The Selling Newsletter
The Selling Newsletter
from Best@Selling
A free monthly newsletter of ideas to help make your selling easier.
Selling is the easiest job in the world…Just ask anyone who is NOT in sales! Best wishes for YOUR successful selling—Maura
This issue contains:
-The Selling Quote for the Month
-Upcoming Programs
-The Selling Ideas for the Month
-Action Items
-Selling Tips
-To Subscribe to the Selling Newsletter
-Need an article for your newsletter?
-About Maura Schreier-Fleming
-Contact Information
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The Selling Quote for the Month
“The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.” – Linus Pauling
As you develop your selling strategies it’s a good idea to use your creativity. That way you’ll get to generate many ideas and you’ll get to pick the best idea. Too often the biggest barrier to creative thinking is our own judging. You may think of an idea and then immediately say, “That won’t work.” You are judging your idea and it’s not appropriate at the beginning of the creative process. Instead, consider every idea. Hold off on judging until you have exhausted your thinking. When you postpone judging you’ll produce more ideas. In selling, new ideas are the currency of your business. Without creative thinking you’ll find it much harder to solve the sales challenges you face. So avoid judging till you’ve given every idea a chance. You just may find that the one unusual idea led you to one of your best ideas.
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Upcoming Programs
When : Friday, February 17, 2005
11.30 AM- 1:30 PM
Where: Small Business Development Center
4800 West Park Blvd.
Plano, TX
What: Selling Strategy
For more information: 972-985-3749
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When : February 24, 2006
Where: Small Business Development Center
4800 West Park Blvd.
Plano, TX
What: Laser Listening
For more information: 972-985-3749
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The Selling Ideas for this Month
Taking Care of Business
You would pay attention to customer service if any failures got the attention of the FCC. That is the case with telecommunications companies. They do their best to prevent problems and use customer service to keep customers. Here’s how one of the largest national telecommunications companies uses customer service to grow their business.
You’ve got many types of customers. Before you can provide customer service you have to identify who your customers are. It’s easy to think about external customers. For this telecommunications company external customers are buying phone service. It’s important to remember internal customers as well. Internal customers have a big impact on the service external customers receive. This company provides telephone service that is sold by a sales force composed of independent contractors. Management has identified the sales force as one very important class of internal customers because the sales force is such a critical component of the company’s success. A separate support team handles their customer service issues. You might consider which internal customers you need to serve to ensure that your external customers receive the best service.
Treat customers differently. If customers have a problem, do you treat all of them the same? This company does not. The Director of Training said, “We give our customer service representatives more latitude with our new customers. They are authorized to give refunds even if there’s no need to. Our representatives can also make exceptions to company policy. New customer problems also get escalated all the way to the office of the president.” Why? This telecom company researched its business and found that a new customer is very valuable for their sales process and highly sought after by their competition. The company knows that most of their new business is from word of mouth. The company fosters word of mouth by calling new customers and asking them if they’ve referred customers to them. The result is that if a new customer is treated well the customer is more likely to positively influence other new business. This company pays special attention to new customers with problems because they have too much to lose.
Plan for customer service. Customer service should never be an afterthought. How you serve your customers is a key element of keeping your business. This company has a separate Office of Strategic Planning that is responsible for developing the company’s customer retention and win back (if a customer is lost) policies. This department is responsible for developing the customer retention strategic plan that is part of the company’s overall strategic planning. The Office of Strategic Planning also incorporates data from the Vice President of Metrics who forecasts how many customers the company needs to retain to meet performance goals. Management is strongly involved and committed to the program’s success. Approval for the customer service policies and retention policies is done at the highest levels of the organization.
The Director of Training says everyone must understand the urgency of the policies and deliver customer service well. Employees have a 48 hour deadline to respond to customer complaints. The company has extensive training for their employees. Employees learn from more experienced employees how to listen empathically so they can identify customer emotions and respond appropriately.
Closing a sale is not the end of the sales process. Your work has just begun. The time to develop a customer retention strategy is before you get your customers. Along with your sales goals, set retention goals and develop retention strategies. When you thoughtfully approach how you will keep your customers, you’ll be ready at your next sale to create long term customer relationships.
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Action Items
1. Identify the internal customers who you need to serve. Make sure you are making their job easier so that your external customers are served well.
2. What is your customer service policy? Is it the same for all customers? How quickly can you respond?
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From Maura’s ebook: 97 Ways to Sell More Now E-Book
https://www.bestatselling.com/selling_tools.htm#5
Selling Tips
From Maura’s ebook: 97 Ways to Sell More Now E-Book
https://www.bestatselling.com/selling_tools.htm#5
Tip 42. Set a minimum objective for your next sales call. It’s what you will leave if you don’t accomplish what you want to. It’s the least you’ll go away with that is more than what you had when you started. Perhaps a referral or an agreement to move forward.
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Looking for new strategies to improve your persuasion skills? This easy to apply Audio CD will give you many new ideas to easily improve your persuasion skills so you can sell more and close business faster.
https://www.bestatselling.com/Audio_CD.htm
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I’m always looking for success stories and other tips from sales professionals. Please feel free to email me at info@bestatselling.com with ideas that have worked for you.
If you want to build customer relationships for long-term business, you can easily do it using Exacttarget (www.exacttarget.com) and their CANSPAM compliant broadcast services.
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To Subscribe to the Selling Newsletter
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Need an Article for Your Newsletter?
Articles from this newsletter may be used in your free publications or posted on your web when given the following credit:
Written by Maura Schreier-Fleming, Best@Selling (www.BestatSelling.com). Maura works with business and sales professionals who want to sell more and be more productive at work. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results.
For free articles, selling ideas and morale boosters
visit https://www.BestatSelling.com
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About Maura Schreier-Fleming
Invite Maura to speak at your next conference or sales meeting! Contact: info@bestatselling.com
Maura Schreier-Fleming works with business and sales professionals to make it easier to sell more and be more productive at work. Her Best@Selling clients want to create long-term client relationships. They include Fujitsu, Fannie Mae and Dr Pepper/7UP. She has an M.S. in Textile Engineering from Georgia Tech and was Mobil Oil’s first female lubrication engineer in the U.S. With over 20 years of sales experience, she teaches the art and science of selling with a unique hands-on perspective and a great deal of real-life insight. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results (a book filled with ideas to make selling easier and more productive. Her business column ‘Selling Strategies’ appears in the Insurance Record magazine and her column ‘Street Talk’ appears in Jobbers World. You can contact her for seminars at company or trade association meetings at 972 380 0200 or info@BestatSelling.com
Privacy: At Best@Selling we take privacy issues very seriously. Your information remains with us and will never be sold, shared, or distributed in any manner, for any reason.
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Contact Information
1. Our Web site: https://www.BestatSelling.com
2. E-mail: info@bestatselling.com
3. Call: In Dallas 972 380 0200
4. Write us:
6757 Arapaho Rd., Suite 711-183
Dallas, TX 752448
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(c) Copyright 2006 Maura Schreier-Fleming. All rights reserved
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