Thank you for calling ABC Company.
Your call is VERY important to us.
In order to serve you better, please press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish, 3 for French, 4 for German, 5 for Cantonese, 6 for Pig Latin and 7 for New York tawk, 8 for southern drawl. If you do not understand the question, please press 9.
How many times have you experienced the audio fortress set up as a barrier to quality customer care?
,
In an effort to reduce staff and operate more efficiently, many organizations forget about one thing. The one thing that keeps their doors open, their lights on, pays their salaries and ironically enough, pays for their expensive automated phone system...the CUSTOMER.
Some organizations have concluded they can lower costs by outsourcing their call center to a third world country where English is, or might as well be, a second language. A number have since retracted that decision.
When you tell the customer service rep or technical support specialist that you didn't understand them, they figure you'll somehow comprehend them better if they just say the same thing twice as fast. Add to that frustration, the sound of keyboard entry on the other end of the line after you get past the "morse code" that means they are going to type in your question to a web data base of FAQ's and try to answer you. HELP!
It's no wonder that we've finished the call more frustrated then before we made the call.
So as the race to get "scale", remove non-value added activities, and reduce operating costs continues, organizations that might actually believe they are improving customer service are creating a needs gap.
So what does all this mean?
These needs gaps created by organizations that have left the customer behind, are great places to cast your net. They may have left behind a blue ocean (as described in The Blue Ocean Strategy, Chen and Maughborne).
Let me paint the picture. Let's say you notice a trend in the competition or current supplier community for a product or service. Automated customer service is a great example. You personally experience the associated pain. Let that frustration service as the origin of an idea to capitalize on ... a place to cast your net. Let it serve a place that you can create value for customers sick and tired of voice mail hell.
Think about other "Press 3" frustrations that could get you to the live person THEY seemed to have forgotten about.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
The Invisible Wall of Distrust: How To Breakthrough the Stereotypes
You can't see it.
You can't hear it.
You can't smell it.
But it most definitely stands tall and wide. The battle tested wall that took generations to build, centuries to shape and decades to perfect that stands between the customer and the sales professional.
What's so amazing is that there are times when a sales rep can spend an hour meeting with a client they hope to get to buy their goods or services and never even sense the wall's presence.
Yet, there it was the entire meeting, structurally sound, message resistant and without pretension...the Invisible Wall of Distrust.
This wall of distrust has been constructed with impervious materials. Consider three of the building materials used to create this wall - stones of braggadocio, bricks of babble and concrete closes.
Stones of braggadocio - "Our product outperforms any competitor's on the market", "We have the best XYZ (you fill in the blank) in the industry", "I've been doing this a long time and what you need is...", "I really don't want to brag, but I did win the Sales Executive of The Year four consecutive times".
Bricks of babble - "Show up and throw up" techniques act like iron reinforcements for the wall of distrust. While they forget to leave their ego at the door time after time, so many sales reps feel compelled to show the client just how much they know about what they do (of course simultaneously showing how little they care about the customer's needs).
How about one of my favorite bricks of babble, industry jargon. "Well we have a DDCPI that came out after we discontinued our PPDCD program last year." "You don't know what DDCPI is?"confusing the customer's first signs of nausea with a request for approval to continue "basically (or as someone once said, let me dumb it down to your level, Mr. Customer) it's the best ACTD since PPDCD migrated to CCCPO...it's the Lexus of the industry." It's scary, but it's true. This stuff really does happen.
Concrete closes - Oh no, here it comes, like the attack of the killer tomatoes, the close! The customer is thinking that this over-cologned, missing link must have read the ABC's of Closing just before he arrived. Unfortunately, customers don't like to be sold to, they like to buy things.
Each time a sales representative uses these building materials, the wall grows in breadth and depth. Consider three possible ways to tear down that wall:
You can't hear it.
You can't smell it.
But it most definitely stands tall and wide. The battle tested wall that took generations to build, centuries to shape and decades to perfect that stands between the customer and the sales professional.
What's so amazing is that there are times when a sales rep can spend an hour meeting with a client they hope to get to buy their goods or services and never even sense the wall's presence.
Yet, there it was the entire meeting, structurally sound, message resistant and without pretension...the Invisible Wall of Distrust.
This wall of distrust has been constructed with impervious materials. Consider three of the building materials used to create this wall - stones of braggadocio, bricks of babble and concrete closes.
Stones of braggadocio - "Our product outperforms any competitor's on the market", "We have the best XYZ (you fill in the blank) in the industry", "I've been doing this a long time and what you need is...", "I really don't want to brag, but I did win the Sales Executive of The Year four consecutive times".
Bricks of babble - "Show up and throw up" techniques act like iron reinforcements for the wall of distrust. While they forget to leave their ego at the door time after time, so many sales reps feel compelled to show the client just how much they know about what they do (of course simultaneously showing how little they care about the customer's needs).
How about one of my favorite bricks of babble, industry jargon. "Well we have a DDCPI that came out after we discontinued our PPDCD program last year." "You don't know what DDCPI is?"confusing the customer's first signs of nausea with a request for approval to continue "basically (or as someone once said, let me dumb it down to your level, Mr. Customer) it's the best ACTD since PPDCD migrated to CCCPO...it's the Lexus of the industry." It's scary, but it's true. This stuff really does happen.
Concrete closes - Oh no, here it comes, like the attack of the killer tomatoes, the close! The customer is thinking that this over-cologned, missing link must have read the ABC's of Closing just before he arrived. Unfortunately, customers don't like to be sold to, they like to buy things.
Each time a sales representative uses these building materials, the wall grows in breadth and depth. Consider three possible ways to tear down that wall:
1. Acknowledge the wall exists - some customers come right out and tell us, but most just look through the wall as if it weren't there. The first step toward solving the problem is admitting you have one.
2. Observe the dating rule - let them do 75% of the talking. I know it may be difficult to keep biting the same spot on your tongue but it's real hard to listen while you are talking. Should you be more interested in what they have to say? Ask yourself how much of the talking you did on the last sales call.
3. Seek approval to move to the next step - if you've done your job clarifying their needs and getting their agreement that you can help them arrive at a desired outcome, customers will probably pull you through the process. At the very least, they'll be more than happy to move along with you.
Now that you know the secret of the invisible wall of distrust, and some of the demolition tools to tear it down, you can have an unobstructed view to your customers.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Out of Alignment? Why Selling Strategies Crash
Morale Low?
Turnover High?
Sales Flat?
All of the above?
Has you notice good people headed for the door?
Most sales organizations that suffer from some of these ailments don't see it coming. It was a HIT and RUN I tell you!
Well, actually, it was a misalignment.
When your car drifts out of alignment, it doesn't just smack into a lampost. Instead, it starts to pull to one side. The tires begin to wear unevenly. More stress causes the shocks, struts and axel to break down. Then one day, your car folds like the Baltimore Orioles in August (sorry, that's a local thing).
Let's bring it back to the sales organization. Let's say you make blogclogs (shoes you wear while blogging - ok, not so humorous). Many firms already have a corporate vision (although we might want to explore how they developed that in a future blog). Many of those same organizations have a selling strategy that incorporates a recruiting and retention plan, compensation, incentives, recognition, benefits, sales training, etc.
So the key isn't whether an organization has a vision and a selling strategy, but rather if they are in alignment?
In our out-of-alignment car, we have lots of blame to go around (except for the car owner, of course). Let's blame the manufacturer, the dealer, the auto mechanic, Goodyear, Jiffylube, US Highway and Roads, and your spouse!
Indeed, now we move directly into our "Whodunnit?" phase, in which all suspects are guilty until proven innocent!
Who made it? (The Factory) Guilty!
Who hired them? (HR) Guilty!
Who trained them? (Outside training companies are easier to blame so let's blame them) Guilty!
Who managed them? (The Sales Manager) Guilty!
Who didn't sell enough? (The Sales Rep) Guilty!
Who didn't help with the sales adminstration fast enough? (Sales Admin.) Guilty!
You get the idea!
A sales organization doesn't crash in one day. Instead it drifts further and further out of alignment until it collapses like the Orioles of late.
In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins sites his finding in organizations that have gone from good to great (exceeding the performance of the general stock market by a factor of 15 over a 15 year period) by having clearly defined core values and a vision that doesn't shift from year-to-year, but is timeless. Yet, what can and should change are the strategies and operating procedures a firm implements.
In my 25 years in sales and sales management, I've seen organizations in and out of alignment. What's interesting to me, is that senior management often takes the Whodunnit? approach instead of checking to see if they are living their vision.
So before we play the blame game, can we check the maintenance record?
Turnover High?
Sales Flat?
All of the above?
Has you notice good people headed for the door?
Most sales organizations that suffer from some of these ailments don't see it coming. It was a HIT and RUN I tell you!
Well, actually, it was a misalignment.
When your car drifts out of alignment, it doesn't just smack into a lampost. Instead, it starts to pull to one side. The tires begin to wear unevenly. More stress causes the shocks, struts and axel to break down. Then one day, your car folds like the Baltimore Orioles in August (sorry, that's a local thing).
Let's bring it back to the sales organization. Let's say you make blogclogs (shoes you wear while blogging - ok, not so humorous). Many firms already have a corporate vision (although we might want to explore how they developed that in a future blog). Many of those same organizations have a selling strategy that incorporates a recruiting and retention plan, compensation, incentives, recognition, benefits, sales training, etc.
So the key isn't whether an organization has a vision and a selling strategy, but rather if they are in alignment?
In our out-of-alignment car, we have lots of blame to go around (except for the car owner, of course). Let's blame the manufacturer, the dealer, the auto mechanic, Goodyear, Jiffylube, US Highway and Roads, and your spouse!
Indeed, now we move directly into our "Whodunnit?" phase, in which all suspects are guilty until proven innocent!
Who made it? (The Factory) Guilty!
Who hired them? (HR) Guilty!
Who trained them? (Outside training companies are easier to blame so let's blame them) Guilty!
Who managed them? (The Sales Manager) Guilty!
Who didn't sell enough? (The Sales Rep) Guilty!
Who didn't help with the sales adminstration fast enough? (Sales Admin.) Guilty!
You get the idea!
A sales organization doesn't crash in one day. Instead it drifts further and further out of alignment until it collapses like the Orioles of late.
In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins sites his finding in organizations that have gone from good to great (exceeding the performance of the general stock market by a factor of 15 over a 15 year period) by having clearly defined core values and a vision that doesn't shift from year-to-year, but is timeless. Yet, what can and should change are the strategies and operating procedures a firm implements.
In my 25 years in sales and sales management, I've seen organizations in and out of alignment. What's interesting to me, is that senior management often takes the Whodunnit? approach instead of checking to see if they are living their vision.
So before we play the blame game, can we check the maintenance record?
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