At an estimated cost of $350 million, the John Carter story contrasts sharply with a message we heard loud and clear just a few weeks ago.

It’s okay to fail.  But fail quickly – and inexpensively.  Learn from your mistakes, fix them, and move ahead on the right track.

That message was a recurring theme at an off-site senior leadership meeting we facilitated for one of our clients.  And it’s a message that has continued to resonate with us.

In today’s fast-paced and intensely competitive business environment, the speed of innovation is more important than ever – and may provide the only sustainable competitive advantage.

There’s nothing new about the need to innovate more quickly.  It’s been 30 years since Tom Peters and Bob Waterman wrote In Search of Excellence and popularized the expression “Ready.  Fire!  Aim.”  Yet The Elkind Group continues to see many companies that hesitate to try new approaches to sales or service – even when it’s clear that their old approaches are failing to deliver the desired results.

No matter what business you’re in, there are many ways to move beyond analysis paralysis and drive innovation more quickly.  For example, one of our clients needed to substantially reduce the time required to develop and deliver a new sales training program.  We were able to accomplish this goal by moving directly from a training design plan to a series of pilot tests.  The result was a program that met their needs in less than half the time – and at a much lower cost – than they would have achieved with their usual design and development process.

There are always risks associated with trying something new.  But the risks of not innovating are even greater.  It’s okay to fail.  But fail quickly – and inexpensively.

As a leader, what are you doing to drive innovation and accelerate the pace of change in your business?  How are you helping your front-line employees to seek – and to find – new ways to connect your customers with the products and services that meet their needs?

A successful service to sales transformation requires a complete change of culture and mindset at every level of the organization.  And many companies are hampered in their efforts because they lack the consistent, high quality information they need to accurately measure and improve employee performance.

Recently, Andy joined performance management expert Matt Katz to discuss industry best practices and practical tips for helping companies make the transition from pure service delivery to a blend of sales AND service delivery.  If you missed the live webinar you can still see it here.

Recently, Kerry had a customer experience that surprised and delighted her – and renewed her conviction that great service is the foundation of sales and the path to customer loyalty.  Here’s her story.

I enrolled in a free training seminar on social marketing for small businesses that was offered by the San Francisco Business Times.  Due to unforeseen client commitments, I was unable to attend.

Shortly afterwards, I received an e-mail from Ray Zegri at the San Francisco Business Times.  Ray offered to meet with me and review what I had missed in the session.  Having been in the business of sales for a long time, I was immediately suspicious – and curious – about his offer.

We had some trouble getting together and I’m sorry to say that I had to cancel twice.  But the other day I did manage to meet with Ray for a cup of coffee.  And it turns out that Ray is great at what he does – helping business owners use the San Francisco Business Times to meet their business objectives.

Ray began by asking me a few open-ended discovery questions about my business and what I want to accomplish.  After listening carefully, he spent the next 50 minutes explaining – specifically -how The Elkind Group can use the San Francisco Business Times to acquire new clients and grow my business.

Ray consistently referred back to the goals and challenges I had shared with him and showed me how different features in the paper could help me.  He personalized the experience of reading the Business Times, and helped me to acquire a new appreciation for his product as a resource for my business.  When it came time to “ask for the sale,” I did it for him.  Ray’s expertise and helpfulness were so exceptional that I couldn’t wait to sign on the dotted line.

Wouldn’t you love to see this scene occurring on a daily basis when your front-line sales and service representatives talk with your prospective customers?  There is no magic formula.  But your organization has to hire, train, develop, coach, and reward people who are genuinely curious about their customers, deeply knowledgeable about their products, and able to personalize their recommendations to the unique needs of each customer or prospect.

Ray, I would like to personally thank you for demonstrating – once again – that a good sale is good service, and great service is the foundation of great sales!

All in all, it was a terrible customer service experience.  But what really disappointed me was that the representative never once attempted to save the sale.  She never showed any concern about losing me as a customer or any curiosity about why I wanted to cancel my subscription.  She never asked what she could do to keep my business.  I just didn’t feel the love!

Afterwards, I realized that all I really wanted was a personal invitation to stay.  But alas, all she wanted was my $50.00.

How often does this happen at your company?  How many customers are you losing simply because you are not asking them to stay with you?

During the holidays and throughout the year, customer loyalty is so critical to a thriving business.  It costs five times as much to win a new customer as it does to keep a customer you already have.

So our holiday tip is to remember the importance of customer lifetime value.  To put it simply, you should always be winning back your customers.  Provide your front-line representatives with the skills they need to save the sale and show your customers that they CARE:

• Connect with each customer on a personal level
• Ask questions to find out why the customers is leaving
• Respond to concerns – and remind customers of the benefits you provide
• Encourage customers to stay with you

The Elkind Group sends Seasons Greetings and wishes for a very happy and prosperous New Year.  Happy Sales To You!

But the time between Thanksgiving and the end of the year can feel like a wild and crazy marathon.  So it’s important for your coaches and managers to get your team mentally ready to perform at their best during the weeks ahead.

When the pressure mounts and the lines get long, it’s easy for front-line representatives to become reactive and revert to just taking orders.  But for many businesses this seasonal peak is a small window of opportunity.  And there’s no better time to provide great service, increase sales, and build customer loyalty.  Take advantage of this opportunity and remind your front-line team to take CARE of each and every one of your customers:

Connect. Greet customers warmly and establish rapport.  Thank them for waiting and assure them that you will help.

Ask. Be curious and ask questions to identify each customer’s needs – even if some people are waiting.  Integrate a few key questions into your conversation.  It doesn’t have to take a lot of extra time.

Recommend. Use your knowledge and experience to help customers solve problems and achieve their goals.  Guide customers by making recommendations tailored to their wants and needs.

Encourage. Respond to questions, concerns, and objections.  Create an appropriate sense of urgency to help customers make buying decisions.

If your business is moving into the start of your peak season, ask yourself these coaching questions:

• How am I getting my team focused and ready to perform at their best?
• How can I help my front-line representatives stay calm and poised even when they are balancing the needs of multiple customers?
• How can I sustain my team’s ability to take CARE of our customers during the busy weeks ahead?

We invite and encourage you to share your answers to these questions so that we can all experience a season of bountiful results.  And we wish you success and happiness during the weeks ahead.

That is the question that advertising executives asked themselves last month in San Diego at the Western Classified Advertising Association annual conference.  Kerry was fortunate to be a keynote speaker, and she conducted a three hour session on  Service To Sales: Changing Culture and Mindset In Your Call Center Environment. Although these organizations are facing incredible challenges and monumental changes, we took a deep dive to see what the future can, and should, look like.  At times it felt like “to dream the impossible dream,” but we persevered and everyone walked away with something of value.

View the video below to get a feeling for what this experience was like.

In today’s challenging economy, many front-line employees are worried about losing their jobs.  Only the most capable employees have the confidence – and the skills – to proactively seek new opportunities.  The vast majority of front-line sales and service people are content to hunker down and stay where they are.  This poses an enormous challenge to managers and supervisors.  How do you keep people engaged, willing to change, and ready to perform at their best?

Effective coaching is the key.  The best managers and supervisors don’t take a “one size fits all” approach to coaching their sales and service employees.  They take the time to get to know their people and tailor their coaching strategies and activities to meet their individual needs and goals.  Here are some questions to help you assess the coaching approach in your organization.

How are you coaching to keep your top performers?

Top performing sales and service representatives fall into two groups.  Some want to continue to excel as individual contributors, while others want to move up to positions with management responsibility.   In either case, these are the employees you most want to keep.  How well do your coaches adjust their approach to support their top performers’ goals and motivations?  How are they recognizing and rewarding results while they challenge and support the top performers and learn from their best practices?

How are you coaching to move the middle?

Mid-level performers are the backbone of every sales and service organization.  They tend to represent the highest percentage of people on the team and they are already doing a good job.  But they may want to do their jobs the same way they always have – especially if they’re long-term employees.  Meanwhile, the world is changing and the demands of the business are increasing.  How are your managers coaching to get their buy-in to changing the game?  How are they coaching to move the middle from what they’re comfortable with to what they’re capable of?

How are you coaching poor performers up or out?

When new representatives join a service or sales team, managers and supervisors need to make an extra investment to help them get up to speed.  And from time to time, any employee might experience some performance problems and need some additional coaching support.  But chronic poor performers can have a huge negative impact on results, and they can sap the morale and energy of any organization.  What are your coaches doing to drive accountability for improvement?  How are they helping poor performers increase their effectiveness or seek other employment opportunities that may be better suited to them?

For more information, please join us.

Learn about the powerful coaching strategies that leading organizations are using to retain their top performers, move the middle, and help poor performers step up or move out.  If you’re looking to improve the performance of your sales and service team, please join Kerry on October 19 from 1:00-2:00 EDT.  To register or get more details, please click here.

We’re indebted to our colleague John Goodman for shedding additional light on this topic.  As Vice Chairman of TARP, John is the customer service guru who is behind nearly all the cutting edge quantitative research on customer loyalty.  If you have read any article which cites data relating to customer loyalty, chances are that there is a TARP study behind it.

John was kind enough to share a number of resources, including his articles Grow Your Top Line With Service² and Marketing Myths and Service Slips³.

Here are some key takeaways:

There’s nothing “wrong” with trying to delight customers.  The real question is cost-effectiveness.  How much does it cost to exceed the customer’s expectations, and what is the return in increased customer loyalty?

It turns out – not surprisingly – that it may be costly and time-consuming to delight a customer.  And what’s the upside? TARP’s research found that it’s a 12-14% increase in the likelihood that the customer will recommend your company to someone else.

Meanwhile, there were four relatively simple actions that turn out to be twice as effective and increase positive word-of-mouth by 26-32%.  They are:

• Interacting briefly with the customer about something other than the basic transaction to create a personal connection (26%).

• Telling the customer about a new product or service that fills a genuine need (30%).

• Providing consistently good service (30%).

• Proactively educating the customer about how to avoid problems or get more out of a product or service (32%).

These are remarkable findings!  They suggest a simple and cost-effective two-step strategy your business can use to increase customer loyalty and generate positive word-of-mouth referrals and recommendations:

Step 1: Take a personal interest in your customers and make sure you provide them with consistently good service.

Step 2: Proactively make suggestions and recommendations based on customer needs.  In other words, move beyond a narrow and reactive view of “service” to a broader and more proactive approach to “sales AND service.”

Transform Your Organization From Service To Sales!

In today’s challenging business climate it’s more important than ever for your business to increase customer loyalty and generate positive referrals and recommendations.  Isn’t it time for your front-line team to move from a narrow, reactive focus on service to a broader and more proactive focus on sales AND service?

The Elkind Group specializes in helping organizations transition from service to sales. We are always collecting best practices.   And we invite you to share what you are doing in your organization to move your team to take a broader and more proactive approach to service.  Please let us know – we’re looking forward to hearing from you!

References:

¹ Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman, and Nicholas Toman.  Harvard Business Review July-August, 2010.

² John Goodman.  Journal of the American Management Association, Volume 8 Number 3, Summer/Fall 2009.

³ John Goodman and Dennis Gonier, TARP white paper, April 2007.

But in most businesses, it’s still critical – and possible – to coach and develop on a regular basis.  Here are five tips to help you make the most of your coaching time.

Schedule your coaching sessions in advance, and send out an agenda. Most managers would never conduct a meeting without an agenda.  But when it comes to coaching sessions, it’s a different story.  A clear agenda allows you and your employees to prepare in advance and make the most of your time together.  And be sure to invite the employees to add those topics that they most want to cover.  That’s an important first step in encouraging your people to become more responsible for their own development.

Make sure your employees have the latest metrics and performance information before the meeting. Companies that use performance management software (like Merced Performance Suite from our colleagues at Merced Systems) are making it possible for front-line employees to review current performance metrics on their own, without requiring a supervisor’s intervention.  If you’re not currently using a system like that, be sure you provide the most recent performance metrics to your employees in advance.  Otherwise, what could be a useful coaching dialogue becomes instead just a reporting session.  Telling employees what they can and should be able to understand on their own can’t possibly be the best use of your coaching time.

Ask questions, listen carefully, and let your employees do most of the talking. Who is responsible for your employees’ performance and development – is it you, or is it your employees?  If you want your people to take responsibility then they should also be doing most of the talking.  As the coach, it’s up to you to ask powerful questions – and to listen carefully to what your employees say, how they say it, and what they don’t say.  If you find yourself doing most of the talking remember the acronym WAIT and ask yourself Why Am I Talking?

Focus and prioritize. Coaches, by definition, are optimists.  After all, if you didn’t think that your people had the potential to improve, why would you take time to coach them in the first place?  When this inherent optimism combines with relatively infrequent coaching sessions, the outcome is often a desire to fix everything at once.  That’s understandable but impractical.  Most people – even your most committed employees – can only work on one or two things at a time.  If you try to accomplish too much too soon you will overwhelm and discourage the people you’re trying to help.  This is definitely a situation where less is more.  One of the most valuable roles you can play is to help each employee focus on just on one or two things that can make the biggest difference in his/her performance and development.

Develop a coaching action plan and ask the employee to write it down. It was movie mogul Sam Goldwyn who famously noted that “an oral contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”  The same is true of coaching plans.  If you were conducting a project meeting you wouldn’t leave without a clear plan of who is going to do what, by when, and how you will follow up to ensure success.  Why should a coaching session be any different?  With a written plan, both you and your employees can track what you’re supposed to do and make sure that you do it.  Of course, not everything that gets planned gets done.  But what you don’t agree to in writing will rarely happen.

By applying these five tips you’ll be able to make the most of your coaching time – and improve your effectiveness and impact, too.

So I wasn’t too concerned when I was on a business trip and reached the monthly limit of 20 free downloads.  The pay wall I encountered on my phone gave me an opportunity to log in as a home subscriber.  When I did, I received a cheery message: Your Benefits Have Been Activated!  And I was invited to return to the article I was attempting to download.

But when I tried to reach the article, I was sent to the pay wall.  So I logged in as a home subscriber.  I was delighted to see that Your Benefits Have Been Activated!  And I was invited to return to the article and . . . was sent to the pay wall.

Two weeks, four phone calls and more than an hour of my time later, the problem has been resolved.  (And here’s a special thank you to Resolution Specialist Oneka at extension 4718!)

But my recent experience with The Times was on my mind as I was reading the article Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers by Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman, and Nicholas Toman (Harvard Business Review July-August, 2010).  Their Idea in Brief:

Conventional wisdom holds that to increase loyalty, companies must “delight” customers by exceeding expectations.  A large-scale study of contact-center and self-service interactions, however, finds that what customers really want (but rarely get) is just a satisfactory solution to their service issue.

As part of their study, the authors evaluated the power of three metrics to predict customer loyalty.

• To the surprise of no one, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) once again proved to be a poor indicator of loyalty.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) was a more accurate predictor of loyalty.
• But the most accurate metric was Customer Effort Score (CES).  This measurement is determined by asking just one question: “How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?”

In my recent interactions, The New York Times performed rather poorly on this CES measure.  I recall my frustration when the third representative I spoke with returned to the line after one of numerous holds and said: “Thank you for patiently holding.”  “Please don’t thank me for my patience,” I said somewhat tensely.  “I’m rapidly losing my patience.  Please fix the problem.”

So here are five tips to make it easier for customers to solve their problems quickly and easily:

1. Don’t just resolve the current issue – head off the next one.
2. Arm reps to address the emotional side of customer interactions.
3. Minimize channel switching by increasing self-service channel “stickiness.”
4. Use feedback from disgruntled or struggling customers to reduce customer effort.
5. Empower the front-line to deliver a low-effort experience.

What is your organization doing to make it easier for your customers to do business with you?

Reprints of the article and a download of the Customer Contact Council^® Effort Audit tool are available from the Customer Executive Board. Click here to read.