Successful Sales People Have A Customer Service Mindset

Great customer service extends far beyond responding more quickly to sales leads (although the power of that action alone will pole-vault your sales figures to the next level.) 

Improving your customer service mindset will win you more sales right through the customer lifecycle. 

Here are six ways to powerfully improve your customer service skills. 

1. Respond quickly. 

In sales, you know the speed of response matters in securing the sale. With clients now doing a lot of their research online and coming to you ready to buy, being the first company to respond to a lead is vital.  

As this report quoted in Harvard Business Review research showed:  

“Firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead … as those that tried to contact the customer even an hour later—and more than 60 times as likely as companies that wait 24 hours or longer.”

But this doesn’t just apply to leads- you should also be responding to existing customer queries at lightning-fast speed. (And no, auto-generated email responses don’t count.)  

Action: Set yourself a target on how quickly you respond to customer emails and calls. Will it be 30 minutes, an hour, 3 hours? Just remember, every minute that passes diminishes your chance of making a sale or keeping an existing customer satisfied. Track your response speed in your CRM to keep track.  

2. Play the long game.  

It’s easy just to focus on the initial sale, but the great software sales reps play the long game, cultivating relationships over the customer’s lifetime.  

Action: Once you’ve sold a piece of software to a client, you should check in regularly to see how the client is finding it, and how the software is helping them fill their business need. 

You might find an opportunity in these conversations to sell them an upgrade or a new product, but even if you don’t, you’ve built on your relationship. This makes it easy to identify at-risk customers and launch a strategy to convince them to stay.  

Additionally, never give up on a lead—even if they’ve given up on you! Check in occasionally to see if their needs have changed and if there’s anything you can offer them. 

3. Set customer service tasks as a priority. 

In the busy life of a salesperson, it is all too easy to let customer service tasks fall to the bottom of your to-do list. This is particularly the case when the task isn’t going to lead to a potential sale, for example, following up on complaints or technical queries. 

Yet good salespeople instinctively know that excellent customer service right through the customer lifetime is the key to consistent long-term sales. 

These efforts work to improve customer retention, and a 5% increase in customer retention can result in a staggering 75% increase in customer value (while also decreasing the chance an unhappy client will talk to their network about a poor experience with your company). 

Action: Set a certain number of customer service style tasks as non-negotiable targets during your working day.  

4. Treat all customers with respect 

No doubt, it can be frustrating when speaking to someone who doesn’t understand much about technology, and who can’t easily conceive of the value your product will bring to their organisation. 

But the software salesperson who lets this frustration show when speaking to a lead or customer is destined for failure.  

In truth, customers who aren’t tech-savvy are the perfect opportunity to hone your sales skills, allowing you to come up with simple explanations for complex operations. It can be helpful to keep in mind Albert Einstein’s famous quote:  

‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.’ 

Technophobes are the perfect way to deepen your understanding of the product, the product’s different uses, and improve your sales pitch for different audiences. 

Action: Learn from each encounter, simplify your language, and deepen your product understanding until you can explain it to  

5. Conduct a survey. 

If you really want to stand out as a salesperson who cares about customer service, send an auto-generated survey asking the lead or customer to gauge how happy they are with the sales experience and the product thus far. The customer will feel valued, and you’ll gain valuable feedback that can improve your sales skills. That’s what we call a win-win! 

Until next time,  

Nikki 

About LivRecruit 

LivRecruit specialise in Inside Sales, Senior Sales and Technology Recruitment. The LivRecruit team is based in South Manchester and have over 17 years’ experience providing recruitment solutions for technology companies across the UK.  

If you are looking for the right new hire for your technology team or want to take your career to the next level call us on 0161 883 2856 or email us here.