Handling complaints successfully

Every time.

If you are like most of the sales professionals I work with everyday, you have had lots of experience in handling complaints. Chances are you have a natural ability to calm people down and things always work out for the best. Alternatively, you are one of those people who dread getting that phone call or having to attend a meeting where you will have to defend your performance or that of your organisation. Did you ever wish you had a watertight system that allowed you to handle customer complaints effectively every time, and with the client perceiving you to be the consummate professional?  Well look no further. I can present you with a simple system which if adopted, and executed in a natural manner, can leave you handling complaints at a higher level of competence and with a lot less stress.

(1) The first thing you need to do is listen. Just listen. Say nothing, do nothing, defend nothing. Just listen. Use your whole body to prove to the client that you are honestly trying to understand their issue. Even if you are aware of the problem already, just listen. This is the first time that the person will have a chance to tell someone what his or her problem is.

(2) I suggest that you paraphrase what the client has just said to you. This serves two very practical purposes. Firstly, if you can accurately summarise the key issues the irate person will know that you were listening. In addition, you will have the benefit of understanding what the real issues are that need to be addressed. Begin this part by saying something like “ I fully appreciate why you might be so upset” Or “ It’s not surprising that you should be so mad”. This can take the steam out of their argument in less than 5 seconds.

(3) Develop rapport with the person throughout this process. A lot of salespeople tell me you find it hard to do this as you are faced with a tirade of abuse. Nevertheless, take some time now to review the component parts of rapport building. What tone is the person using, what body posture have they adopted (match it if at all possible) what words are they using  a lot (can you use some of them in your responses), do they have an accent and at what pace are they speaking (slow or fast). Remember, we are not trying to mimic, merely trying to reflect aspects of their behaviour or speech.

(4) A key task at this stage is to vent emotions. Skilled sales people achieve this by asking simple questions which allow the person to get all the anger or excitement out, emotions that are preventing them from being open to anything you are saying and stopping them from making rational decisions. “You sound really mad”, “you look very annoyed” or “ I get a real sense that you are not very happy”

(5) The next important step is to ask the client the following question “What would you like me to do”? Chances are you know already what is required to fix the problem. By asking the client however, you are giving him the opportunity to say what has been on his mind all along. If their request is a reasonable one, then by agreeing to it you are positioning yourself and your organisation as a responsive and customer-focused organisation. The final result is that you don’t have to compromise your position as much as you thought.

(6) If you feel you are really up against it, I suggest you present the following Statement. “ I couldn’t be more sorry, I feel really ashamed” In most cases the clients ego will have been compromised. A customer with a bruised ego is not a pretty sight. By saying this sentence as presented here, you achieve two things. Firstly the client feels that the balance has been re­-established and secondly that s/he has clearly got through to you.

 

This six step process should be practised in a safe place, well in advance of that difficult encounter. The highly charged environment is not the place to practice this for the first time. Once you are comfortable with this approach, I can guarantee you will succeed in regaining lost ground in a shorter space of time, with less hassle and less cost than may have been the case to date.

If you are one of the 78% of the business leaders with whom  I have spoken to in 2005, the single biggest challenge you are facing is finding and recruiting excellent sales people. Inwardly you are exasperated. You took a lot of time, spent a lot of money and invested a lot of energy in getting the resource up to speed. Now  6 months into the relationship, you begin to realise that this is not the right person for your organisation.

Let’s look at the financial cost of making the wrong decision 6 months previous. How many hours of your time did you spend in the recruitment process, and how much per hour is your time valued at? How much did you pay the recruitment agency? How much have you paid this person in the last 6 months? What expenses have you incurred while working with them?  How much off-target are they? How much more revenue could they have brought in had they done a good job? How much will it cost to deselect this person? Add up all these figures. This is your “cost of poor recruitment”. Like it or not, you own this number.

Does the figure scare you enough to want to read on?

Here are the top 5 things that should set your alarm bells ringing when interviewing potential sales candidates for a job on your team,

Has this person a need for approval?

If they do, these people typically have difficulty asking hard questions, avoid confrontation and contentious issues and are afraid of loosing their prospects approval. They will sell well to people they get on with and will put more energy into creating the relationship than progressing the sales.

Do they get emotionally involved?

If this person is someone whom you think can get emotionally involved rather than remaining focused, expect they will loose control of meetings and their listening skills will weaken.

What records have they in their collection?

We all have about 55 beliefs and values that serve us well (e.g. “I am skilled at dealing with decision makers”) or can impact negatively on our effectiveness (“I hate making cold calls”). How many self-limiting beliefs does this person have?

What’s their buying process?

If this person were making a buying decision for themselves (a new car for example), how would they make the decision? Do they typically need to think things over, comparison shop, look for the cheapest option or think a small amount of money is a lot? Then expect them to be overly sympathetic to a customer who wants to do the same.

How do they relate to money?

If this is a person who is uncomfortable with money, then don’t be surprised if they overly empathise with their customer over the budgetary issues. Likewise you can expect them to stop short of digging deeper to unearth concerns and find solutions.

Do you want to get your sales recruitment right, hire the right person from  the beginning and spend your time in dealing with external customers as opposed to internal HR issues? Then get experienced help. Get an informed and skilled second opinion, someone who has a speciality in getting sales recruitment right first time. Someone like . There is a price for using such a resource.

Selling under pressure

Em! An interesting statement in itself. If you are like me, pressure is an integral part of being a sales professional. You use it to motivate yourself, it gives you a buzz, you cope with it well and no other person in your company has the same pressures to deal with. If it was not for customers, targets, reports, time schedules and managers you would have the perfect job.

But what happens if the pressure is really on? You know those times when you experienced a greater sense of urgency, when there never seemed to be enough time in the day, when customers and managers seemed to have higher expectations than normal and your own capability to keep a number of balls in the air was seriously questioned. And whilst you seemed to be the only one in such a pickle, you knew that there must be other sales people out there who are struggling with similar issues.

I don’t believe that you can have a “one size fits all” strategy to deal with these pressure situations. The combination of your circumstances, skills, customers, and environment are all unique to you. However, I would like to share with you a few thoughts I have found to work with successful sales professionals.

1. Things are as they are. Commit here and now to accept that “Things are as they are”. Sure there may be things that you could have done differently to stop getting into this mess, but there is no point in beating yourself up. There will be a lot of others to help you at a later stage. First accept reality and then deal with it.

2. Stay cool. Easy to say but hard to do in any pressurised circumstances.  But it’s a well-known fact that “stress makes people stupid”. Who do you know that seems to stay cool under pressure? James Bond comes to mind; no danger is too great. Imagine how James would approach this situation. What would he be thinking? What might he do? Who would he call? This simple technique allows you to adopt a different and more impartial view of the situation. And you will be amazed at how more obvious might be the ideal solution.

3. Be honest. Be honest with yourself, your customers and your manager. The temptation is to try and be superman and solve all the issues before anyone notices. Chances are they have already noticed and an opinion has been formed. The other stakeholders may not like the situation, but you are more likely to engage them in helping to construct a solution by being honest. As De Bono once said. “You can’t dig a different hole, by digging the same one deeper”

4. Remember a time when you were “in the zone”. You felt invincible as a sales person. Your customers could not praise you highly enough, your pipeline was full of profitable business and you were closing all your deals. What was it that you were doing at that stage? How did you feel? What approach served you well? Taking time to reflect on strategies that served you well in the past is likely to give you the confidence to address your current issues.

5. Have a written plan. Most businesses have a Disaster Recovery plan, discussed, well thought out, documented and executed to make sure it works. Why not consider having your own disaster recovery plan; your own “pressure plan”. What would you do if a deal goes sour at the last minute or if the supply chain lets you down? No doubt there are specific aspects of your own business that are unique to you. Now is your chance, without the pressure pot, to plan for almost any eventuality. The key task here is to generate as many valid options for yourself to cover all situations. Be prepared to miss out on something. Disasters by their nature are unpredictable in scale, timing and severity. What are the guiding principles that will serve you well, irrespective of the specific nature of pressure? It is said that every minute you spend in planning, saves you 10 minutes in execution. So it’s well worth the effort to plan.

6. Stick to it. The dreaded day comes when you are called upon to enact your plan. The temptation might be to deviate because you never imagined that the situation could be as bad as this. Trust yourself, you did image how bad things could get and you did construct a winning action plan.

7. Debrief and review your “pressure plan” afterwards. Things have died down, you weathered the storm. Some things went better than planned; other areas could have gone better. Now is your chance to take the learning and improve your plan.

8. Prioritise. When you are under pressure, there is never just one thing that needs to be done. Lots of issues all seem to be of equal importance. Two suggestions here. Ask yourself “If I wasn’t under pressure, what would the most important priority be”? Strange as it may seem, phrasing the question like this challenges you to look at the situation from a detached position, one where you are better equipped to answer in a constructive manner. Secondly, whilst there may be lots of things to be done, pick one or two that you know you can finish within a sensible time-frame. The very act of successfully completing some part of the jigsaw, allows you to address the other areas from a position of higher power.

9. Narrow your focus. It is so easy to panic at this stage. You have done your prioritising, and still the task seems insurmountable. Here is a simple tool to help you narrow your focus onto what can be achieved within the time available. For each of the tasks, ask yourself “ is this something I can influence or is it something I have direct control over.” No guesses then on where you are best advised to spend your time. Spend 80% of your time on what you can control and 20% on that which you can influence but not control.

10. Work with someone. Work with someone who is impartial, emotionally detached and has your best interests at heart. This is the individual or group who will support you when the going gets tough, and who is  best positioned to help you through. It may well be a sales or performance coach who can offer practical and constructive support. All the better if you feel your manager can ideally fulfil the position. It could be a peer from a networking organisation whom you feel is well placed to offer insightful advice. Consider whom among your circle of friends can remain impartial, emotionally detached and has your professional interest at heart and will not start their sentences with “now, you know what you should be doing…”

 

 

Performance Lotto.

Thoughts on creating a high-performance environment; if you don’t want to leave it to chance.

How many of you have ever watched the Simpson’s on TV?  Love them or hate them, I fell off the chair laughing when Homer gave this piece of advice to Bart “If you really want something in this life you have to work for it. Now quite; they’re about to announce the lotto numbers”. How many of you check your numbers and dream about how all your problems would be solved if you won the lotto. All you need is some psychic to give you the 6 numbers for success.

As sales professionals or sales leaders, we sometimes wish that we could magically create a culture and environment that like the lotto made us an overnight success. Our pipeline is oversubscribed, closures rates are well ahead of expectations, customer satisfaction is at an all-time high and profitability is above target. Well imagine if someone, purporting to be a “sales psychic”, was to tell you that you could achieve such overnight success and that the only numbers you needed were

17, 5, 18, 20, 12, 19

Would you give them a go? Sure, you might be sceptical. Yet the chances are you would be prepared to try them.  Well today may be your lucky day with a 100% guarantee that this combination will work. Having worked with sales teams over the past 13 years I am amazed by the number of sales professionals who said they radically improved performance, leaving nothing to chance and winning every time by adopting these simple guidelines towards creating a high-performance environment. So what are the ingredients present in sales relationships and sales teams that make them high-performance?

Reality is ball number 18. I am challenging you to look as honestly as possible at the sales environment that you operate in. Are all stakeholders looking at the same issues and calling them by the same name? Do we truly understand why we are winning sales, or why we are loosing them? Do we fully appreciate why others are selling or managing better than us? Are we honest enough to admit our shortcomings? Are we seeking outside perspectives from others who have no agendas and are not emotionally attached to the situation? Sometimes we prefer to say that sales were lost because of customers being stupid, having the worst territories, poor delivery by the service department, lack of proper pricing by the company or better products from the competitors. The sales person gives their reasons for failure. The manager sees these as excuses.  When challenged to change their mind or prove that there is no need to do so, both parties get busy on the proof.

In a high performance environment, everyone explores, admits and agrees reality; so are you truly prepared to “get real”?

Empowerment is ball number 5. This has to be the most overused word, the most misunderstood concept and least apparent process in sales teams today. We empower ourselves to the extent that we feel confident that we have the self-mastery and efficacy to do our job to the standard expected from ourselves.

 

As sales professionals or sales leaders, we know we have the skills, drive, energy and personal power to do the job expected. In a recent survey carried out in the US, only 40% of sales people felt that they were in the right job for them, that they had the personal motivation to do what the management team expected of them and that they had the relevant skills to complete the job. The bad news for sales professionals is that 60% of you are square pegs in round holes and wishing they were in other jobs. You are probably under greater stress to perform in a role that is not best suited to your profile. So, what is the bad news for sales leaders? You probably already have a good idea who is contributing to your team objectives and who are your poor performers. You probably spend a significant amount of your physical time and worry on those individuals. Amaze can help you carry out an interesting 20 minute exercise to determine “cost of poor performance”. You might be horrified by the answer but as the Chinese proverb says that “wisdom comes by calling things by their right name”

Solving problems is represented by ball 19 and is a key competency in a high-performance environment. Whether we are solving issues on behalf of our customers or addressing internal shortcomings in our organisation, out ability to solve problems is what differentiates the great from the

good.

The Shewhart cycle (promoted more recently by Demming) is a structured approach which helps introduce better work practices.

• Discover the problem as a gap between the current situation and the desired future state (ACT).
• Invent useful strategies (Plan).
• Produce results (DO)
• Evaluate results against the original problem (Check).

 

As a sales leader or sales person, do you feel you have the authority or skills to use a process like this to address some of the problems you are currently facing? If your answer is no, then you are not

working in an empowered environment and chances are you are a long way away from operating in a high performance environment.  The extent to which you are encouraged to solve these problems yourself, to offer recommendations that are implemented, to devise ways of addressing these issues in the future, is another measure of how high a performance environment you are operating in.

Uniqueness is ball number 21. I am reminded of the part of the film “The Life of Brian” where the whole crowd responded together “we are all individuals”. We are recruited by organisations for the individuality that has served us well in the past, and then encouraged to blend in with the culture that has evolved. How many times have we seen colleagues shunned because they were thought to be different? The term maverick is usually reserved for the most individualistic of our colleagues. However, think of the person on your sales team who is the most successful when evaluated by customers and management? Think about how they deal with internal staff? How do they solve problems? How do they communicate with customers and management? Chances are they are seen as different and unique. Sometimes it is merely their ability to uniquely execute simple tasks repeatedly in an excellent fashion. But the one comment that can be attributed to them is that they are “unique”.

The extent to which you are encouraged to be yourself, to draw on what makes you different, to build on the factors that have made you a success heretofore, to be communicated to in a manner that is meaningful to you, to be listened to and accepted is a real measure of the quality of the high-performance environment that you are operating in.

Links are represented by lotto ball number 12. There are a number of links to consider here. As a salesperson, how strong is the link between your customers and yourself? As a manager, do you allow your direct reports to make decisions about their roles? Are links formed between what you value as a person and what the organisation can offer you? Money may be what we are paid at the end of the month, but do those we work with know the link that really motivates us, that makes us get out of bed in the morning and personally motivate ourselves to achieve? Are the tasks and roles that we perform strategically linked to what the organisation is trying to achieve, and do you understand and fully accept that link? The stronger the linkage, the stronger is the bond between ourselves and the role we have. This leads to a greater desire, commitment and personal motivation to achieve success.

Top 10 reasons to hire a Development of Potential Expert

You cannot solve today’s issues with yesterday’s strategies. An experienced Development of Potential Expert (DoPE) helps you develop the capacity to handle the increased complexity of your situation. Consider the following…

 

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1. Results
2. Time
3. Awareness
4. Priorities
5. Balance
6. Communication
7. Options
8. Emotional Intelligence
9. Control
10. Clarity

 

Results

With two people working on your agenda, you are guaranteed to achieve a lot more than if you were doing it all on your own. One of our clients added 270k euro to their bottom line within 78 days of engaging with Amaze™ (Bet your curious now).

Time

For anyone in business, time is as scarce as water is in the desert. Short, focused sessions move you forward quickly. One of our clients reported in July 2007 that they added 9 extra hours of effective time into their week as a direct result of behavioural changes they made.

Awareness

Awareness of how your words, impact and actions on others is crucial to influencing others. Your blind spots (we all have them!) could be fatal. A DoPE  will help you understand perspectives you may not have considered.

Priorities

The DoPE is experienced in helping you identify what’s important now and in the future. What is the most important thing you need to do right now? What is stopping you from executing on this priority?

Balance

The pressures of juggling work-life balance are always present. Quality coaching powerfully facilitates your choices and allows you to establish a sensible balance.

Communication

Your effectiveness in understanding and being understood is critical to your success. A DoPE will help you develop your competence in communication, listening skills, delivering feedback, presenting your ideas, managing meetings and creating an impact.

Options

To make the right decision, you need to have more than one idea. A DoPE will challenge you to generate practical and viable alternatives.

Emotional Intelligence

Studies show Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is more important than IQ in an executive, leader, sales professional, business owner or manager. A DoPE will help you understand and develop higher levels of emotional intelligence. Amaze™ are accredited to measure, interpret and deliver feedback .

Control

Having a personal development plan to act as a guide will put you back in control. With a map, a plan and a performance coach you will not fail.

Clarity

You had it at one time but the rate of change have caused you to loose it. A bDoPE helps you regain the clarity that allows you to accomplish anything you set your mind to.

 

The top 4 reasons why top performers leave their current role;

1. They don’t like how they are managed
2. They lack opportunities to learn
3. They lack control over their projects
4. They are not challenged