I believe it was Lucy of “Peanuts” fame who said, “I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand!” But Lucy would have had an argument from former Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca, who said: “Anyone who doesn’t get along with people has earned the kiss of death, because that’s all we’ve got around here are people.”

 Whether you like them, you need to learn to get along with others. Having a co-worker who is difficult to deal with can destroy an office dynamic, which can be very bad for business. Customers wonder, if they can’t get along with each other, how will they treat us?

 On the flip side, a staff that has learned how to cooperate regardless of personal differences will project a positive vibe to customers. People, not specs, in many cases will be the key in determining who gets the sale.

Former U.S. Education Secretary William Bennett was once asked by a seventh-grader: “How can you tell a good country from a bad one?” The secretary replied: “I apply the ‘gate’ test. When the gates of a country are open, watch which way the people run. Do they run into the country or out of the country?” Bennett’s answer can easily be translated to business settings. If a company is good, people want to work there and customers know they are valued. The doors don’t spin fast enough at a bad company.

 Never underestimate the importance of people in your life. And always look for opportunities to improve your relationships, no matter how good they already are. What can you do to become a better co-worker?

•  Maintain a positive attitude. Managers and co-workers appreciate the support of someone with an upbeat outlook. Look for opportunities, not problems and find the bright side of challenges you face.

• Always demonstrate integrity. Be honest with people. When you don’t have an answer, say so. Admit your mistakes (and concentrate on not repeating them). Keep your promises and meet your deadlines.

• Show a willingness to try. Don’t be afraid to stretch out of your comfort zone. Volunteer for new tasks and extra responsibility. Take risks. Don’t back away from a challenge because of the possibility of failure.

• Co-operate. Be a team player — help your colleagues with their priorities, and share information instead of hoarding it. Offer your support when people need it, so they know you’re not just out to get ahead for your own benefit.

• Manage conflict. The ability to resolve conflicts among different groups of workers is a coveted skill in most organizations.

• Focus on other people. Ask questions that let other people talk, and encourage them to open up and share their thoughts. You’ll be less worried about saying something wrong, and you’ll probably find enough common ground on which to build a real conversation.

• Set a great example. Show others that they can count on you to be fair, friendly and even-tempered. Remember you’re dealing with people who also have feelings, opinions and ideas. You can’t learn anything if you are doing all the talking.

 Then, take these suggestions and apply them to your customer service. Your customers are people, too! If there’s one complaint I hear over and over from customers, it is that some companies they deal with treat them like account numbers rather than flesh and blood. Deliver your customer service with a human touch. Your customers should feel like the technology you use is an enhancement of your personal service, not a replacement.

 HARVEY MACKAY, Star Tribune www.harveymackay.com

“They’ve noticed their mothers online, their friends using mobile devices to share YouTube videos, or even a co-worker circulating an insightful blog article about business innovation,” she writes at MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog. “They’re wondering how might this make sense for their businesses. Will it allow them to connect with customers?”

She believes the answer is yes—and suggests 10 ways your company can benefit from social media:

1. You demonstrate to potential customers that you are human and care about their world.
2. You bring to life an externally focused mindset.
3. You to bring to life your otherwise static brochure-like website with a dynamic presence.
4. You address in a public forum the questions and concerns your customers have about your products and services—which are being asked anyway without your participation.
5. You participate in the conversations taking place that relate to your business, products, industry—and have the opportunity to shape the agenda.
6. You manage your reputation.
7. You build a customer community.
8. You direct prequalified prospects—with whom you’ve already established a relationship—to your website, so you can engage in business.
9.  You build your digital visibility and online presence.
10.  You remain relevant to customers.

The Point: It’s really simple. If your customers use social media, you need to be there, too.

Source: MarketingProfs Daily Fix.

And then it happens! We win the next contract, get the new client, and win over our newest customer. Depending on what you are selling you may or may not have some role with this new customer, possibly in training, roll out, or just insuring the sale is complete. At some point our new sale is finished. You are done, the sale is final, and hopefully you have been paid, only to move on to do the cycle all over again. Spend all that time and energy to get the next new customer again.

So that’s it! Let’s move on to the next customer! Right? Wrong! Who is more important to follow up with? New leads, old leads, or existing customers? Existing customers! Don’t get me wrong, you always need to have a constant flow of new customers. My point is the customers you already have are a great resource for new ones! Experts suggests creating a percentage baseline for the number of clients referring business to you. Finding this number will allow you to improve on your processes so you can achieve the maximum referrals from your clients. Following up with your current customers will not only help you with your customer retention, it will also lead you to new customers. Why not start tomorrow by calling ten customers you have not spoken to in the last 30 days. Just check in with them and see how they are doing. Make sure they are happy with your product or service. Ask them if you can do anything for them. It shows great customer service and you might just receive a referral to your next new client!

Remember the time you focus on your current customers will allow you to attract new clients with ease. Sometimes the all alluring next new client is right in front of you! All you need to do if follow-up, stay engaged, and build on the relationship you have already created.

You Already Have Your NEXT New Customer! September 30, 2008 http://www.followupsuccess.com/2008/09/30/you-already-have-your-next-new-customer/

Mistake #1: Failing to Keep Your Pipeline Primed

• Definition: Not having enough prospects at the beginning of the sales cycle.
• Why It’s Easy to Make: Filling the pipeline often involves cold-calling and often plenty of “rejection.”
• Why It’s a Big Mistake: If you don’t have enough prospects at the beginning of your pipeline, you’ll probably not have enough coming out the other end as real live customers.
• The Unintended Consequence: You may end up spending extra time on the accounts that you DO have in the pipeline and put unconscious pressure on those prospects to buy, thereby creating resistance and EVEN FEWER sales.
• Why It’s Easy to Avoid: You can easily schedule quality time for cold-calling, asking for referrals and other lead generation activities.

Mistake #2: Failing to Research the Prospect

• Definition: Going on a cold call or going to a face-to-face meeting without knowing much about the prospective customer.
• Why It’s Easy To Make: Your primary job is to sell, not to dig around and find out things, right?
• Why It’s a Big Mistake: You have a limited amount of time with each prospect.  If you spend it finding out things that you could find out elsewhere, that’s less time you have to actually move the sale forward.
• The Unintended Consequence: The prospect will know you’re unprepared and (worse) take it as a sign of disrespect.
• Why It’s Easy To Avoid: You can use the web to discover where your offering fits before contacting the prospect.

Mistake #3: Failing to Qualify the Lead

• Definition: Putting a sales lead into your pipeline without being certain that they have a need for your offering or the money to buy it.
• Why It’s Easy to Make: If you get some prospects in the pipeline, your manager will finally get off your back, right? And, who knows, maybe they’ll buy…
• What It’s a Big Mistake: Every second that you spend on a prospect that won’t and can’t buy is time you could be spending on prospects that will and can.
• The Unintended Consequence: You’ll make a few sales… but your numbers at the end of the quarter will look weak compared to your peers who bothered to qualify their leads.
• Why It’s Easy to Avoid: Have a list of qualification questions and ask them early in the sales cycle.

Mistake #4: Failing to Discover the Buying Process

• Definition: Going through the sales cycle assuming that your sales activities will drive the sale from inception to closing.
• Why It’s Easy to Make: The illusion that you can control the sales through persuasion and manipulation is comforting in an essentially chaotic world.
• Why It’s a Big Mistake: Every firm has its own way to make buying decisions, with its own timetable for making them.  When your sales activities get out of sync, you end up working a cross-purposes.
• The Unintended Consequence: Surprises at the end of the sales cycle… like contracts and P.O.s that get signed late, or never get signed at all.
• Why It’s Easy to Avoid: During your initial conversations, you can work with your customer contact to define the buying process.  You then adapt your sales activity to match.

Mistake #5: Giving a Generic Sales Pitch

• Definition: Pulling out your slides and going through a canned list of features and benefits.
• Why It’s Easy to Make: Marketing gave you this pitch and said it would WOW the customer.  And rumor is that it does work sometimes.  Or so you’ve heard.
• Why It’s a Big Mistake: Canned presentations are not only boring, they’re vaguely insulting.  plus, you’re force-fitting whatever you’ve got to sell into something that the customer should buy, whether or not he really wants or needs it.
• The Unintended Consequence: Best case, this “spray and pray” behavior simple wastes the customer’s time, but the prospect will forgive you and move on and perhaps even buy.  Worst case, you can antagonize the prospect to the point where he’s not going to buy from you, period.
• Why It’s Easy to Avoid: Simple.  Just remember that you should never fire up PowerPoint unless you’re presenting to a room full of people… and then only after you’ve customized the presentation to match the prospect’s requirements.

Mistake #6: Trying to Close Too Soon

• Definition: Asking for the business before the prospect is convinced that there is a real need for what you are offering.
• Why It’s Easy to Make: You’re already counting your commission in your imagination, so you misread the cues that the prospect is giving.
• Why It’s a Big Mistake: You end up looking hungry and like you’re really only trying to cut a deal – for your own reasons, not because you want to help the customer.
• The Unintended Consequence: The sale will take longer, because you’ll need to step back and work to re-establish trust.  And if you flub it again, you can probably kiss the sale goodbye, because the prospect now sees you as a “used car salesman.”
• Why It’s Easy to Avoid: You can ask confirming questions.  Listen to the customer’s answers carefully. If there’s still resistance, it’s too soon to close.

Mistake #7: Waiting Too Long to Close

• Definition: Letting the sales process go on and on, without ever asking for the business.
• Why It’s Easy to Make: You’re afraid of getting a “NO!” and finding out that the customer doesn’t really like you, even though you’ve spent all this time on the account.
• Why It’s a Big Mistake: The time you spend unnecessarily on one prospect is time that you’re not spending developing another.  And that’s money out of your pocket.
• The Unintended Consequence: You’ll end up hustling like crazy at the end of the quarter to close… and you probably won’t close because you missed the window of opportunity.
• Why It’s Easy to Avoid: You can ask confirming questions.  Listen to the customer’s answers.  When you’re getting all green lights, ask for the business.

Mistake #8: Failure to Follow-up

• Definition: You make a commitment to a prospect, but don’t find the time to fulfill it; or you forget to check on a customer after you’ve made the sale.
• Why It’s Easy To Make: Hey, you’re busy, right?  You’ve got lots of things that need doing. And there are always other deals in the pipeline, eh?
• Why It’s a Big Mistake: If it’s a prospect, you just proved that you’re unreliable and untrustworthy.  If it’s a customer, you just proved that you were really just trying to make a sale and “so long, Mr. Customer…”
• The Unintended Consequence: You’re clobbering your reputation and making it impossible to sell to those people. And you can forget about ever getting a referral.
• Why It’s Easy to Avoid: With a little forethought, you can schedule follow-up activities immediately after the contact. And schedule a series of follow-up phone calls and email to check on each customer’s status. Then do it.

Mistake #9: Forgetting to Get a Referral

• Definition: Not getting “warm leads” from your existing customers.
• Why It’s Easy to Make: You were told that the best time to ask for a referral is when you close the deal.  That seldom works, so you stopped bothering.
• Why It’s a Big Mistake: Referrals are the easiest leads to qualify and the easiest prospects to convert to customers because you enter the sales cycle without having to work as hard to establish trust.
• The Unintended Consequence: You end up starting from scratch on every sale, which takes time, which means that you’ll ultimately be making fewer sales than if you had some “warmer” prospects entering the pipeline.
• Why It’s Easy to Avoid: You can make it part of your regular routine.  At closing, you can obtain a promise of a referral if, after delivery, the customer is delighted.  Then, after delivery, you follow up, and ask for the referral.

BNET Insight [Internet]. San Francisco (CA): Geoffrey James – [cited 2010 February 2]. Available from www.blogs.bnet.com/salesmachine/