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Sales and Service Excellence - Customer Loyalty
Observe six best practices
August 2006
Sales and Service Excellence, pg 17
By Dianne M. Durkin
Successful selling is not about products and services— it is about relationships. Selling is more personal, mental, and emotional than it is technical. Successful selling requires balance. The alignment of a salesperson’s perspective, energy, and skill with the customer’s needs and goals results in a winning equation—six best practices.
Best Practice 1: Passion and belief. Your success rests on the bedrock of belief that what you offer prospects and customers is of greater value than what you could ever receive in return. Also, believe that you are the right person with the right product or service in the right place at the right time. From this bedrock of belief rises the passion that nurtures personal power and fuels success. Belief is the most powerful tool of persuasion. Beyond facts and data, you convince others with passion and belief.
Your personal communications package is a combination of your words, voice, and body language. Your words may carry all the right facts and data, but your words only comprise 7 percent of your total message. Your energy, passion, and belief make up the other 93 percent of your message. When these are missing, doubt is conveyed.
If you detect a lack of positive energy in your voice and body language, explore the source of your doubt and determine what is draining your energy. Identify a mentor—someone whose energy, passion, and belief are visible, effective, and contagious.
Best Practice 2: Put yourself in a listening state. Total communications tends to be 40 percent listening, 35 percent talking, 15 percent reading, and 9 percent writing. The average listening efficiency is 25 percent, resulting in 70 percent of all communications being misinterpreted. Listening is the most critical communications tool, especially for salespeople. The most important levels of listening are conscious (attentive) and empathetic listening, because they put a salesperson in the other person’s frame of reference, or in their shoes.
Conscious listening reveals the speakers’ business needs, while empathic listening uncovers their emotional needs. Intertwined in all purchasing decisions are the emotional needs of the buyers. Here are two examples:
• A payroll manager wants a more effective system so she can distribute paychecks to her staff on time so they can pay their bills and meet their financial obligations. She also wants to take less time to distribute the checks so she can spend more time bringing money into her company.
• In another example, one bank customer wants to make a deposit as quickly as possible so she can get to her son’s soccer game on time. Another customer wants to make a deposit and receive personal attention, because for him, going to the bank is a social and enjoyable activity.
Understanding the needs of each individual requires that you be in that moment with each customer, listening to his or her business needs and emotional needs. Each time you deal with someone, stop and drop everything else. Focus. Listen. Connect.
Best Practice 3: Come from the other’s perspective. You might say, “My real goal is to get the customer to see things from my perspective in order to make the sale!” Actually, what you should be striving for is a shared perception or rapport gained by viewing the situation from the customer’s point of view. By listening empathically, you learn the customer’s goals, objectives, and potential objections. When you clearly articulate your understanding of your customer’s needs and wants, your customer recognizes that you have a shared perception and have built credibility. Common perception leads to rapport. Rapport leads to respect. Respect leads to trust. Trust leads to disclosure. Disclosure leads to commitment. Commitment leads to partnership and loyalty.
Best Practice 4: Professional behavior. The rule of thumb is to begin on a relatively formal basis. You must earn your right to be informal with your customers and prospects. Well-intentioned but misguided efforts at rapport building result in not only the perception of a lack of professionalism but also no sale. So don’t get too personal too soon. Professional behavior requires you to stay tuned to your customers and to only go where you are invited.
Best Practice 5: Develop a questioning strategy. Salespeople use questions. Make sure you are using the right question at the right time for the right purpose. Do you want to gather information? Open-ended questions are essential. Do you want to lead the customer to a particular conclusion? Closed questions provide the pathway. Do you want to emphasize your understanding of the customer’s needs, objectives, and objections? High-impact questions are your secret weapon.
Begin your sales call with a questioning strategy in mind. Ask two or three open-ended questions, followed by two or three closed questions, capped off with a high-impact question. You may need to follow customers down a slight detour on occasion; however, you can always redirect the conversation and steer it in the desired direction.
Best Practice 6: Focus on what you can give, not on what you can get. It’s one of those paradoxes: If you remember that the focus of the sales call is to meet the customer’s needs—not to make the sale—you will be more likely to actually make the sale. This practice requires that you hear both expressed and unexpressed needs. If you listen closely, you’ll hear what they don’t want in addition to what they do want.
The most critical part of building customer loyalty is to exceed customer expectations. Your potential as a sales professional is limited only by your own energy, passion, and belief. By utilizing these techniques, you can increase your ability to build longterm partnerships and increase profitability. People buy from people. SSE
Dianne Durkin is founder and president of Loyalty Facto and the author of The Loyalty Advantage, (AMACOM). www.loyaltyfactor.com
The Tampa Tribune - What makes a house a home? It depends on the age of the occupants.
When real estate agent Barbara Jordan shows homes, she needs only to gauge her clients' age for an idea of what they'll find appealing.
July 17, 2006
The Tampa Tribune
By B.C. Manion
Baby boomers - currently ages 42 to 60 - gravitate toward formal living and dining rooms, and spaces where they can display the traditional furniture pieces they have acquired through the years.
Generation X-ers, on the other hand, "like the urban look and the urban lifestyle," says Jordan, who works for Coldwell Banker in Tampa.
These 25- to 41-year-olds are eclectic in their tastes and place a high value on home life.
The American dream, it seems, differs depending on when the dreamer grew up. "They [X-ers] were latchkey kids with workaholic, dual-career parents," says Chuck Underwood, of Generational Imperative Inc., a generational consulting firm in Cincinnati. About 40 percent grew up in single-parent households.
"Because of this harsh upbringing, family and home is critical to them," says Ann Fishman, of Generational Targeted Marketing Corp. in New Orleans.
"Their house allows them to feel a stability they never enjoyed," Underwood explains.
That translates into amenities such as media rooms, where families can watch movies together and kids can play electronic games.
As latchkey kids, X-ers spent a lot of time in front of televisions, which shaped them into highly visual consumers.
Furniture with clean lines and kitchen appliances in eye-catching colors draw them "like a magnet," Fishman says.
Boomers define themselves by their careers; X-ers don't, says Dianne Durkin, president of Loyalty Factor, a consulting firm in Portsmouth, N.H.
"They want balance in their lives," she says.
"They look at their parents, who worked 100 hours a week just to get laid off," Fishman says.
What Boomers Want
Unlike previous generations, boomers keep their big houses long after the children have grown and moved away, Underwood says.
They are outfitting homes - or buying homes - that will accommodate aging, says Sean Ruck, of the National Kitchen & Bath Association in Hackettstown, N.J.
"Walls are prepared to be weight-bearing so you can install grab bars," which are being designed so they look stylish, not institutional.
Boomers want hallways wide enough for wheelchairs and laundry rooms next to bathrooms and bedrooms, for transporting ease. Seats are being added to showers and tubs.
Some boomers are even installing elevators.
"The standard interior door was about 2.6 feet wide. Now, we're starting to see 3 [feet]," says Shane Meisel, marketing manager for Jeld-Wen, a Klamath, Ore., company that makes windows and doors. Sound-proof doors are becoming a popular choice for laundry rooms next to bedrooms, he adds.
Although Whirlpool doesn't target age groups, it aims to meet consumer needs, spokesman Audrey-Reed Granger says. The company makes a washing machine, for instance, with large lettering to accommodate people with failing eyesight.
Generational Style
Boomers tend to decorate along a single theme - Southwestern, perhaps, or Old Florida, Underwood says.
X-ers, on the other hand, like to mix and match. They don't mind spending, but they want value, experts say.
"They don't like hype and spin. They grew up in a world where sex could kill," Fishman says. "They expect you to deliver on your marketing promises. Burn them once; lose them forever."
They're sophisticated consumers - socializing at the mall while growing up and shopping on the Internet. If they don't see what they want, they'll have one made.
That's precisely what Bradenton thirtysomethings Amyra and Aaron Mondon did when they couldn't find a couch they liked.
"We looked for months. We could absolutely not find a couch," Amyra says.
In the end, the couple had one custom made. It cost $6,000, but the Mondons say it was worth it.
"It's very deep. It's stuffed with down," Amyra says.
X-ers like furniture to be functional with simple lines, says Jackie Hirschhaut, vice president of American Home Furnishings Alliance in High Point, N.C. Furniture makers are targeting young consumers with furniture that maximizes the use of space.
At the same time, they're responding to boomers who want dining tables for up to 16, Hirschhaut says. Boomers want to seat their aging parents, children and grandchildren together for meals.
X-ers want their technology wireless, and they want their music and video systems to work in sync.
Boomers want sophisticated home video systems that are easy to use, and they're willing to pay a premium for them, says George Liu of Audio Visions South in Tampa.
No matter what they're buying, X-ers tend to shop differently than boomers.
"Whatever they buy from you, they're going to have visited your Web site, first," Fishman says. "If you don't understand how to put together a home page, you don't understand them."
And, Coming Up...
Millenials or Generation Y's - the youngest among us up to about 24 years old - haven't established a home-decor profile.
But Michael Payne, a furniture designer and host of HGTV's "Designing for the Sexes," says he has gained insights about the group from his 26-year-old son.
"They're looking at a truly new way of shopping, of living, and it's all about simplicity," Payne says.
They need only four walls with a bathroom to wash in, a stovetop to cook on, a chair to sit on and a bed to sleep on, he says.
Although millenials are young, marketers shouldn't ignore them, Fishman says.
This group is drawn to name brands and begins developing loyalty at an early age, she says. That's why there are stores such as Baby Gap.
"They begin to bond at age 10. They're fully bonded by 15," she says.
It's important to talk the millenial talk.
"The language of Gen Y is instant messaging and text messaging. If you don't know what a blog is, you need to have a crash course. You need to be in their world in order to get them, and they expect that of you," she says.
"If I say Hillary and you think Clinton instead of [Hilary] Duff, you're not in their world."
Baby Boomers
• Born approximately 1946 to 1964.
• Tend to decorate rooms with a single theme.
• Are thinking ahead to old age and equipping their homes with wider doors, walk-in showers and laundry rooms next to the master bedroom.
• Define themselves by their jobs.
• Are brand-name conscious and like to keep up with - or be ahead of - the Joneses.
Generation X
• Born approximately 1965 to 1981.
• Are highly visual. Grew up in front of the television. Curb appeal is important.
• Are market savvy.
• Have eclectic tastes. Like to mix and match styles in the same room.
• View work as just a job. Have a higher priority on parenting.
• Are more interested in quality than name brand.
• Want a high-tech home.
• Are homebodies, even more so since 9/11. Want their home equipped for family life: game rooms, media rooms, pools.
Millenials (Gen Y)
• Born approximately 1982 to present.
• Speak in language of text messages and instant messages.
• Are attracted to brands at an early age and remain loyal.
• Think globally - a generation without borders.
• Are more diverse.
Incentive Magazine - How Service Impacts Your Brand
Your company is judged by the stores you keep.
July 1, 2006
Incentive Magazine
By Julia Chang
As companies focus on advertising, marketing collateral, and consumer incentives to build their brand, they may be ignoring another area of investment that can affect their image: customer service. According to a survey of more than 7,000 consumers by BIGResearch, a market intelligence firm based in Worthington, Ohio, 53 percent of shoppers believe poor customer service reflects badly on the entire corporate chain, from the employee to the store manager to headquarters. In addition, 25 percent say bad customer service reflects poorly on the company alone, a higher percentage than those who think it solely makes an employee or the store manager look bad.
More than half of those surveyed also believe customer service in general is getting worse, but that could reflect higher expectations, says T. Scott Gross, a management consultant based in Kerrville, Texas, and author of When Customers Talk. "I think anecdotal evidence shows that service is better [than it was in the past], but now good customer service is the expectation," he says.
Small businesses tend to have the advantage in the service arena, but larger companies can take advantage of their resources to ensure they are doing enough to gauge customers' expectations, such as by using sophisticated predictive surveying technology that analyzes a market base and enables businesses to pinpoint customers most likely to jump to a competitor, Gross says. Large firms should also work on "microbrands" by using local marketing that focuses on people who run the neighborhood stores. "We have to give these big-box managers a little bit of ownership," he says.
Additionally, too many companies skimp on the training and recognition needed to motivate employees who work in high-turnover, lower-pay customer service or retail sales positions, says Dianne Durkin, president of Loyalty Factor, a customer- and employee-loyalty consulting firm based in Portsmouth, N.H. "What they don't understand is the amount of knowledge needed to service people properly," she says. "And it's not just about product knowledge. [Companies] don't appreciate the follow-up it takes; that makes the difference in customer-service skills."
In her sessions, Durkin asks workers to describe the best customer-service experience they have ever had. "Then we say, 'Here are the characteristics you described; how can you transform them [to apply] to the job you have?'" she explains. She adds that workers feel empowered when they know there isn't a list of rules preventing them from helping irate buyers. "You have to say, 'I'm going to trust you.'"
Workforce Performance Solutions - Increasing Engagement by Creating a Responsibility-Based Culture .
July, 2006
Workforce Performance Solutions
by Dianne Michonski Durkin
Imagine working in an environment where all employees are fully engaged in what they do, excited about their work, accept personal responsibility for their performance and are committed to the organization. Envision your colleagues connected to the vision of the company, looking forward to coming to work and actually wanting to provide customers and the community with exceptional service.
No, this isn't some warped episode of "The Office." As sitcom-perfect as this might sound, employee engagement and high-performance workplaces are becoming an essential reality.
In recent years, the Gallup Organization has stepped up its research efforts, particularly in organizational culture, management effectiveness and employee engagement. The research has revealed three types of employees: engaged, not engaged and actively disengaged.
Engaged
Engaged employees make up approximately 29 percent of the American workforce. They are employees who show consistent levels of high performance. They are natural innovators, are energetic and enthusiastic, and they never run out of things to do. They create more work for themselves within their area of expertise. They are committed to the company and their team, and they accept accountability and responsibility for their actions.
Not Engaged
Not-engaged employees account for approximately 55 percent of the American workforce. These are employees who are non-risk takers and have a low commitment to the organization. They don't feel a sense of connection with their organization or their manager, and they do not have a sense of achievement in relations to their job. They become more focused on the steps involved in doing their job rather than the results achieved and might focus on doing just enough to keep their job.
Actively Disengaged
The last category is actively disengaged employees. This group accounts for approximately 16 percent of the American workforce. An actively disengaged employee is not just unhappy at work, they act out that unhappiness. They find it almost impossible to become part of the solution because they thrive on being part of the problem. In many cases they also spread their discontent.
The reality is that most people come to a new job enthusiastic, highly motivated, creative and totally committed. What happens is the culture or a manager does not respect and honor the innovation, the new ideas or even the enthusiasm. It doesn't take long for this highly motivated employee to become disillusioned and move from highly engaged to less engaged. In fact, Gallup studies show that employees that have been in their jobs for three to 10 years are 16 percent less engaged than they were during their first six months on the job. It is very disheartening to think American businesses are operating at one third of their capacity.
Think about that: What if only one third of a bank's branches opened each day? What if only one third of a manufacturing company's machines operated at capacity every day? The lost opportunity is obvious — and so is the opportunity for growth.
Using Gallup's statistics let's assume engaged employees are giving 100 percent and non-engaged and actively disengaged are giving 50 percent of what they are capable of. The cost to the organization would be approximately 35 percent of payroll. This is a huge cost of lack of engagement. So what's the answer?
Companies need to build a culture based on trust, freedom, responsibility and accountability within a framework — a culture where people are willing to go the extra mile and perhaps to extreme lengths to fulfill their responsibilities. It's a culture where people are self-directed versus a culture where people look to an authority figure and comply.
This is what is called a "responsibility-based culture." In this culture trust is essential. Managers and employees practice the elements of trust including straightforwardness, openness, acceptance and reliability. When these four elements are present, respect is high. People are valued for who they are. Rewards and recognition systems exist. People are rewarded for their results, recognized for their performance and receive the recognition they deserve. Everyone seeks the highest level of excellence by being the best they can be and helping others maximize their strengths to be the best they can be.
In addition to building the culture, companies need to develop their leaders and managers so they can:
• Set the challenge, create and communicate a vision or goal that compels others.
• Engage people in the possibilities and speak those possibilities in a clear, concise and consistent fashion.
• Create trust by leading by example, setting a positive tone by never doubting people and getting others to do versus being asked to do.
• Distribute power by sharing decision making, giving credit where credit is due and valuing innovation.
• Understand strengths and areas for development and looking for the shining eyes in the organization.
• Celebrate successes by recognizing performance and rewarding the results.
Companies that want to increase productivity and profitability must build trust within their organizations. Management should ensure employees that they are respected for their contributions and ideas and that differences are valued. Executives must share leadership, which will help create an environment where employees count on each other for support, take responsibility, keep their commitments and strive for excellence. Companies that do not have trust between employees and managements will suffer from employee turnover, reduced customer satisfaction and ultimately lose profits.
With the business pressures and the challenges of constant change, companies need to have everyone efficient, effective and working at 100 percent. It is time to engage people and trust them to exceed expectations.
Dianne Michonski Durkin is president and founder of Loyalty Factor, a training and management consulting firm based in Portsmouth, N.H. Durkin is the author of "The Loyalty Advantage" and is an adjunct professor at Penn State University's Executive Management Program. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Destination CRM - Like a Circle in a Spiral
Making your IVR system as user friendly as possible will help increase customer loyalty and keep costs down.
May 01, 2006
DestinationCRM.com
By Coreen Bailor
Paul English, CTO and cofounder of travel search-engine site Kayak.com, touched off a significant media and customer incident in 2005 when he unveiled on his blog the IVR Cheat Sheet, which provides shortcuts to get to live reps at various organizations. Overwhelming response forced him to launch www.gethuman.com in February 2006, a site run by volunteers that focuses on improving customer service and phone support and that also features instructions for bypassing IVRs. Unfortunately, the reasons behind customer frustration (poor design and restricted choice with automated help), remain.
Dianne Durkin, president and founder of training and consulting firm Loyalty Factor, says, "There are so many automated [queues,] the person wonders if they will ever be able to tell their story and receive a correct answer." Another source of irritation is an IVR system crafted from a company's perspective, using company jargon that customers don't understand. Moreover, requiring customers to repeat information already given through an IVR when connected to a live agent is a surefire satisfaction deflator. "The biggest mistake is not having a zero-out option" to reach a live agent, says Rosanne D'Ausilio, Ph.D., president of Human Technologies. The result? Rising costs, as more customers will be forced to contact organizations again, increasing the price to handle the inquiry. Organizations also will see an impact on their bottom line resulting from customer defection attributable to poor customer service.
But IVR systems will not simply fade away, nor should they. IVRs that deliver tight, easy prompts can efficiently and effectively allow the customer to independently handle basic inquiries, such as checking account balances. However, customers should not be forced into IVRs, says Maggie Klenke, a founding partner of The Call Center School. Klenke suggests that organizations have one phone number for the IVR system and one for a human, allowing customers to make the choice. "You have a choice at the airport; you could walk up to the kiosk to get a boarding pass, but if you'd rather stand in line and talk to a human, that is your option. If the IVR was as simple to use as the airport kiosk, then people would use them."
Most businesses note that without an IVR their costs would drastically increase. Angel.com, a provider of on-demand call center and IVR solutions, responded to English's list with its "IVR Cheat Sheet for Businesses," released in November 2005. Some tips include: keeping the user interface simple; not hiding the option to speak to an agent; not making callers repeat information; and giving callers the option to use touch tone or speech recognition.
"Many companies don't realize that speech technology has made significant strides in consumer adoption over the past few years, and there are voice self-service options that are far more efficient than touch tone technology," says Azita Martin, vice president of marketing at TuVox. Speech recognition must continue to deal with its own issues, such as improving its ability to recognize accents and colloquialisms.
Still, there are companies like American Airlines that have sound IVR deployments, according to D'Ausilio, who simply requests an agent if she needs one.
But until more companies make their IVR systems simpler and easy to use, English will have more companies to add to his infamous list. "Call centers have to gather data and pass it through the rest of the organization where the problems can actually be fixed," Klenke says. "Then the people won't call and the cost will go away. It's not a matter of minimizing it, it's a matter of eliminating it."
