Search Our Catalog of Articles

  Everybody Sells (Even Service)
 
Ten tips for turning your Service organization into a Sales machine
 
In the fight for customer attention, Marketing is having trouble keeping up. Mindshare is harder and harder - and more and more expensive - to obtain and retain. Traditional tools like telemarketing are being nullified by privacy legislation, and response rates for traditional marketing campaigns are dropping, even as costs skyrocket.
 
On the other hand, there’s a group in your organization that gets and keeps the customer’s attention daily – without even asking. This group knows your customers far better than Sales ever will, and knows your marketspace more intimately than Marketing can ever dream of. This group placates your customers when they’re irate, guides them when they’re confused, and even shares personal experience and wisdom with them.
 
We’re talking, of course, about your customer service channels.
 
In an era of lean and mean, and “everybody sells”, most organizations have come to the conclusion that Service needs to take an active part in growing revenues by cross-selling and upselling during customer interactions.
 
Not An Easy Metamorphisis
 
However, turning a seasoned service channels into a numbers-oriented sales channels is a sensitive task, to be accomplished with the right proportions of tact, persuasion, incentive and clout. The following ideas are worth consideration when approaching the job:

1. Marketing, Meet Service. Service, This is Marketing
    
   Once you’ve made the strategic decision to sell through service channels, you’ll want to introduce these two “strangers” to each other, and make them equal partners in the implementation of the new strategy. Each group brings a unique and valuable perspective to the selling effort – Service the daily close customer contact, and Marketing the bigger organizational and market picture. Experience has shown that the closer the Marketing/Service relationship, the better the service channel sales results.

 

2. Show Your Commitment to Selling
    
   The strength of your organization’s commitment to selling through service channels needs to be clearly and loudly demonstrated. This may involve committing resources and investing money up front – but it also may simply involve management raising the profile of the program through an internal promotion campaign.
    
   Whether it’s allocating money for incentive programs, explaining the importance of the program through short employee seminars, or even nominating a dedicated cross-selling “champion” with high-profile management backing – the extent of management’s visible dedication to the effort will determine the level of employee buy-in, and ultimately the strategy’s success.

 

3. Teach Service: “Sell” is NOT a Four-Letter Word
    
   Service people tend to respond with knee-jerk, negative reactions to the prospect of becoming salespeople – “I wasn’t hired to sell!”. This resistance is born from a perception of sales people as “slick,” or “fake” - just out to make the buck and move on. Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) tend to be “pleasers” – thriving on successfully resolving problems to mutual satisfaction and benefit, and keeping the customer happy.
    
   Don’t fight this inclination. Harness it! Explain to CSRs that upselling and cross-selling makes them into “solutionists” - providing a solution for the customer, increasing the customer’s satisfaction with the company, and solving a problem the customer may not have known he/she had.

 

4. Don’t be Afraid to Shake the Tree
    
   In any organization, there is a core of players who are more difficult to sway in new directions. These may, in fact, be some of your most valuable employees – seasoned CSRs with excellent service track records, for example.
    
   It’s important to identify these employees – and take a particularly sensitive and persuasive approach to their needs in the transition to a culture of selling. These people are key to the effort’s success – win them over, and the others will follow.
    
   At the same time, don’t be afraid to shake the tree. Sometimes an entrenched mind simply can’t be changed – and you may be forced to part ways with these employees. Selling through service channels is a strategic shift – and there is sometimes an unpleasant, but necessary, price to be paid.

 

5. Let Service Have a Say
    
   One excellent way to win buy-in for service channel sales efforts is to have Service involved in crafting cross-sell offers. Under the auspices of your newly-formed Marketing / Service forum, representative CSRs should have the opportunity to actively use their experience and insight to help implement the cross-sell strategy. These people speak to your customers everyday – they know what will fly and what won’t. Giving them a voice increases their self-worth, productivity, and (most importantly) the response rates to cross- and up-sell offers.

 

6. You Catch More Flies with Honey -- Incentivize Smartly
    
   A crucial step in converting Service into an effective sales force is to make it worth their while. An effective incentive program should start with clearly-defined goals and milestones, allowing the CSR to know where he/she needs to go, and how long it’s expected to take.
    
   An important – and often overlooked – element in CSR incentive programs is peer recognition. Creating a culture of sales in the call center should involve publicly recognizing success, to encourage both personal achievement and healthy competition.

 

7. Give CSRs the Tools to be Effective
    
   No less important than winning the hearts and minds of CSRs is providing them with the right tools to do the job. A regular training program, offer briefings, and easy access to comparison charts, FAQs, and other sales materials are just some of the key items CSRs require. Sales materials should be customized to specific offers and customer profiles, and be pushed to CSR in real time, during the customer interaction.

 

8. Don’t Overwhelm Customers with Offers
    
   In cross- and up-selling, less is more. Customers should receive no more than one-two offers per interaction, and these offers should be highly focused, and tailored to specific customer needs. Find and implement intelligent software tools that both assist CSRs in choosing the right offer for the right customer at the right time, and ensure that customers don’t receive redundant offers from different organization touchpoints.

 

9. Set Realistic Goals
    
   When setting goals for Service, take into account the often limited capacity of CSRs to make cross or up-sell offers. Remember that they are still Service personnel – and will be inclined to shy away from Sales for some time, despite the most intensive training and incentive efforts. Also, remember that not every service call may be suitable for cross- and up-selling. During calls dealing with ongoing or yet-unresolved customer problems, for example, selling could only add fuel to the fire.

 

10. Keep Offers Valuable, Updated, Relevant and Coordinated
     
    Sound obvious? Not so when you’re talking about a large Service array with multiple touch points and thousands of customers.
     
    CSRs will be less likely to successfully sell if the customer has recently heard (and possibly refused) the same offer on a visit to a branch office. Similarly, an outdated offer, an offer aimed at the wrong customer profile, or simply an offer presented in the wrong interaction context not only shoots down he current sales effort – but also future efforts with the same customer.
     
    Achieving this level of offer coordination is a technological and management challenge – but it is an imperative for effective cross-enterprise sales efforts.