Meeting your customers’ expectations? All may not be well.

If you didn’t have products or services that customers need, you wouldn’t be in business.  Successful businesses meet those needs, but doing so is a bare-bones minimum.  Great companies go far beyond simply meeting customers’ needs by delivering great service at all customer touch points.

To be fair, if you’re selling bags of sugar or some other commodity, you’re probably safe to focus simply on meeting your customers’ expectations.  All buying decisions, yes all of them, are emotional.  Even sugar, for example, is purchased because of one’s love for baking sweet treats.  There’s an emotional connection, both to the joy of baking and to seeing the smiles on the faces of those who enjoy the end result.  Unless your sugar ruins my recipe, I’m buying, because it meets my expectations.

With premium products and professional services, however, solely meeting expectations is no ringing endorsement.  Be honest.  When is the last time you got excited about a product or service when you heard “yeah, it meets my expectations”?  If you were honest, the answer is never.

I’m a Home Depot junkie, which means my workshop/basement is loaded with stuff that I’ve purchased, and that I’m planning to use at some point.  From time to time (after 12 months of not using something) I’ll return it.  You guessed it – Home Depot’s return process does not meet my expectations.  It exceeds them.  Their incredible no-questions-asked return policy is painless, stress-free, and every retail store could learn something from the model.  In short, it blows away my expectations about product returns.

Find ways to surprise your customers with extraordinary service.  Send a hand-written note, agree to a meeting before or after “normal” business hours, remember their birthday or children’s names, send information on Wednesday even though you have until Friday, accept a return after 12 months without question.   If you don’t, someone will, and over time your customers may be lured away from your basic, vanilla, no frills, expectation-meeting experience.

Call your prospects to add value, not just to check in.

Think again!

Have you ever been on the receiving end of a courtesy call from a sales professional who is just checking in to see if you’ve made a decision and are ready to buy?  Typically the first check-in is followed by a second, a third, a fourth, and so on until a near perpetual game of cat and mouse breaks out only to end once the cat, or salesman, completely runs out of energy, or worse, when the mouse goes on the offensive!  The answer is simple, but it is rarely practiced effectively.  Make each call an opportunity to add value for your prospective customer.  However, there is a catch.  It must be genuine!

In our practice, sales consultants aren’t allowed to call a prospect simply to “check in” or “touch base” without at least delivering information that could be of value.  Perhaps the information is a new way to use a product or service, advice based on past experience, an interesting article, or even a networking introduction.  It should be relevant and genuine, and not simply an exercise in reaching out.

Prospects find new and creative ways to avoid calls and emails that offer no value, but serve only as a reminder that they have not yet said “yes” to your sale.  The next time you grab your phone or type an email in an effort to move an opportunity forward, do so by offering value and building trust.  Drop the phrases checking in and touching base from your sales vocabulary, unless you really like leaving all those voicemails!

Work habits for better client relationships

As we head into a new week, I wanted to share with you a simple work philosophy that I try to personify daily.

The Four H’s:
Honor your client. Listen emphatically in an effort to learn and when it comes time to speak, do so only to provide value, based on what you’ve learned.

Be honest with your client. Honesty may not always be popular or easy but without it, there will be no trust and no long-term relationship.

Be humble about your work. Surely, somewhere in the world, someone else has discovered a better, faster, cheaper way.  Self-praise has no place on a successful team.

Share humor in all situations. The joy of levity can be transformative. It is as powerful a tool as any and it should be used often.