Fighting Complacency: Why Your Customers Deserve Better Than an 8/10

When I visit countries, accompanying salespeople to their customers, I always ask them this question: Why do you think you will win this opportunity from the customer we are about to visit?

This time, a sales executive’s answer surprised me: “Because I have a good relationship with this customer.” He continued, “I always respond immediately to any issue they have and follow up diligently. They are very happy with our service, and whenever needed, they are always happy to meet with me. They trust me,” I asked, “On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate their contentment? “He said a solid eight.

We walked from the reception to a meeting room on the second floor only to hear that his customer had given the opportunity to the competition. We were fishing being the net.

A New Meaning To “A Good Relationship”

This was a wake-up call that, driven by customers, a good relationship has a new meaning. Are you perceived as a great problem solver or as someone who assertively challenges them to look for different types of growth opportunities? Is your relationship built on service support or strategic insight?

What risk are you currently exposed to? Well, your business is no longer safeguarded by operational excellence because your customer may get the same from the competitor. Operational stakeholders may appreciate your attentiveness and reaction speed to solve issues, but in the end, their senior management has commitments to their shareholders; they need to grow their top and bottom lines.

In other words, while you think you are “serving” your customer, other stakeholders with revenue and profit responsibility are looking for a different type of support.

Normal is the New Danger

The longer the relationship lasts, the worse it can become. If you and your support teams always look backwards and try to resolve problems, you and your operational stakeholders regard your excellent support as”normal.” This “normal” is the new danger if you, as a salesperson, only focus on looking backwards and not on the difference you can make by looking forward more strategically with the bigger buying room.

A Strategic Relationship

Here are 10 initiatives to change your customer’s perception and build a strategic relationship:

1. Your current care and support deserve an 8 out of 10. Great, keep this going, but start delegating more customer issues to colleagues cross-functionally. This will create more time for you, which is what you will need.
2. Besides QBRs, invite your customer to a Strategic Business Review (SBR). Ask for their commitment to do SBRs 3 x per year.
3. Set the agenda together with your contact. What market changes and pressures are their commercial teams currently working on? Come up with business growth ideas that they may not have been thinking about. Back your ideas up with third-party research.
4. Stay as long as needed in Why Change conversations. Avoid jumping to selling your solutions.
5. Your business growth ideas kick-start their buying process. With your help, they see the risks of staying in their status quo.
6. Invite revenue and profit-responsible managers/directors to the SBR. This will drive different types of conversations. Collaborate with them and offer help.
7. Share success stories of other similar customers in similar situations facing similar challenges. How did you help them?
8. Come with a business case for change. Simple math will do. What outcome do you predict? What is in it for them?
9. Let the stakeholders discover what solution criteria they should have in place to make your business idea deliver better outcomes. Don’t tell them your solutions.
10. Request to work out a more detailed business case together with operational and commercial team members. They have nothing to lose.

Through these initiatives, you are changing the way your customers see your relationship with them. You are changing from a great account manager to a trusted advisor.

Your customers deserve better than normal. They deserve better than an 8 out of 10.

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