Top 10 tips to empower your sales force for greater customer retention that drives loyalty

Last Updated: January 16, 2012By Tags: ,

To remain competitive in a dynamic and increasingly multifaceted global setting, you need to create an environment in which your customers are at the center of every decision. The idea of having a customer-centric approach is the essential element for generating customer loyalty and retention. It is known fact that a 5% increase in customer retention has been shown to increase profitability from 25% to 85%.

Hence, here are the top 10 tips to empower your sales force for greater customer retention that drives loyalty:

  1. Give your sales team a high degree of flexibility for meeting uncommon customer requests.
  2. Your sales culture should support taking risks and implementing new ideas.
  3. Customer’s needs and expectations should be at the center of your decision, system, and process.
  4. Communicate to rest of the business about your sales/customer service initiatives. Especially to the employees who are customer-facing.
  5. Make sure that your sales team have all of the skills-including problem solving, customer service, communication, and teamwork-they need to meet customer needs.
  6. Structure all customer requests so that the links between individual sales employee action and impact on the customer are obvious.
  7. Deliver exceptional service to internal customers, because you can’t deliver exceptional service to external customers without it.
  8. Get help and encourage non-sales employees to contribute innovative ways to serve customer needs.
  9. Provide all of the resources and support necessary for the sales team to offer excellent customer service.
  10. Assess training needs regularly and provide appropriate training for your sales team to think outside the box to address queries.

Satisfying customers is no longer enough to keep ahead of the competition. Your effort to create customer value will help you maintain your competitive position and gain competitive advantage.

Chintan Bharwada

Chintan is the Founder and Editor of Loyalty & Customers.

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To achieve better sales and profits, most companies could be doing more to cultivate business from their existing customers. However, enthusiasm for customer-retaining strategies must not endanger sound customer-getting efforts. How companies balance the two is the big question. To intensify reaching old customers while still seeking new ones, for many firms, will mean changes in market analysis, planning systems, management incentives, and marketing and/or operations organization. In the rush toward growth, consumer marketers have tended to regard success as stemming from obtaining new customers while unwittingly minimizing the importance of satisfying old ones. It is time for more companies to distinguish between their getting and retaining functions, to assess the balance between them, and to remedy any deficiencies in customer retention. This process requires management to value the potential of current customers and to treat them in special ways to get them to keep coming back. Several major elements should be part of the new marketing mix for customer retention: Product extras Keeping customers frequently requires giving them more than the basic product that initially attracted them. Product extras for individual customers over time can play a sales-expansive role. Reinforcing promotions Product promotion works better when aimed at existing customers. If a marketer knows who these customers are, benefits can be obtained by giving them reinforcing communications. Sales force connections The sales force can play a decisive role in the customer-retention function. At a retail or service counter the salesperson is the focal point of the company's strategy and is the firm to the customer. Post-purchase communication A company must anticipate that some customers will encounter either minor or serious problems after purchasing. If the firm is not ready to hear and correct these difficulties, the customer may not repurchase  or may cancel the the relationship. Whether company or customer is at fault, standby post-purchase activities can be instrumental in saving these customers.

2 Comments

  1. Top 10 tips to empower your sales force for greater customer … | Loyalty Marketing News January 18, 2012 at 4:14 am

    […] Top 10 tips to empower your sales force for greater customer …… Marketing Controversy customer acquisition customer engagement customer loyalty customer retention customer satisfaction customer service engagement …loyaltyandcustomers.com/…/top-10-tips-to-empower-your-sale… […]

  2. David Abraham February 20, 2012 at 1:04 am

    Nice informative blog, thanks for sharing.

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