|
Aligning
Your Sales and Corporate Strategies
Anatomy
of an ideal sales strategy
When
your sales strategy is not aligned with your
corporate strategy, your organization can become
its own worst enemy. While the sales force may be
heading in one direction (e.g., applying their own
processes, emphasizing certain product lines,
addressing their own objectives) the corporate
direction and priorities could be completely
different. Of course it’s the customer who
suffers the most when these strategies are not
aligned. Hence, it is critical that sales and
corporate strategies be in sync to avoid conflicts
with processes, priorities, resources, and
especially customers.
A
business’ corporate strategy defines “what”
the business wants to do, such as grow market
share, increase revenue, reduce costs, increase
customer retention, prevent customer defection,
etc. A sales strategy defines “how” the
business will achieve those goals. And the
sales methodology defines the skills the sales
people need to execute those strategies. All
these strategies need to be aligned and consistent
in order for a company to reach success and
maintain a positive customer retention rate....
Read
More
|
|
Crumby
Customer Service
Selma's
Cookies could learn some lessons
I'm
not one to complain, much. And I'm not too picky
about most things, except when it comes to selling
and customer support, especially since I make a
living helping businesses improve both. Needless
to say, when my recent experience with a
well-known mail-order cookie company turned
crumby, I really took notice. About
a year ago, my wife ordered a beautiful cookie
arrangement from Selma's Cookies through QVC for
her mother's birthday, who lives across the
country. My dear mother-in-law absolutely loved
them. They came in an arrangement like a dozen
roses, but instead of 12 flowers at the end of
each stem (or stick in this case) there were 12
huge delicious cookies. So, a year later, we
decided to treat her to the same gift. This time
we ordered it directly from Selma's web
site. Unfortunately,
when they arrived, the cookies were very hard, in
fact, too hard to eat. My mother-in-law,
father-in-law, and assorted guests who visited for
her birthday, all agreed that the cookies were inedible.
Not a problem. This happens now and then,
especially with flowers. And when you call a florist
to tell them their flowers arrived half dead, they
typically send out a new arrangement at no charge,
and with no hassle. So I called Selma's to see if
they would kindly help. That's when things turned
ugly. First,
they recommended we put the cookies in the
microwave to soften them up. Obviously missing the
point, I insisted that wasn't an acceptable
solution, so they promised to have a supervisor
call me, but I never got a call back. So when I
called back and spoke to Helen, the supervisor,
she insisted that since they ship their cookies
fresh, they could not be stale. I said,
"Whatever, they are still too hard, stale or
not, and they are now in the trash and I'm out
$28, and my mother-in-law is without a birthday
gift from us. How will you help?" Believe it
or not, Helen had the nerve to tell me she was
helping because she actually took the call. Now
how's that for completely missing out on what
customer service is all about? She
refused to believe her cookies arrived hard and
implied I was lying. Of course, she didn’t see
it that way. At this point, I couldn’t
understand why this company didn’t have a policy
that empowered a supervisor to just fix the
problem because it isn’t worth having an unhappy
customer. It doesn’t matter if the cookies were
stale, or hard from some other reason. The fact
is, they arrived hard as a rock and my
mother-in-law could not eat them. Just fix the
problem and make the customer happy. I
then told her that I do sales consulting and
training and am very sensitive to how businesses
treat their clients, since I use these examples in
my training classes and speeches as a public
speaker and trainer. So now would be a very good
time for her to “do the right thing”. I was
only asking to have new cookies sent. Finally, she
said she will ship new cookies, but she was
going to put a note in the database that said,
"I don't want to purchase from Selma's
anymore." I NEVER said that and asked her not
to put that in my record. She told me that it
would be best if I never buy from them again.
Then
I said, “Let me get this straight. You satisfied
my problem by re-shipping the cookies. I am happy.
I am willing to buy from you again. Yet you are
telling me you don’t want me to buy from you
again. Is that correct?” She said, “Yes.” I
laughed and told her how this was incredible and
how I will definitely use this example of horrible
customer service from Selma’s Cookies in ALL my
sales training classes and conferences where I
speak. She didn't seem to care. Unbelievable!
Oh
yes, the end of the story? The cookies never
arrived as promised. I called Selma’s and spoke
to one of their sales agents. She said that,
"Helen changed her mind and did not ship the
cookies after all and said to tell us that we can
cancel our credit card payment instead.” Helen
never contacted me to tell me this herself.
I
called Selma directly several times and left
messages. I also sent her a
couple of emails asking her to contact me so I
could describe what I considered to be a
horrendous customer service problem with her
company. I never got a call back or email from
Selma, even though I explained what I do for
a living. Wouldn’t
it have been easier to just send my poor
mother-in-law another batch of cookies? Instead,
this company chose to be stubborn, arrogant and
stupid and give me a hard time. On top of that,
I'm black-balled from ever buying her cookies
again, not that I ever want to. How's that for
customer support? Pretty crumby, isn't it?
This
is a clear example of how bad customer service,
and therefore bad customer retention, is part of
their corporate culture. Customer service starts
at the top and permeates throughout the company,
from the CEO to the receptionist. If it's bad,
like at Selma's Cookies, then everyone treats you
poorly and you lose my business. I hope
your corporate culture about customer service is
excellent and that you never treat your customers like this.
By the way, I ended
up sending my mother-in-law a bottle of vodka
instead.
Good
luck and good selling!
Russ
Lombardo
|
