How to cope with the long customer life cycle and not poison the merchants?
Obsah
When the salesperson finally learns everything he can about the products, he leaves. How to prevent that?
You probably know it too, and you may not even work in IT. The company needs to sell, and in order to sell, it needs salespeople. They have a clear assignment and as soon as they start working, one phenomenon that we cannot get rid of – the customer’s life cycle – starts throwing sticks under their feet.
Sectors where the customer is his own sales person are ideal. But this is the privilege of only a small fraction of companies. So most have to focus on working properly with the customer life cycle. And that’s not always easy.
The customer’s life cycle leads to one unpleasant thing – a split between management and salespeople. Management wants new customers, sales people want new customers, so where is the problem? In timing. And that is why I would like to focus on important elements of the company’s function that will help to get this split back on track.
Cycle Dynamics
One thing is that you understand in the company that the life cycle is just long. This is an important first step. But the second one is no less important – to understand how dynamically the cycle changes in different phases.
Probably the worst is the stage of reaching out and being able to communicate at all. It is possible, however, that the curve, which seems not to rise at all over time, will eventually take off by rocket speed when we hit the potential customer’s needs.
So it’s not like once someone wants to talk to us, it will take the same amount of time before we manage to turn them into a customer. This may or may not be the case, which is why it is so important that sales and management understand the speed of each acquisition phase.
In connection with this point, the ability of sales to detect a need, which can often be hidden, and help a potential customer to realize it, is very important. So the time investment in training is very worthwhile. At that moment, communication is much more constructive and as soon as we hit the sweet spot, suddenly the cycle speeds up again. And that’s not magic, but effectively done work and spent resources.
Lulled by Success
While our first point was more for managers – we have to be more patient, even if it doesn’t work – this one is more for sales. The smell of success is very comforting, but you can’t get stuck on one point. Think of all those singers and bands who are known as one-hit-wonders.
However, sales people do not want to stop at that, and therefore it is necessary to get out of the intoxication of victory as quickly as possible and start again at step one. Keep nurturing that new and hard-won customer, but there are others out there waiting for you to reach out and get them, so don’t waste your time in the past. The funnel of potentials has a wide throat, but the companies will not address themselves alone.
The Right Motivation
Sales people are motivated by money.
Sales people are motivated by a good feeling.
Sales people are motivated by a sense of victory.
Sales people are motivated by necessity.
Sales people are motivated by their relationship with the company.
Which of these statements is true? One, all, none? That depends on which particular sales person you ask. We are all different, so motivation is always individual and you as a manager (and I as a manager) need to understand who actually works for us.
And that last point is no coincidence. An important task for us managers is to create such conditions for each sales person that loyalty to the company becomes part of his motivation. This is the real key to maximizing retention.
You no longer live in an era of rigid rules for employees, so don’t be afraid to adapt. Can a sales person work part-time while raising children? So come to an agreement and you will see that she will be grateful to you. Does a sales person need to communicate this way or that way? So come to an agreement and you will see that he will be grateful to you.
Balanced Work Life
This is such a weird part. After all, a sales person is a sales person. Yes, but in many cases it cannot be full-time. Given the sales department has fully adopted an automated approach to work, there is a need to keep the monotonous and routine work balanced out.
There are certainly a lot of activities that would be useful for the company and are not completely of the sales sort. So determine the percentage of time they will devote to this activity, and give salespeople the opportunity to breathe between individual waves of reaching out, communicating and personal contact. Efficiency will go up, even if you might not say so at first.
Summary
I won’t go back to the thoughts, but I’d be interested in your thoughts on this topic and what your advice and recommendations are for sales departments that have to deal with the long customer acquisition lifecycle.
