Make Sure It's Good This Time

A lot of sales people seem happy if they can just convince the customer the problem won’t happen again. This is short sighted at the very least and down right dishonest at the worst. Either way it’s not likely that you’ll be trusted again. If you want to build a career, part of the deal is working to insure that bad experiences don’t repeat themselves. If the prior sales person dropped the ball this may be fairly simple to guarantee that this experience is going to be a good one. If another part of your organization dropped the ball it may be more difficult.

Over time it’s critical that you build relationships with people in all the different departments of your company. In the context of those relationships you can begin to influence them on how their area affects repeat business and ultimately whether or not we all have jobs in 5 years. For a good primer on this topic, read John Maxwell’s Book 360 Degree Leadership. It is excellent. Another one is, You Don’t Need A Title To Be A Leader by Mark Sandborn. (You guessed it. Both are in our bookstore.) In politics, this is called Pork Barreling… it’s getting something accomplished for your district. It’s what gets you elected in politics and it will make you sales when you are able to get something fixed or accomplished for your customer. The Legendary Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil used to say, “all politics is local”. He was right and "all selling is local" as well.

When my friend Earl Estep in Northern California runs across a customer who had a negative experience while he is out cold calling, he responds, “That’s why I’m here, the company has asked me to follow up with you and see if there is anything we can do to make it right, and to do everything I possibly can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Don’t promise perfection. We employee people and unfortunately none of them are perfect. A good program does not mean a perfect program. I tell people honestly their are over 100 things that can go wrong in their program or any other companies program. Sometimes I even give them a list that I have prepared that details each of the 100. Then I tell them I can’t guarantee something won’t go wrong, but I can guarantee I will be right there with them to face it and fix it if it does. People respond to that kind of honesty and service.

My dad was a building contractor for 35 years. People used to ask him about the cracking stucco on their homes. He was a remodeling contractor for most of those years and they wanted to be sure the stucco wouldn't crack on their new room addition the way it did when the previous contractor built the original home. His response was always the same, "we guarantee our stucco to crack... it's what stucco does". He went on to explain what he did to minimize it, but the fact is, cement products including stucco does crack.

After having said that, their is a threshold of problems that go beyond acceptable business practice. Their is a point that is beyond explanation. Their is a point that will insure your customers will begin to fall away, go with a competitor, do it themselves, or not at all. If you've done your do diligence, worked in your organization to insure and acceptable product/service sequence, and significant numbers of customers are still angry and unhappy, it may be time to move on. If and when that becomes the case, hold your head high, and walk out the door into a new future with a new company that is committed to it's customer. Treading water is a good strategy that has it's place. But eventually everybody drowns.