Your customers are waiting!

I know, I know, you’ve scheduled a phone call for that key customer and key accounts once every couple of weeks.

You've also scheduled phone calls to all your best customers on a semi regular basis in order to keep in touch.

It wasn't so long ago that this was the best strategy and in fact if you did it properly and consistently led to good customer rapport as well as growth in most of your accounts. Further this strategy helped to stave off unnecessary attrition and protect you from your competition.

All in all, a pretty good strategy and not difficult to put in place for most companies.

So, here's the problem with that strategy in today's new world.

The assumptions this was based upon are simply no longer true. One of those assumptions held in very high regard was that once you established the key contact, you were good to go and you had full control of the account. Sadly, this is still assumed today in far too many companies.

As many studies have proven in the last 3 to 5 years this theory no longer holds. In fact, many companies can have as many as 6 to 10 decision makers and or people involved in the decision for any major purchases or system changes. That's right as many as 10 people!

Now based on this fact go back and count how many contacts you have in each one of your key accounts and I'd be willing to bet you lunch today that very few of you have anywhere near “10”.

Here's another interesting change impacting our old ways of doing things, people don't just wait for your phone call, I know it's shocking!

In fact, your customers are online everyday looking for better ways of doing things and of course the scary thing is those other eight or nine contacts that you don't have are just as active as contact you do.

So, when I say your customers are looking for you I mean it. Your phone call once or twice or three times a month is simply not good enough anymore.

You need to be front-and-center of all of the key contacts in every account you have All the time.

No, I don't mean sending out corporate spam 24/7.

What I mean is insightful valuable information being in front of your customers wherever they are. Many of these customers are on LinkedIn but some of them are on Facebook others maybe on Twitter and others yet maybe on Instagram. Not a problem you simply get your content and your information in front of them no matter where they are.

You know what they say, the best fishing is done where the fish are, just showing up on the lake isn't good enough. Figure out where your customers are and get good information in front of them as much as possible.

Next, recruit your team to do as much of this with you and across their contacts in those same fishing spots, just as regularly.

You see, this is now a team effort and not just the job of your number one Hunter or sales person. With so many people involved in decision-making at all of your customer accounts it takes a team effort to be effective.

This may all seem daunting and a huge change and I'm not going to kid you it is. However, consider two things:  

1)   What happens if you don't do this?

2) Many of the activities you do today simply no longer need to be done so you have     much more time to do things properly than you think.

If you're interested in learning how to do this in your company, just let me know and I'd be glad to provide additional information online, as you should be doing for your customers.

** An overwhelming number of companies are still stuck in the mindset that social media is the domain of marketing rather than sales. As buying patterns continue to evolve this is an increasingly dangerous position to take. More and more every day, buyers are reaching out via social channels rather than phone or email, and your sales team needs to be equipped to properly follow-up with these leads. **

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@TRsocialselling || @ExpoSalesLtd