Leadership, Sales Techniques

How to stay connected to your customer to increase sales

How well are you connected to your customers? In today’s business environment it’s easy to lose touch with their needs, concerns, and business issues.  Falling into the day to day routine of your job description.  Getting caught up in internal meetings, 1- to-1’s,  and pipeline reviews can distract you from the most important task of all…staying current with what is important to your customers and prospective customers. Having this valuable information can allow you to continually adapt your sales message to keep it relevant.

You need to spot trends in what’s supporting the buying decision. Understand how your customers want to be sold to.  Which content on your company website, sales presentations, sales demo’s and throughout the sales process prospects find most engaging? How important were each of your company’s USP’s and what was the WOW factor in their buying decision? Understanding this, and more will help you find and sell to more customers. It will help you connect with customers and prospects on a better level giving you an advantage over your competition. Here are four things you can start doing now to stay connected with your customers and prospects.

Have an independent interviewer speak to your wins and losses

Having someone independently interview your wins and losses will give you so much information.  You get some amazing feedback which will help you to grow and develop as a business. That human to human interaction gets you so much information. It’s 100% worth the investment. Interview your wins, people who you sign up and the people that you don’t. Say you lost 10 opportunities in a quarter, or twenty. You might pick 5 or 6 of them to be interviewed. Or 5 that you won and 5 that you lost. This will give you a gauge of what your customers are thinking. And you will know what really happened with them.             

Contacts that leave…Give them your product or service for free

People move around from job to job over time.  It’s hugely important to find a way to stay connected to your key contacts after they leave. A great way to do this is to give them access to your product or service for free when you know they are leaving. This way they keep connected to what you are doing and can still be a friend of the company. This will then set you up with the best chance to carry on the relationship in their new role at some point in the future. If they don’t buy it in their new role it still doesn’t matter as they will still be a great advocate for your company and brand.

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Survey new and existing customers

You need to get feedback from every new customer within a week or two max after they have signed. This way you can understand what they are thinking now and what they felt about the sales process.  A great way to do this is to send them a survey. Here is a great tool for this that is low-cost, easy to use and looks great: www.getfeedback.com. It will give you great insight as a team to learn from. When a client stops using your product or service you should send them a survey as well. Like an exit interview given to departing employees. Your churn rate of clients is a vital piece of data and you need to understand why this happens and quick. It is always hard to get the real truth from a client verbally at the time they tell you they are leaving.  A survey will allow you to learn from and understand the honest facts about why they are going and help you fix any issues.

Run events to give back and share

Another way to stay connected to customers is with events that allow you to give back and increase interaction. An example might be a seminar on a current topic of interest to your audience. Include several speakers and invite your clients. You have the opportunity to network and spend time with them. They’re gaining knowledge, you’re giving them something back and staying better connected to them. Other alternatives might be focus groups of top customers to get their input on potential new services or existing ones.

Staying connected with your customers will help you learn quick and increase sales. When you listen to them you understand their needs, concerns, and business issues. You keep current with what’s happening in the market and you close more business.

I hope this helps

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