Facilitating customer relationships--rather than revolts.

• Author: Hall, Robert
• Position: Marketing Solutions

Every day in businesses around the globe customers who intended to buy leave stores, branches, sales offices and their own offices without buying. They not only fail to make a purchase, but they are determined not to do business again with a prospective provider who--a few minutes, hours or days earlier--was a likely recipient of their business. Why?

Certainly there are many reasons--personality clash, inexperienced salespeople, bad luck to name a few. Too often, however, the very process of selling unfolds in such a way that it repels many potential buyers. Sales process can be toxic to long-term relationships when it is so intent on "selling" that it is blind to the customer's "buying" process. If an organization is responsible for anything, it is for its core processes. Ironically, in response to pressure for revenue growth, many organizations that have become very intentional about "selling" and "sales culture," have unwillingly killed the goose--the customer relationship--that lays the golden eggs.

Two sides of the same coin

What percentage of customers who enter your establishment are repelled by your sales process? For organizations trying to eke out 5 to 8 percent revenue growth, losing 15 to 25 percent of customers inclined to buy, but repelled by the buying process, is disastrous. At the extreme, many organizations seem caught in a struggle of false choices. Their customers either experience a passive, disinterested interaction that shows little initiative for understanding customers, their needs--expressed and/or latent--or providing proactive, even active help in getting them taken care of. Or, customers experience an aggressive "sales" interaction that is very proactive and needs-based--the problem is that it is the cross-sell, quota needs of the salesperson, not the customer, that drives the process. Although this aggressive approach looks and feels very different from the passive approach, they are two different sides of the same problem. What both the passive and aggressive sales processes share is an utter disregard for the customer.

The customer management process of the future must proactively help navigate the customer to the customer's preferred way of doing business. For the customer doing business in this new environment, there is good news and bad news. The good news is there are many new choices for not only how to buy but how to interact in the buying process--visit a branch and talk with a person face to face; go...