Here is an important mantra: We don’t want a sale, we want the re-orders.

That task however is getting harder and harder. Customers today are more educated, better prepared and have more alternatives than ever before. Satisfying a customer is not enough – we have to exceed their expectations and provide exceptional customer service. Customer service has only one truth – how the customer perceives the quality of the service. Forget what we think is good customer service. We have to be really clear about what is the customer’s perception of good customer service. This is a totally subjective idea on the part of the customer, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have influence on that perception.

Here is a quick audit on your understanding of the customer. How well do you know the customer’s perception of high quality customer service? When was the last time you asked about how well you were doing with serving that customer? Are you assuming that because there are no claims, that the customer is fully satisfied? Do you have a clear idea of the level of service your competitor is providing in terms of customer service?

The building of a strong fan base amongst your clients is a key step to becoming more successful. We all know the acquisition cost of finding a new customer is many times more expensive than deepening the scope of the relationship with an existing customer. That is fine but we need to also expand our numbers of customers. We always need more good customers, but how can we create new fans? How do we do that when there are so many rivals? Here are four approaches to consider.

1. Have broad product knowledge

Whenever we ask a salesperson a question and they cannot answer it immediately, we doubt their value to us. Often however, we salespeople can become concentrated on just a few products and lose touch with the broader perspective. We need to keep studying our total product line-up, so that we have broad knowledge to show we are professionals in our business. Prove that we can be trusted to serve the customer. So ask yourself, how well do you know your own product line-up?

1. Have an extreme desire to help

So many times, as customers, we are told “no” by salespeople. Are we ever happy about that response? Buyers are looking for salespeople who they feel are really motivated to serve. The way to prove that is to show your strong desire to serve at every customer face to face meeting, on every phone call and in every response. Great in theory but are you really doing that now?

1. Have a sincere interest in the customer’s situation

We have targets to achieve, pressure to perform and so often we can become totally focused on our own situation. By the way, here is a newsflash - the client only cares about their own situation and how dedicated you are to helping them. Are you really sincere about helping the customer or are you focused on yourself, your numbers, your deadlines? Don’t be in any doubt - customers can feel the difference.

1. Understand the customer’s expectations

Customer expectations change, but often salespeople are not changing with them. Business moves and what was enough some months ago, may not be suitable enough now. We have to really monitor the customer’s situation to see what has changed. That means we have to keep asking them about their expectations of service from us. Are we serving them in the way they want to be served. Most salespeople never want to ask this type of question because they are scared of the answer. We have to be brave and ask and if we do, we will be delivering exactly the type of service the customer wants and expects. When we do that, we differentiate ourselves from our competitors

So what percentage of your customers would you count as your loyal fans? What are you currently doing to drive that percentage score much higher? Customers will become someone’s loyal fan. We have to make sure that is us and not our competitor. Assume that the customer’s expectations and perceptions of what they consider outstanding service will keep changing. We have to keep up with the change but are we doing it?

351 My Boss Isn't Listening

f you reading this title and thinking “this has nothing to do with my leadership”, you might want to think again. We hear this comment a lot from the participants in our training. They complain that the boss doesn’t talk to them enough because they are too busy, don’t have much interest in their ideas or do not seek their suggestions. In this modern life, none of these issues from staff should be surprising. There have been two major tectonic plate shifts in organisations over the last twenty years. One has been the compression of many organisational layers into a few. The other has been the democratization of information access. Bosses have been struggling to keep up.

When we had more layers in our company structures, leaders matured like a fine wine. They rose up the ladder in small increments, over an extended period of time and were groomed for responsibility. There were assistants aplenty to do mundane, time consuming tasks. The striping out of the layers, for the sake of cost cutting and “efficiencies”, has thrown this world off its axis.

The fewer layers means the jumps are larger, the responsibilities greater and no assistants. Boss busyness has resulted in less subordinate coaching and delegation getting done. Explanations have been replaced with directives – “do this, do that”. Bosses don’t delegate much anymore, because they are time poor. They don’t have the bandwidth to explain, so they say to themselves, “it will be quicker if I do it myself”. Does this scenario sound familiar at all?

The internet has made information instantly available and free. Boss monopolisation of information is not as easy or replicable as in the past. The amount of information emerging everyday has become a massive flood tide against which resistance is useless. Bosses cannot be in command of its entirety, so they have to rely on others much more than before. They need their subordinate’s help, but the sting in the tail is that they are not doing enough about accessing that help.

Subordinates have good information, get ideas, are closer to the market, collect the most up to date experience and produce insights. Harassed time poor bosses have no time to seek out these ideas and bring these insights out into the open. They don’t create the time required to coach. They do delegation, but in a way guaranteed to fail, because they won’t invest the time to sell the delegation.

The consequence is that subordinates hesitate to engage with their boss, because they see how distracted and frantic they are already. When they do talk to the boss, it is all formulistic around reporting on progress on the various projects being worked on. Bosses don’t bother to enquire about the other key things going on in their subordinates lives. They fail to seek ideas and innovations because they are already preoccupied with their own work. They hover between distracted and selective listening. On a slow day, they might stray into the zone of attentive listening, but that would be a rarity in a year long period.

In fact, bosses tend to excel at pretending to be listening, because they are brilliant at multi-tasking. They are mentally fixated on something else, while they are talking to their subordinates on a completely different topic. Does this ring a bell? They are listening for key items which will be of interest to them and they are tossing out everything else. The subordinate doesn’t feel they are actually being listened to at all. They don’t feel it is attentive listening, let alone empathetic listening. They draw the conclusion that their actual perceived worth and value to the boss is pretty low. They get discouraged and soon just stop inputting ideas into the system.

If you have not been hit up with an idea from one of your subordinates in the last month, take a moment and reflect on exactly when was the last time that happened? The chances are it has been a long time between drinks. The reason is probably that you are not really engaging with the team and making sure they feel they are being listened to. They need to know that their ideas have value, that you are recognising their contribution. They want to see their ideas being put into application. Are you doing this? Are you really listening?