50 First Dates: Or how to improve sales by focusing on service.
During the pandemic, when fast food was drive through only, I went to a Chick Fil A. Please, this is not a political post, so if you disagree with their politics, so do I. This is a post about grilled chicken sandwiches and customer service.
You couldn’t get grilled chicken anywhere else, and I came to love the Chick Fil A sandwich. I also came to love the customer service. The drive through was staffed up, the employees were cheerful, happy, efficient, and courteous.
The other day, I went to another fast food store. It was slow. I still couldn’t get a grilled chicken sandwich, and they didn’t even thank me. Remember when the drive through started with the employee saying something like, “Welcome to McDonalds, may I take your order?” All I got was “What can I get you” to start the order.
Recently a friend asked if I might act as an advertising consultant for a family member in the used car business who was interested in expanding their advertising in Radio. They are in a smaller southeastern market, and they had bought a jingle, and gotten a proposal from a major radio company who operated in the market. And no, my former company did not operate in this market.
Here are three things I learned from being on the ‘buy side’ for a change:
1. The Sales Reps did negotiate on price, but neither of the two companies I was dealing with ‘dropped their pants’ even when I suggested they would get left off the business. In fact, the biggest company, who I was always told would drop their rates - stuck by their pricing. They eventually gave me some bonus inventory, but hardly the kind of price drop my sellers used to tell me about. The other rep did negotiate down in price, but did so well, and we came to fair deal. It seems that my sellers who always were sure they would lose the order because of ‘the other guys’ were wrong. They were getting played.
2. Neither sales rep asked or probed about what I was trying to accomplish or how I could measure results. They simply sent me rates on the station I requested with no effort to learn about the goals of the campaign, or how we would measure results. One of the companies had a tool to measure web traffic driven by the radio commercials, but I had to bring it up. It’s like they didn’t want to talk about results. They all just wanted my money.
3. The program has run for 3 weeks and one of the salespeople has not followed up with me at all. The program is 8 weeks long, and not a follow up call or email. Not an effort to discuss with me how it’s going. Nothing. They took the order, apparently got the commission, and moved on.
I know lots of sellers and managers are thinking to themselves, “Well that’s not me or my people.”
Really? How do you know.
You see, I don’t blame the sellers, any more than I blame the kid on the drive through at the McDonalds. I blame management for not having systems in place to welcome and on-board new clients. I blame management for not training their people to do a better job of turning transactions into customers. I blame management for not getting into the drive through lane to see what the customer experience is like, from the customer’s point of view.
Three things you should do today to improve the Customer Experience (CX) in your business.
1. Have a standard approach to on-boarding new customers. Send a manager thank you email, or even a personalized call to each new customer. Give the new customer the manager’s email or phone number if they have a question or problem.
2. If you are a sales rep, ask these questions BEFORE you accept the order:
a. How will you know this program is successful? How will you measure success?
b. What can happen to make you feel like this went wrong?
c. How often should I reach out to you as follow up over the life of this program? I’d like to schedule the first zoom meeting now, where we can review how it’s going and make any adjustments needed.
d. You want regular ‘excuses’ to interact with the customer after the first sale so having regular re-cap or check in calls is vital to creating a collaborate business relationship.
3. Become a customer of your own business. Get into the drive through and see what it’s like? Call in and ask for information from your sales team. Or hire someone, like me, to evaluate the sales process for you.
If you have an outside sales organization, generating warm leads, or cold calling to get leads is more difficult today than ever. It is critical that every customer feel like they are important. It’s easier to retain, than to find new customers. There is so much focus on generating more new business, and not enough focus on retaining customers through effective CX and focus on customer needs. Getting the sale is just the beginning of your business relationship, but too many act like it’s the goal line.
So politics aside, Chick Fil A gets my drive through business because they have the product I want, it’s a good product, and the service is outstanding.
If you are in the media business, many people have a comparable product. Isn’t it time that customer retention, and the customer experience became a focus on your business?
Otherwise, you’re just back to 50 First Dates.
Michael Doyle, TheSalesMD.com can help you build a customer experience that will grow your revenue and improve your bottom line. Schedule a free consultation with him here: https://www.thesalesmd.com/free-consultation.