How Commissioned-only Selling Ruined the Sales Profession

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Mindful selling, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Results

The United States has been responsible for many great innovations but not all have turned out the way the inventors, architects or innovators intended. One such miscalculation was the introduction of ‘commissioned-only’ salespeople.

This initiative spawned negative effect on the reputation and results of salespeople worldwide and its stigma has remained ever since, commissioned or not.

Have you ever wondered how ‘commission only’ selling was born and why it harbours such negative sentiment? To understand the driving forces behind the commission only sales force, one must travel back to the US in …

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Are you really listening or just waiting to speak?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Life Skills, Mindful selling, Wellbeing

Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf… – Native American Proverb How long do we actually listen to another person before we start interrupting? How quickly do our own thoughts take over and we start thinking about what question to ask or what we need to say in reply even before they’ve finished speaking? Do we find ourselves interrupting the person to give our own opinion or finish their sentences before they are finished? If this sounds like you, then you’re not listening you are just waiting to speak and as the Native American Proverb above says, if we …

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Getting Personal Or Time To Get Personal

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Sales Relationships

‘Getting Personal’ was voted as the Number 12 Sales Trends for 2011. Despite the advances in technology and the rise of the Internet, customers still want personal and single contact satisfaction. Contrary to some pundits who believe the role of salespeople is becoming obsolete with the proliferation of Internet and mobile technology, effective sales professionals and a personal approach to selling remains important to successful business this year and in the years to come. Smart salespeople are offloading functional and transactional activities to better concentrate …

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Procurement & Value Managed

By / / Customer Service, Procurement, Sales Culture, Value Proposition & Value Add

‘Procurement & Value Managed’ was voted as the Number 8 for Sales Trends for 2011. In 2011 we are seeing the development, thinking and sophistication of the Procurement Profession accelerate. This progression will surely see procurement on the front foot of supply chain management. Around 60 percent of major global corporations now have Procurement and Supply at the executive table alongside sales, marketing, finance, production, HR, IT, etc. Security of supply, environmental credentials, sustainable business practices, integrative processes and business cases will be up for discussion at the executive …

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The New Age Customer

By / / Customer Service, Procurement, Sales Leadership, Social Media

In a world still recovering from the GFC and grappling with the buzz of social media, we are now in the midst of a war between retail and online shopping facing daily decisions about purchasing locally or overseas, and B2B sales teams challenged with moving from selling product transactions to being business people who can sell value and ideas. It’s no wonder that businesses are grappling with the new age customer who has emerged looking somewhat different in this new climate.

Sales leaders often struggle with the changing dynamics of the customer relationship. The Sales …

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Why selling is now a team sport

By / / Collaboration, Communication, Customer Service, Marketing, Procurement, Sales Relationships, Sales Training, Teamwork

Subjected to marketing and sales monologues for the better part of 40 years in the form of blanket advertising, product brochures and ‘your call is important to us’ busy signals, customers have taken the lead and are way ahead of us when it comes to having sales and marketing dialogues. Far more informed and sophisticated, and posting blogs, Facebook ‘Likes’, Tweets and reTweets, customers are engaging in their own sales and marketing dialogues about our products, our sales people, our promise, our customer service proposition and our brands, and they are affecting …

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Why we should take customer service more seriously

By / / Customer Service, Ethics & Values

I propose that customer service is an assertive act, a proactive role that has an incredible impact on the attraction and retention of customers. It represents the ‘front door’, the daily face of a business, ideally setting the scene for productive, healthy relationships. I propose that customer service can often be a much harder, more gruelling role than selling; dealing with the many variables that confront a business, sorting out problems, providing advice, answering technical/distribution/supply questions, coordinating and liaising with various departments, contacting suppliers and, dealing with crises; all the while being polite, friendly, effective and efficient on a consistent …

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Why you should stop trying to delight your customers

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service

Delighting customers does not build loyalty. Reducing customers’ effort does.

These were the findings from a large customer service survey conducted by the Customer Contact Council (CCC), and featured in the July edition of the Harvard Business Review. The survey’s aim was to get answers to three questions:

  • How important is customer service to loyalty?
  • Which customer service activities increase loyalty, and which don’t?
  • Can companies increase loyalty without raising their customer service operating costs?

    • After conducting structured interviews with customer service leaders and a study of more than 75,000 customers, the CCC uncovered three findings:

    1. Exceeding expectations during service interactions has negligible …

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    What’s the difference between a member, a client and a customer?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Ethics & Values, Sales Culture, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Strategy

    What’s in a name? Well, there seems to be some confusion in the market place around the terminology used to describe those people who pay us money for goods, services, experiences, donations, etc.

    Different industries can have different terms for the consumers of their products and/or services. We see terms such as customer, client, patient, guest, patron, member, subscriber, donor, etc. used to describe a person who buys our products or services and intends to use them directly. In short, these terms are referring to the same person – the ‘end user’. However, not everyone ‘consumes’ our products or services or …

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