Leaving convention aside for necessary Reinvention…
We all know the “Sales guy”, the guy who closes the
deal and in the vacuum left by him is the memory of a charismatic fellow, who
made us forget why we are doing business with the customer in the first
place!!... Strange as it sounds, it’s a reality that often visits us too late
when our customers are barking at us as to why they are leaving to find someone
else who actually fulfils their needs and keeps all their promises!
Leaving aside the ‘obvious’ clichés like “always
keep your promises”, “say what you mean, mean what you say” and my personal
favourite “do what you said you would do”, management over-focus on aggressive
sales growth is often driven by variables outside of the company. I submit that
this creates strategic weakness in how repeat customers are managed through
Account Managers, whom are often conflicted in their roles by design.
In a prior role in Credit Management, I got an
escalated account where a senior customer manager was very angry with what he
saw as an appalling service provided by the company. The account was small in revenue
terms and ”the sales guy” was happy for me to deal directly with the customer.
After getting a raw deal from multiple departments, whom should have organised
the resolution to the problem, it was passed from department to department as
the customer grew more and more red faced! When I eventually got the call, he
was furious and I certainly got a piece of his mind. Appalled, I worked through
his issues after the initial venting; when a bad call was turned into an opportunity
to “make it right”.
Here is what I did after the first call:
- Confirmed customer allegations of overcharging
- Responded to the customer with confirmation and a plan to put it right
- Coordinated with all stakeholders to find out exactly what happened our side and obtained documentary evidence of transactions supporting the process flow that is in contention for the periods in question.
- Conducted a forensic analysis of the documentary packet identifying bias errors in process flows; tracking them back to the teams and individuals concerned with the assistance of their team leaders.
- Agreed a resolution with the team leader on training to fill the skills gap identified in the investigation and a timeline for completion of retrospective queries related to this issue.
- Followed up with the team leader to confirm query resolution compliance, deployment of training with his team and brainstorm any automated enhancements that could prevent this happening again.
- Updated the customer and asked to meet him face to face to discuss next steps.
- Updated all stakeholders involved on the meeting.
- Followed up with internal stakeholders to put simple changes in place.
- Confirmed deployment was successful with all teams in a feedback session
- Trained my own team on the changes and what to look out for into the future.
- Followed up with the Billing Queries Team Leader to confirm all queries resolved along with audit of subsequent bills confirming correct billing.
- Updated the customer on the successful resolution asking for their feedback.
- Set a review call for three months from that point to confirm account was running ok and to address any issues therein.
Sounds exhausting for a small money account, right?
Well it was and with “the Sales guy” uninterested still, the happy customer who
was impressed with us pushed within their company for a regional switch to my
company which was a contract in the millions. Suddenly the uninterested Sales
guy appeared along with a “Strategic Sales guy” who I never heard of before.
Apparently, he has special talent that means a customer will never have to worry
about a thing. All it took to get a multi million dollar contract was a great
product, service offering AND a back office structure that minimises the
customer’s cost of doing business in dollars and resource drain on all levels.
This true story shines a light on what so many
overlook in the dogged chase of aggressive sales growth, which by its very
definition is unsustainable. If you don’t consolidate your back office
correctly with the customer at the centre of your efforts from employee
incentives to organisational design, you
will eventually loose your customers and not replace them fast enough to
maintain your trajectory thus crashing your sales growth.
On that note, here is some advise I have for all
who are thinking about this and how they could fix this issue within their
company:
- a) Don’t assume your products are indefinitely loved by customers, incentivise your Account Managers to complete “routine check-in calls” with customers of all sizes finding out their current satisfaction with the company AND its products along with their needs going forward.
- b) If staff are incentivised on meeting sales targets that are crazy aggressive with no additional KPIs on customer care, then their anxiety in getting back to making money can come across as arrogance to a customer who spends small with the company. You never know who will grow into the titan of tomorrow, and if you treat everybody as the titan of today, tomorrow’s titans will remember you kindly.
- c) Today's big spend accounts needs to be handled by account managers with exactly the same high level of training as regular account managers, the only difference is they handle less accounts. Apply your teams expertise evenly remembering big spend accounts spend money to have a great product AND service, not to ensure your other customers don’t have the same experience.
- d) Create a KPI incentive base for account managers that are different to new business development executives who should be focused on business expansion plans only! Ensure your KPI suite for account managers covers non-sale check in calls, billing query resolution rates, customer satisfaction index surveys, sales (repeat) and sales (new product ranges). The account manager as part of the KPI incentive suite should do cross selling as the customer’s main point of contact.
- e) Conduct index surveys on account managers by internal stakeholders (ran by HR) to ascertain their level of skill in project management, stakeholder engagement and stakeholder influencing.
There are more, but even with these changes, the
impacting and consequential changes needed to do it right would make a positive
impact on the organisation in my view. It comes with risk, but doesn’t all
great things come with risk before you can reap any reward? I think so, what do
you think?
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