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7 must-have expectations met to start growing customers for life
Blog / Sales Management / Jun 21, 2017 / Posted by Jermaine Edwards / 6700

7 must-have expectations met to start growing customers for life

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There isn’t a company on the planet that doesn’t want their customers to say yes more often: yes to higher prices, yes to more purchasing, yes to the greatness of your service and yes to the results of those services. This is certainly how you start growing customers.

Here’s the reality. You have to earn every yes you get in business. Today that doesn’t come easily because the expectations of service are higher than ever (regardless of what a customer pays for your product or service).

I observed something interesting while working with a group of consultants on a company change project that involved thousands of customers. In all those interactions there was a clear voice of the customer telling us that they were underwhelmed. They liked the product and service but there were other things that concerned them. It was exploring what these concerns were that led to the idea of the ‘Yes’ criteria.

Unless you know what your customers want to say yes to, all your efforts to get a yes will be in vain. Here’s what I mean.

Your customers ‘Yes’ criteria are the expectations and experiences they want to see, hear and feel when working with and engaging with your business at all stages and levels.

What your customers actually care about is much wider and more meaningful than your product, service and results they get.

Here are seven areas in your business your customer actually wants to say ‘yes’ to in your business. All these seven things are important perceptions your customers may have of the value, ethics, relationships and reputation of your company. Each one needs to be looked at seriously and carefully.

YES 1 – They want to say yes to your account managers

Your customer cares about who serves them, including their actions, behaviours and ability. The sales people, account managers and those engaging with the customer should be aware of your customer’s expectations at all stages and levels with your customer. This enables total consistency of experience and quality and effectiveness of every interaction.

YES 2 – They want to say yes to your values

Your customer cares about what you believe. They want to feel good about working with people and organizations that reflect their same values. Customers more and more today are making conscious and ethical decisions about buying and partnership decisions.

YES 3 – They want to say yes to your Leadership

Your customers are watching the way your business is being led. If your leadership is found ineffective and with a poor reputation your customers will have second thoughts about how they deal with your company. Just look at the reputation of some of the biggest companies and industries today in areas like finance and oil that demonstrate the potential challenge in this area.

YES 4 – They want to say yes to your on-boarding

Your customer wants to feel they are unique and the process to supporting them isn’t a one size fits all. A unique personalization and individualization of your product/service should set your relationship with them apart. If you can make your customers feel like the hero they will give you a hero’s welcome.

YES 5 – They want to say yes to your communication

Your customer wants to be updated and know that they matter by the quality and value of the communication they receive. They also want this communication to be a helpful tool for sharing internally so things can be more easily translated and sold in any part of their business. They want communication to be emphatic and of high value to enable them to win in their jobs and business.

YES 6 – They want to say yes to your relationships

Your customer wants to have deeper relationship where trust is high and they feel they can trust you with more. The customer should feel you’ll use the information they share to enable them and not negotiate with them. They want to know that good relationships are being built across their business and more and more they’re paying attention to local, international and global feedback to measure these relationships.

YES 7 – They want to say yes to your referral requests

Your customer wants to tell others about the great partners they work with. Especially when they’re winning big and the whole organization is benefiting. They want to be enabled to do this collaboratively and not be one sided. They’re open to creating a platform to do this in a proactive way and want to see a more thought through communication of how you both can benefit.

There you have it. The seven yeses your customers want to be able to shout about. Think about those seven areas and decide which one is not being served as well as it could be in your business.

What one thing could you do this week to enable your customers to say YES in those areas? If you look closely, each of these YES factors are powerfully connected to your sales and growth success.

Just improving one or two could easily change the dynamic of your customer engagement. What if you could activate all seven?

Tracking what engages and makes customers happy is a primary benefit of Pipeliner CRM. Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.

About Author

Jermaine is an Inc magazine featured Author and most interviewed customer growth and B2B relationship expert. He help Key Account Managers, sales leaders, account directors and consultants around the world become irreplaceable advisers and repeatable profit sales growth from their value customers.

Author's Publications on Amazon

Based on the study more than 200 customers and 150 successful key account managers, sales professionals, and customers. You can be confident that this book will be practical and real-world in its examples.
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