’s role/title, as well as their question or query?
    • How can you improve productivity and efficiency without sacrificing customer satisfaction?
    • Do you have target goals to quantify metrics? For example, time to resolve common problems, or number of service tickets solved satisfactorily?
  • Track customer complaints by frequency and type.
    • Is a complaint appearing over and over?
    • Is a certain department or person the cause of complaints?
    • How could complaints be addressed better and more efficiently?
    • Could complaints be prevented entirely?
  • Use online listening tools (such as Mention) to see what people are writing about your products/services, company and brand as well as your competitors.
    • What are experiences people share about working with your company?
    • Are there lessons to be learned?
    • Are there improvements which can be made?
    • What are competitors doing that you could be implementing?
    • How are your competitors serving customers better?
  • Benchmark how your company stacks up against competitors. Whether your industry tracks standards or you quantify how you perform against competitors, it is important to know how you stack up.
    • Do you have more complaints, more negative reviews, what’s the average time for problem resolution, and so forth?

Ask Tough Questions

Following up on lost sales is also critical. Yet 60% of sales professionals do not contact prospects to find out why they lost the deal. (1) How can you fix the problem if you have no idea what caused it?

Losing a client or a sale is also often a group effort, though often may be perceived as just the sales representative’s failure. Asking tough questions such as the following is an excellent way to start discussions that can help to understand more about what happened:

  • Why did we lose this customer or sale?
  • What could we have done differently?
  • What should we have made priority?
  • Did we truly listen to the customer?
  • Which areas are weak links for us?
  • What do we need to improve?
  • Which employees need to improve and for what reason?
  • How do we help them make these improvements?

In addition to asking revealing questions, breaking your staff away from working in isolated silos is imperative. Start by holding a roundtable to find out how the organization can improve as a whole to prevent customer and sales losses.

See the Big Picture

Getting too comfortable with processes, or not being able to see new perspectives, can be factors in low customer retention and the need improve lead-to-conversion rates. Organizations should always factor both micro and macro analysis into how the workforce impacts revenue earning potential.

Common factors that can influence buying behavior as well as customer lifetime are as follows:

  • Are prospects properly vetted, qualified and quantified before too much time and effort has been invested?
  • Is research performed to identify the need/pain point/opportunity, buying cycle, factors that influence the buying decision or current situation prior to conducting sales calls?
  • Are sales calls customized to provide unique experiences for each buyer based upon need, industry/market, role/title, their point in the buying cycle and so forth?
  • Are objectives anticipated, planned and addressed before they become obstacles?
  • Is building a relationship and earning trust prioritized over fast sales?
  • Are there customer retention strategies in place such as:
    • Proactively seeking ways to provide an elevated level of service.
    • Ensuring competitors do not lure customers away with greater value, or superior service.
    • Keeping in regular touch to track changes in roles or titles on the customer’s end.
    • Touching base with all internal staff members to verify purposeful intent in servicing the customer to retain with the company’s services for the foreseeable future
    • Continuing to build the relationship with the customer through referrals, repeat business, extending helpful information and working toward trusted advisor status

Training employees to recognize and nurture the lifetime value of customers is the cure for the disease of complacent staff members. Make sure that everyone in the company fully understands their role in winning each sale as well as retaining each customer. Offering employees incentives for successfully retaining customers is a helpful way to motivate them.

Convert Current Loss to Future Wins

Take the insights you obtain from client and sales losses and apply this knowledge toward existing clients and new sales. This is particularly effective when dealing with clients or prospects similar to those you lost.

By following the tips outlined above, you can convert client and sales losses into future wins and ramp up the success of your business.

For more information about how Gavel International can help your organization strive for bigger goals,  contact us.

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SOURCES:

1 https://aircall.io/blog/sales/sales-tips-lost-deals/

Jim Bozzelli
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