Customers usually buy from people that they trust and see value in. Although your sales team is the tip of the spear when it comes to finding new business, fulfilling sales promises is a responsibility that many different people at your organization have to help with.
Is The Customer Experience Consistent Across Your Organization?
There’s nothing worse than buying a product or service with certain expectations in mind set by the salesperson, only to be disappointed by the experience you have with the organization.
Many times, this type of situation is driven by a misalignment between sales and the rest of the client-facing organization.
These six tenets of fulfilling sales promises will help keep your customers happy and make sure your organization is working together cohesively.
Facilitate Interaction Between Sales And Other Departments
The first step to making sure you can fulfill the things that your sales team promises is to host a discussion between sales and your other departments about what they are able to deliver.
Sales trainer Victor Arocho says that your departments should decide together what kind of experience customers want to have after working with your organization.
The reason that they should be together is so that everyone can see the work required from each department to deliver on customer promises.
Work With Support Teams To Get New Information
Has there been a slowdown at the factory that is causing a temporary delay in lead times?
Your sales team must have information like this so they don’t make promises that your company cannot keep. It is crucial that your sales people get the latest information about company operations from your support team as it relates to product and service development, warranties, and delivery so that they can make promises that can be kept.
Ensure Marketing Materials Are Consistent With Talking Points
Sales and marketing are two different departments, but it is more critical than ever that the two are 100% aligned.
The features and benefits that your sales team talks about with your customers should be aligned with the messages that your marketing team sends out.
This will help you with fulfilling sales promises and with maintaining a clear message for your brand.
Provide Multiple Points Of Contact For Customers
While your sales team is responsible for making initial contact with potential customers, once they actually become customers they should have someone to speak with besides a single salesperson.
For example, many companies will bring in a project manager once the salesperson closes the deal.
A project manager’s job is to help handle the logistics of the project and interact with customers so that sales can focus on bringing in more business.
Use Technology
The popularity of tools like CRM databases and email contact software has made it easier than ever to track customer interactions.
Make sure that all pertinent team members have access to technology that helps your company understand where interactions with a particular customer are.
Not only does this make fulfilling sales promises easier, it allows a new team member coming in to work on a particular account to easily get up to speed.
Get Feedback
Perhaps the easiest way to see how your team is doing at fulfilling sales promises is to simply ask. Talk to your customers about how well your sales team did at delivering on what they said they would do.
Customer surveys that offer a reward are a great way to quickly get feedback about your organization’s performance.
How to Align Sales and the Rest of the Organization
The fundamental truth is this: sales believes that the rest of the company wouldn’t have jobs if not for them…and the rest of the company feels sales wouldn’t have a job without them. Learn how to undo this unproductive dynamic and create a well-oiled machine that will drive more revenue.
