Telcare

I stumbled upon Geoffrey James’s article quite by chance; it made me smile so thought I’d share some of it…

Don’t sell to jerks

Of course, conventional wisdom says that you should sell to whoever is willing to pay. After all, times are hard and sales are hard to come by. If the customer thinks it’s OK to treat you like crap, well, the customer is always right … right?
Wrong.
If you truly believe in your product and its value to the customer, selling to jerks gradually but inexorably leaches away your enthusiasm. When you help somebody you despise to become more successful, you know, in your heart, that you are making the world into a worse place.
That’s especially true when selling to a jerk sets you up for a long-term relationship. Now that jerk is part of your life–is part of who you’ll become over time. You’re now “partnering” with somebody who you can’t stand. It’s like a lousy marriage, bad for both of you.
Best case, you’ll have to tolerate the ongoing presence of the jerk, with all his or her obnoxious behaviors. Worst case, the jerk will become a constant headache, consuming a disproportionate amount of your energy and your company’s resources.
Selling to jerks is also a dead end when it comes to growing sales. The lifeblood of every small company is referrals–it’s the easiest kind of sales lead to close. Referrals come from customers who are happy (with your product and service) and generous enough to help out.
A jerk isn’t going to do that. In fact, jerks, if asked, would probably bad-mouth you, even if you’ve gone the proverbial extra mile. Why?
Because they’re jerks.
So, yeah, you might be turning down a sale by refusing to sell to a jerk. But long term, you’ll end up building a customer base who can be trusted, who will behave in a reasonable manner, and who will help you develop future sales.
And you’ll sleep better at night, too, knowing you’re not beholden (or hostage) to somebody you can’t stand.
Written by Geoffrey James For more information please go to www.geoffreyjames.com

An enormous amount of time is given to focusing on our customers. We spend hours on polishing our service, we are constantly looking for ways to improve and we are grateful for their custom and rightly so, because without them we wouldn’t be in business.

However, whilst we are caught up in the busy life of serving our clients, I wonder how often we consider how we are performing as a customer? We are all someone’s customer. Mostly we happily receive the service our suppliers offer and don’t comment until there’s a hitch in normal proceedings.

Recently I referred to a customer as one of our ‘favourite’ customers. Why are they our favourite customer? Of course there is the obvious answer, they give us business, but then there is so much more to it than that.
A good customer has been open to forming a relationship with us, they provide us with precious feedback, they respect the need for our terms and procedures and they recognise the value of our offerings, they sometimes even refer us.

It got me wondering, how do we rate as customers, what would our suppliers say about us?

Do we give feedback to our suppliers?
Do we acknowledge their payment terms and pay on time?
Are we grateful for the service? Do we tell them?
Have we referred them?

Maybe if we take the time to consider our own behaviour as customers, it will help us understand and serve our clients in a more efficient manner. Certainly food for thought!

Why Exhibit?

As Telcare exhibit quite frequently we often get asked whether we consider these types of events successful. The answer is yes but the emphasis has to be on how you determine ‘successful’.

As we sell telephone systems, which can be a fairly hefty purchase, we don’t expect visitors to walk by our stand and announce that they’ll have two of those please. So instead our aim is to merely introduce ourselves.

We go along to these events focusing on relationships. During the day we meet fellow exhibitors, organisers and visitors. Some we know well, some not so well and others we have yet to meet. Our aim is to support our friends, forge new relationships and strengthen those existing connections.

We have found that it is extremely important to remember that the group of people sharing the event will be made up of customers and suppliers, in other words people who are looking to buy and to sell. The key here is being open to buying regardless of the fact that you have paid for an exhibiting space. The reason for this is plain, if everyone went to sell sell sell then we’ll all find ourselves in a bit of a pickle. If we put on our buyers hat and view visitors as prospective suppliers and open the channels of communication the outcome will be far more enjoyable, and in the long run far more successful. You’ll notice I said in the ‘long run’, that’s because we believe nothing happens over night, success comes from momentum. The more you exhibit the more you will learn; the more you learn the better you exhibit. The more people you meet, the more likely you are to increase the chances of doing business.

Of course there are other things to take into consideration when exhibiting, such as the position of your stand, stand etiquette and the ante and post exhibition plan, but that’s all for another day. In the meantime you can find Telcare at the b2b2012 on 27th January 2012. http://www.b2b2012.com why not come and say hello?