Bribery = Loyalty … NOT!
16 August, 2011 at 3:13 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 1 comment
A nice reminder as to what loyalty is and what really encourages it, from Kathy Sierra on Hugh MacLeod’s GapingVoid.
Your customer won’t take a bullet for you
Some other thoughts on the subject of loyalty:
“Repeat business or behavior can be bribed. Loyalty has to be earned.” – Janet Robinson
“You don’t earn loyalty in a day. You earn loyalty day-by-day.” – Jeffrey Gitomer
And on the other hand, from the man who brought you the Net Promoter Score:
“Loyalty is dead, the experts proclaim, and the statistics seem to bear them out. On average, U.S. corporations now lose half their customers in five years, half their employees in four, and half their investors in less than one. We seem to face a future in which the only business relationships will be opportunistic transactions between virtual strangers.” – Frederick F. Reichheld The Loyalty Effect
Entry filed under: CRM, Loyalty. Tags: CRM, Loyalty, Retention.
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Yokasta | 22 May, 2012 at 9:48 pm
Thanks for identifying this super articles. Both provide opportunities to dig in and assess sales.
Part 1 This is an excellent blog and should be circulated to sales managers and sales trainers throughout the country. The selling environment today is certainly very difficult. Techniques that worked over the past 5 years, past year or even yesterday are ineffective today, yet so many of the old skill sets remain in active use. Salespeople often confuse activity with effectiveness. If I have all these great relationships and work hard, that’s all I’ll need to do. I’m active. I’m busy. The truth is that “relationship building” and “hard work” can also be great hiding places. Sometimes we need to step back to honestly assess how truly effective our activity has been from an actual sales success standpoint. Yes, we make some sales through relationship-building, and yes, we make some sales throughother kinds of hard work. However…Here are some questions to consider: Are we achieving what is possible? Is our “success” actually underperformance? How many sales are we missing because of our old skill set?Because of the downsized and flattened nature of today’s corporate structures, companies need the skill set of a challenger. A challenger can be a strategic business partner without necessarily being on the payroll. Companies need all the help they can get in today’s competitive business environment – an effective challenger can help unlock the gap between current sales performance and what is achievable. Sales leaders – you must call out of all those great hiding places and old skill sets in your sales workforce and zero in on what is effective and ineffective. Sales trainers – you must ensure that you are training the right skills and the right mindset. Rehashing and reinforcingyesterday’s skills and behaviors will be costly for your organization.
Part 2 What keeps you up at night? Excellent insight I had never thought about the impact of that simple question. Customers need their sales representatives to be strategic business partners. The goal of many salespeople is simply to generate a lot of sales to their customers. Salespeople who can transition from merely a generator of sales to a strategic business partner with their customers will ultimately produce more business at a higher level of profitability. Salespeople can do this by focusing on the customer’s true needs rather than on what can besold to that customer. Salespeople who invest their time and energy in becoming a strategic partner with their customers will position themselves for success.