Build a Customer Success Team

Build a Customer Success Team

The customer experience

The digital transformation has radically changed the Customer Experience. To stay competitive the independent distributor must find new ways to reduce operating costs, improve pricing effectiveness, transform evolving marketing methods, and meet other disruptors head-on. For example, focusing on building and sharpening your sales team is one way to do this. Sales enablement expert Mike Kundle’s recent article in Distribution Sales Strategy describes how to build a Customer Success Team.

 Customer retention and loyalty

For handling customer issues and complaints in today’s business environment customer service needs to be reactive and transactional. In high-tech and software-as-a-service (SaaS) verticals, new product implementations are common. Additionally, to ensure recurring revenue and growth it is essential that customer retention and loyalty are developed by the sales team. This is especially true in subscription-based business models. The objective of today’s Customer Success Team is to expand this approach to customer service to other sectors. In brief, you need to provide proactive and personalized solutions to meet customer expectations and needs as they evolve.

Consultative outside sales

The digital transformation has significantly impacted the customer experience. Independent distributors must discover ways to reduce costs, improve pricing strategies, adapt marketing methods, and address other challenges to stay ahead in the market. Thus, customers in this sales model are typically looking for solutions, outcomes, and partnerships.  

How to help

Your Customer Success Team for an engineered solutions business can help customers by: 

  • Understanding the customer’s challenges, opportunities, impacts, needs, outcomes and priorities (COIN-OP). 
  • Designing and delivering customized and effective solutions that meet or exceed customer expectations. 
  • Providing ongoing support, training and education to ensure customer adoption and satisfaction. 
  • Monitoring and measuring customer outcomes and demonstrating value and ROI. 
  • Identifying and creating opportunities for upselling, cross-selling and referrals. 
  • Building long-term and mutually beneficial relationships with customers and stakeholders. 

Best practices for team success

To build a Customer Success Team effectively, distributors need to follow best practices.

Here are some important steps:

  • Create a customer experience strategy that aligns with business goals and values. 
  • Define a clear customer experience vision that guides the customer’s journey and interactions. 
  • Broaden services and offerings to meet diverse and evolving customer needs. 
  • Be proactive and anticipatory in addressing customer challenges and opportunities. 
  • Invest in tools and technologies that enable customer success, such as CRM, ERP, e-commerce, analytics, AI tools, and automation.  
  • Monitor customer experience metrics and KPIs that track customer satisfaction, loyalty, and value. 
  • Train and empower staff to deliver customer success across all functions and departments. 
  • Collaborate and communicate with customers and partners to foster trust and engagement. 

Get tips and tricks like the above in The Art of Sales books. Or subscribe to the FREE monthly articles here.

Getting the contract signed

Getting the contract signed

Once you have identified your customer’s needs and those making the purchasing decision, move into investment discussions and present your solutions. You are ready to get a contract signed.

Customer resources check

It is important to determine whether the customer has sufficient resources and desire to solve their problem(s). Also, be sure the client is pre-approved by your finance department and clearly identify the customer’s terms and conditions and payment method.

Close the deal

To close the deal, the seller must prove to the client that he can’t afford the cost of not accepting your solution.  Review your customer’s needs and determine how much it is currently costing the customer to not make a purchasing decision. Moreover, I generally find that for a customer to make an investment, the cost of solving a problem should be no more than 25% of the developed need and have a return on investment of less than 2 years.

Proof and Interest Confirmation

In the Proof step of the sales cycle, the salesman discloses the product or service solution and reviews its features, benefits and pricing in detail.

To confirm the client’s interest, use the Range Finder. Ask, “On a scale of 0 to 10, 0 meaning you have no interest and 10 meaning you have decided to buy, where are you?” This allows you to parse out unresolved questions the prospect may have. Additionally, if the customer has interest but scores less than 10, ask, “What do you have to see to get you to 10?” Repeat the cycle until the prospect gives you a 10. To get to 10, some prospects may want a demonstration, a form of guarantee, or a change in terms.

Points to remember

  • With some products or services, you may want to use a conditional contract or signed purchase order.
  • Beware of verbal commitments. Prospects often change their mind about verbal commitments and may feel uncomfortable about seeing the salesperson again. It’s best to have either a written contract or a signed purchase order before finalizing the sale.
  • Beware of buyer’s remorse. Once the contract is signed, thank the customer for their order and give them an opportunity to back out.

Get it signed

Lastly, to close the deal, confirm finances and interest. Be patient and thorough. Don’t rush. review, repeat, remind, and get it signed!

Get tips and tricks like the above in The Art of Sales books. Or subscribe to the FREE monthly articles here.

Validate the Decision Makers

Validate the Decision Makers

A critical phase of a successful sales cycle is validating the decision maker(s). Digitalization has made communication — the centerpiece of any sales negotiation — much faster and broader. Also, this has enabled more people and more data to be involved in the validating the decision makers.

Enterprise Selling

So radical is the change brought on by digitalization that in the last two years the title for the sales process has changed from “Consultative” to “Enterprise Selling.” Consultative selling refers to a process involving mostly personal interactions. However, enterprise selling implies the use of digital tools, such as an integrated Enterprise Resource Program (ERP), eCommerce, content management, and artificial intelligence (AI), in addition to people. This approach involves a broader group of decision makers.

Bringing in a wider group of decision makers

In consultative selling, the salesperson would ask his/her contact, “Besides you and me who will be involved in resolving the issues we discussed?” Today’s digitally embedded customer relationship management (CRM) software broadens the group of decision makers.

AI can generate an organizational chart that provides important details about how a customer makes decisions. Predictive AI can assess the reasoning from the viewpoint of the C-suite executive’s strategic direction. It can uncover the desires of the plant manager, engineering, and quality control for the results of implementation. Additionally, it can highlight the need for operations and purchasing agents to minimize disruptive change during implementation. All of this information helps the sales team confirm the decision makers.

For independent distributors, eCommerce and AI have opened up channels that allow you to differentiate your products and services from other online websites. Moreover, decision-makers can recognize the benefits of personalization, local presence, added-value services, and preferred telephone services offered by independent distributors.

Validating the decision makers

Lastly, the sales team has a broader group of decision makers to validate and support in today’s digital world, but it also has more tools with which to do that. In conclusion, be sure you take your time to make sure this step in the sales cycle is done correctly. It will ensure your success in the all-important investment and proof stages.

Get tips and tricks like the above in The Art of Sales books. Or subscribe to the FREE monthly articles here.

Identifying Customer Needs

Identifying Customer Needs

Once you have built trust and understand your customers’ backgrounds and motivations, you can identify their needs and begin to formulate solutions. If your customer relationship is well-established, your client may even tell you how to fit his/her needs into your product or service offering.

The Customer Needs Trail

Once your customer’s needs have been established, take your time in identifying how best to address their specific issues.

Here is a series of questions I recommend asking your client to establish what I call a Need Trail:

  1. Tell me more.
  2. How long have you had this issue?
  3. What have you tried?
  4. How did that work for you?
  5. How much is the issue costing/impacting you?
  6. What other issues do you have?
  7. Is it important to make a change?

There are some important things you should note when using the Need Trail. First, when asking, “What have you tried and how did it work?” you are preventing suggesting something that they have already tried with failed results.

Second, the reason you are asking, “What other issues do you have?” is that normally the first issue a client brings up often is not their biggest problem. This question primes the pump. Many times it is the second or third issue they disclose that is the most critical. Your objective is to try to collect the total cost/impact of all the customer’s issues.

Finally, don’t ask, “Is it important to make a change?” until you have exhausted all the issues. If it is not important to make a change, then there is no real need!

When to propose solutions

Having followed the Need Trail you are now in a good position to formulate solutions. Do not share your solution with the customer at this point, however. Wait until you are in investment discussions. Exposing your product or service solution earlier allows the customer to shop the resolution for the lowest price.

Need to be identified

Having developed a customer relationship built on trust and an understanding of your customer’s motivations, you are in a position to identify their needs and propose solutions in the investment phase of the sales cycle. Get tips and tricks like the above in The Art of Sales books. Or subscribe to the FREE monthly articles here.

Trust in Customer Relationships

Trust in Customer Relationships

Selling involves the transfer of trust, and a successful sales cycle revolves around establishing trust in customer relationships. The manner in which we develop those strong relationships evolves with the changes in the world around us. In my lifetime, the introduction of new technologies has radically changed how one approaches relationship building to succeed in sales.

Telephones and cars

Consider this. I became a salesman in 1972 at a time when the internet was still a research project. My first job title was Sales Engineer. I lived in North Texas and was tasked with calling on independent welding and gas distributors in Dallas, Fort Worth, Wichita Falls, Abilene, Sherman, Austin, and San Antonio. Also, my means of connecting with clients involved many telephone calls (on land lines) and driving just over 20,000 miles per year in my Ford Custom to meet prospects in person.

To achieve success in sales, it’s important to follow a 5-step sales cycle developed by IBM:

  1. Begin the call with small talk
  2. Investigate the customer’s needs
  3. Present the benefits of your product
  4. Address any objections
  5. Close the call using a variety of techniques.

Small talk

Being able to converse with your customers on their terms builds trust. The distributors I called on in the ‘70s were patient with my formulaic approach. Additionally, I quickly learned that “small talk” should involve the Dallas Cowboys, Houston Oilers, Texas Rangers, or Houston Astros. I enjoyed making connections with my clientele and I was able to develop a deep sense of trust with those Texas distributors. I still remember each of their names, their likes, and dislikes. Their work ethic and customer relationship experiences have been guiding principles in my career.

More avenues of communication

In conclusion, digitalization has changed how relationships are formed today. Smart phones and computers have opened up avenues of communication not even imaginable in 1972. Lastly, you can build relationships via mobile phones, text, email, and video chat. Digitalization can be effectively used to establishing trust in customer relationships, which are at the center of the successful sales cycle.

Get tips and tricks like the above in The Art of Sales books. Or subscribe to the FREE monthly articles here.