Help - sales is scary!

 

For those people used to working in customer service roles, suddenly being asked to develop sales skills can be a scary proposition, with the accompanying fears of customer objections and the mis-held view that all sellers need to be pushy and aggressive in order to succeed.

Our research into effective customer service and sales behaviours has allowed us to identify a very close correlation between the behaviours required in both areas and has led us to draw a fundamental conclusion:

No matter how good your customer service behaviours are if your sales behaviours are lacking you will not achieve the high performance levels you desire.

So what can organisations do when they are faced with the challenge of improving the sales skills of their customer service teams and reach the holy grail of sales through service?

Effective behaviours lead to effective performance

Through our research we have developed a series of behavioural and structural models to support effective sales and service behaviours. For example, our C4RE™ model incorporates a series of behaviours that we have found to have the highest impact on improved customer service. Enabling people to use these behaviours and enabling coaches to coach them correctly leads directly to a measurable improvement in performance.

c Control - Effective control of an interaction through structuring and questioning behaviours and by active listening

4 Approachability - Building rapport with the customer by demonstrating empathy and engaging with them, whilst being courteous and using positive voice and body language

r Responsiveness - Proposing appropriate solutions, explaining technical information and taking responsibility for next steps

e Excellence - Take proactive action to exceed the customer's expectations and achieve an outstanding outcome

Steps to success

With the right models in place there are a number of key steps to be taken to successfully embed the desired behaviour profile:

• Accurately identify your people's current levels of customer service behaviours. It is paramount that these are of a high level before any sales skills development takes place. If necessary, develop customer service behaviours to ensure a solid platform on which sales development can take place.

• Accurately benchmark your people's current level of sales behaviours to enable measurement of impact and prioritise areas for further development.

• Develop a behavioural framework that incorporates effective sales and service behaviours into levels of performance.

• Develop sales skills and behaviours to improve performance in areas such as conversion and average transaction value, whilst attaining high levels of customer service.

• Coach your people by using the behavioural framework to give feedback on performance and create solutions for further development.

• Finally, use the behavioural framework to identify high performers and recognise and reward their success.

Even those teams that are 'scared' of sales will achieve increases in both sales and customer service performance levels if they follow the above developmental stages and will discover that sales doesn't have to be scary and aggressive, it is in fact a natural extension of good customer service.

If you would like more information on our work, please visit our website or for an example of how our approach to sales through service works in practice, read our case study on the British Red Cross.

With the right approach maybe sales doesn't have to be quite so scary!

Skill4 is part of the Huthwaite Group, and specialises in improving sales and service behaviours and performance. This quarterly e-newsletter is the first of many to explore key concepts of sales and service in our world today.