You Need Employees and Customers to Sell Your Products

Business would be easy without customers and staff; then business is never easy; if it was everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they?

People are one of your greatest assets, but they can be the biggest liability to your business too. I’m talking about both customers and staff here. How your staff talk, listen and behave with your clients can be the difference between mediocre and meteoric business success. But how your customers feel about their experience with your company and what they say to their friends can make a big difference too.

Do you really know how your employees (and your outsourcers) are dealing with your hard won customers? What do your customers think and feel about your company? Are they ready to purchase again or are they already looking for a new supplier? Research from BIS states that 64% of customers don’t complain, they just quietly walk away.

Starting, and keeping your employees engaged with your vision; business standards and the right way of doing business is critical. Engaged organizations grew profits as much as three times faster than their competitors according to the Corporate Leadership Council.

Turning your customers into your extended sales force is a key goal for any Grown-Up Business. As a grown up business they deliver what they promise every time; they are great to deal with, they care, and they make sure that the customer experience is consistency consistent.

In return your customers feel so comfortable that they repurchase again & again. They have confidence in you and start to recommend you to others. The result; sales increase, marketing spend can reduce, everyone is happier and profits grow.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find out how engaged your employees are right now. Once you have learnt that, you can start making improvements to the quality and consistency of the service that you give to your customers.

How do you find out? The traditional way is an employee engagement survey. But that only shows you half the picture. You’ll also need a customer engagement survey running alongside. What you really need is a survey that does both at the same time; analyses the results from both groups to give you real insight. You’ll need to make sure that you review the six key areas; the customer, the product, the after-care, the sale, the service and the people so that you have a complete picture of what is happening.

Once you have the facts you can them prioritise which parts need your attention first. Improving both employee and customer engagement will start to bring rewards.

One client found that customers waited so long for their samples that they purchased elsewhere. The employees didn’t think that the samples service was important so they had saved up all of the requests to do once a fortnight. Now samples are done every day and customer conversion rates have soared.  The MD is ecstatic, just one small change has led to a massive increase in sales!

Naturally you’ll want to re-survey again in the future to make sure that everyone is seeing the improvements you have made.  You know it’s important; but does it all sound a bit daunting?