SERVICE ORIENTED SELLING: Does It Serve Your Customer When You Vigorously Compete?

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Welcome to "SUCCESSPATH SELLING SERVICE ORIENTED SELLING", a site designed to "Revolutionize Your Approach To Sales and Marketing" . Our goals are to offer ideas and resources that will help you make increasingly high levels of income by offering increasingly high levels of service. This site is for corporate sales and marketing professionals, small business owners who sell, and direct marketers. It is for anyone who is tired of the old, manipulative "me first" and "get all you can" methods. Servant sales people sell their products, services, and themselves with refreshing and sometimes radical "How Can I Serve You?" attitudes and strategies. It is our hope to offer new, contemporary, fresh approaches, integrated with timeless principles that will give your customers "WOW" Experiences". In the process we hope to lead you toward tremendous career success, satisfaction, and significance. Topics we cover include all parts of a sales presentation, time management, creativity, people skills, competition, attitude and more... all from our unique "Servant Selling" perspective.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Does It Serve Your Customer When You Vigorously Compete?

Absolutely!!!!! Competing vigorously and respectfully is one of the highest values you can offer your customers and clients. You owe it to them to honestly share what set’s your company, products, and service apart. What is it that makes you unique? In fact, sharing anything less than that is down right disrespectful.

Competition is often what drives improved service in the marketplace. You add something great and then your competitor adds something great. Everybody wins. Your customer gets a better product or service and you are driven to provide a better product or service.

One of my fears in adopting the “Servant Selling” Brand was that it would be viewed as wimpy or somehow weak. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Servant Salesperson paradoxically combines great sensitivity with great boldness. And part of that boldness is unabashedly communicating your uniqueness in the marketplace.

Servant Selling should even move beyond communicating uniqueness into creating uniqueness. This may happen at a couple of different levels. The first level is creating uniqueness in how you conduct your part of the business. It may be as simple as giving out your cell number, home number, or securing a blackberry so a customer who prefers to communicate through email can reach you 24/7. It may mean building or assembling presentation tools that allow you to communicate your companies strengths more clearly. The ways you can personally offer better service from the sales position are almost endless.

The second way a sales professional can move into the realm of creating competitive uniqueness is by partnering with others in the organization. Over time you can develop tremendous influence in how your product or service is designed. This design shaping may include aesthetics or functional elements that will in the end better serve your customers or clients. It may be as simple as making sure both the positive and negative customer feedback you receive, get to the people who can stay the course or make needed changes.

This week we are going to look at competing in the marketplace from a Servant Selling perspective. Watch the following YouTube sequence of the Apple Computer ads. Apple has creatively put together what comedians call a "running gag" that is designed to showcase it's uniqueness in comparison to a pc. Allow the ad to help you think deeper about your own company's uniqueness in your market niche. Make lists of what sets you apart from your competitors. Think about how you comunicate those things that set you apart. Write down any ideas that might help you communicate more clearly or concisely. Then think about things you could do to better serve your customer and set your company apart. Write that down. And finally, think about things that your company could be doing differently that would better serve the customer and create great competitive advantage. Write that down.

We'll continue our discussion tomorrow...

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Servant Sales Maxims

Why else get out of bed in the morning?
Organizations exist to serve. Period.
~Tom Peters

A business is simply an idea to make other peoples lives better.

~Sir Richard Branson, Billionaire

My staff’s job is to adjust to circumstances with technical precision and artful grace so that every patron has a wonderful experience.

~Danny Meyer

My secret was focusing on the needs of other people. I constantly asked the question "How can I add something of value to other people's lives?" Through this thought process I became a leader... I went from living hand-to-mouth to more than a million dollar net worth in less than one year.

~Tony Robbins

We're running a company to serve more people.

~Mark Zuckerberg

Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make every decision - even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone - according to what's best for your customers. If you're ever unsure what to prioritize, just ask your customers the open-ended question, "How can I best help you now?" Then focus on satisfying those requests."

~Derek Sivers

Our competitive advantage is that when we make a promise we keep it.

~Warren Buffett

Help people do what they already want to do.

~B.J. Fogg

We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.

~Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon

There is a clear goal and it isn't to make money. The goal is to desperately try to make the best products we can. We are not naive - if you trust it, people like it, They like it, they buy it and we make money. This is a consequence.

~Jony Ive, Senior Vice-President of Design at Apple

Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.

~Steve Jobs, founder of Apple

For us, our most important stakeholder is not our stockholders, it is our customers. We're in business to serve the needs and desires of our core customer base.

~John Mackey

The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates a customer.

~Shiv Singh

Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.

~Mark Cuban, Shark Tank Shark

There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.

~Roger Staubach, Quarterback, Realtor

A business devoted to service will only have one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.

~Henry Ford

When life is about caring for the orchard, rather than picking the apples, you get more apples to eat.

~Nicholas Lore

The well-served customer...is an appreciating asset. Every small act on her or his behalf ups the odds of repeat business, add-on business, and price-less word-of-mouth referral.

~Tom Peters

Extend to each person, no matter how trivial the contact, all the care and kindness and understanding and love that you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same.

~Og Mandino

Don't be reluctant to give of yourself generously. It's the mark of caring and compassion and personal greatness.

~Brian Tracy, Author of The Psychology of Selling

There is no difference between selling and customer service; they are the same thing.

~Kip Tindell, Co-Owner, The Container Store

Focus on the promise, not the prize.
~Leslie Mayer, Wharton School of Business

I kept on improving as a salesperson because I kept on learning better ways to service the customer.
~Patrick McCarthy, Nordstrom's All-Time Top Salesperson

Stop worrying about the money and concentrate on serving the customer, the money will follow.
~Patrick Kennedy, Nordstrom's Sales Manager

I realized early on that I didn't need to worry about whether they did business with me or not. I needed to help them make a good decision. If, at the end of the conversation, they didn't need to buy a home or, later in my life, get into real estate, or later, buy one of our franchises, then I didn't want them to do it. I never needed to worry about me. I just needed to worry about them.
~Gary Keller of Keller-Williams, the fourth-largest and fastest growing real estate firm in North America

You don't fall in love with online marketing. It's only a distribution channel. You fall in love with the clients, the people you can reach and the benefit, the impact, the enhancement, the contribution you can make in their life. One of the biggest philosophical breakthroughs we have established in the business arena which I think is directly applicable here is teaching people how to adopt the attitude of what I'll call a "super-servant". The more you realize the concept of being a "super-servant", the more you will take full control of your life. It's not dependency, it's liberation.

~Jay Abraham, Business Consultant

I define selling as a process of identifying and fulfilling people's wants or needs, and creating value for them. It's a mutual win-win activity, where both sides benefit from the transaction.
~Ron Willingham, Integrity Selling

Stop getting and start giving!When you are in the “how I can GET a client” mode, you are focused on you – and that doesn’t make you very attractive. Shift your thinking to “how I can GIVE clients more VALUE” and you’ll become an irresistible client magnet!

~Adam Urbanski, Marketing Consultant

Forget about the sales you hope to make and concentrate on the service you want to render… I tell our salespeople that if they would start out each morning with the thought, “I want to help as many people as possible today“, instead of “I want to make as many sales as possible today“, they would find a more easy and open approach to their buyers and they would make more sales. The person who goes out to help people to a happier and easier way of life is exercising the highest type of salesmanship.
~Harry Bullis, Former Chairman of the Board, General Mills

"When you’re needy it’s difficult to truly care about your customers.”
~unknown wise person

“My challenge was to be patient. There’s no percentage in trying to push the river or speed up the harvest. The farmer who’s so eager to help crops grow that he slips out at night and tugs on the shoots inevitably ends up going hungry.”
~Phil Jackson, Basketball Coach

“What the losers don’t realize is that big money-makers aren’t lucky, and they don’t wait for breaks, and they know how to take care of a new client. To emulate the super-salesperson, you must give your new customer a lot of thought. You must make darned sure that he’s glad that he met you and that he continues feeling that way. You must see to it that he never forgets your name and that you won’t forget his. You must make sure that your new client becomes a customer who will buy from you again and again and again, and will recommend you to his friends and associates. There’s only one way to make all this happen: You must do what I do. Do it with service!
~Joe Gandolfo

“I just discovered many years ago that Major Transformational Experiences don’t pay the rent. What pays the rent is small things done consistently in strategic places. Small things done consistently in strategic places create major impact.”
~David Allen, Efficiency Coach

“A good sales presentation should be like a woman’s skirt… long enough to cover everything but short enough to keep the interest.”
~Unknown Wise Person

“Selling is helping people discover the value for something they haven’t discovered the value of.”
~Jerry Gilles

“When you drink water, remember the well.”
~Zen Saying

“I am convinced by my own experience, and by that of others, that if there is any secret of success it lies in the ability to get another person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as from your own.”
~Henry Ford, Founder of Ford Motor Company

“Everyone has the power for greatness, not for fame but greatness, because greatness is determined by service.”
~Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"There is no such thing as hard sell and soft sell. There is only “smart sell” and “stupid sell.”
~Charles H. Browser, Ad Executive

"Use visual sales aids, they are 15 times more powerful than words. The average attention span of the average prospect is 3 sentences."
~Brian Tracy, Sales Tracy

“If you are trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think.”
~David Olgilvy, Advertising Giant

"Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full - pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back."
~Jesus Christ, From Luke 6:38, New Living Translation

"You can get everything in life you want, if you help enough other people get what they want."
~Zig Ziglar, Sales Trainer

"You heighten your own life when you help others heighten theirs."~Les Brown

I slept and dreamt that life was joy,
I awoke and saw that life was service,
I acted and behold, service was joy.
~Rabindranath Tagore

If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside his skin and walk around in it.

~Harper Lee, From To Kill a Mockingbird

In an age of universal deceipt, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

~George Orwell

There is a whole lot of growing up between "it fell" and "I broke it".

~Anonymous, World Renown Philosopher

Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant.

~Jesus Christ, From Mark 10:43

To often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

~Leo Buscaglia

Every single person on the planet is rewarded for one thing and one thing only, and that is for serving other people. The more you serve others, the higher your reward.

~Larry Winget

"It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others succeed."

~Napoleon Hill

"No one has ever become poor by giving."

~Anne Frank

"You are responsible...for the customer understanding/utilizing the product! If the customer has problems in usage...blame yourself!"

~Tom Peters

SSAT (Servant Selling Achievement Test

1. List 7 ways you serve your customers and exceed their expectations.

2. List 3 things you regularly do for each associate that you work with to make them feel special.

3. How do you personalize your marketing? How often do you send a hand written note with your signature in real ink?

4. How well do you listen? Do you give customers what they want or what you think they want?

5. List 3 recent mistakes you personally made in handling a customer. How did you fix it? Was the customer satisfied? How do you know?

6. How do you treat team members who make mistakes? Give a recent example.

7. What sort of tools do you have in place to get customer feed back? What do you do with the information when you get it?

8. List 3 "New" things you've personally introduced... products, services, ways of thinking about things. How have they benefited your customer? Do you have an ongoing mindset of introducing new things that serve your customers?

9. Do you belong to any groups, formal or informal, where you exchange ideas on sales and service?

10. From your previous answers, list 3 new ideas you've come up with to improve your Servant Selling and exceeding customer expectations.

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Monday, January 21, 2008

Does It Serve Your Customer When You Vigorously Compete?

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