Due to a variety of constraints, such as money, time and other resources, there is often a sizable gap between what sales managers would like to do in an ideal world, and what we actually do in our sales processes. As a result, we are apt to fail our customers for several reasons, including:
1. No enough time – Salespeople work under stress and do not devote enough time to each customer. We, therefore, do not know our customer as well as we would like to.
2. Our proposals to customers are often generic and not personalized. In other words, we suggest what we generally know and are used to selling, and not necessarily what the customer needs.
3. We tend to approach the customer too late or at a time that is inconvenient.
4. We don’t really know what a particular customer wants and often, there’s a gap between the customer’s expectations and our offering.
5. Manual administrative work causes errors which are deemed as unprofessional. The sales process is drawn-out and the need to correct these errors results in a frustrated customer.
6. We sometimes approach the customer via channels that are unsuitable. For example, a customer may prefer to receive information on their mobile device, where ultimately, they will respond faster and we will appear more innovative.
7. We still work using old, outdated methods and tools (mostly manual) which do not fit today’s customers.
What do organizations with successful customer relations do?
1. Use advanced customer relation management tools, maximizing the Salesforce potential of full integration and coordination between sales teams and marketing.
2. Use a robust task management system.
3. Use innovative tools to generate price proposals and renewals to prevent errors and save time and costly resources.
4. Automate processes that do not require human intervention; for example, automatically send renewal agreements generated through Salesforce and Docomotion’s Process Builder.
5. Enable customers to respond and send feedback via Salesforce Chatter and interactive documents so that the organization can obtain information in real-time and consistently improve their processes.
