When Your Customer Wins, You Win

Everyone has experienced significant changes in the business landscape within the past year during this pandemic. Consider sales. These changes have impacted every sales department and every customer in some way. Forecasting sales during a pandemic may not likely yield reliable and valid results (McLeod, & Lotardo, 2020). It is possible, however, to utilize your time right now to empower the sales process throughout your organization to optimize results for your customers, and in turn, for your organization. You can achieve this by considering Customer Performance Indicators (CPI’s). Whether B2B or B2C, your customer is key to your success. You have many opportunities to create or build upon a meaningful relationship with your customer. When your customer wins, you win.

How Do Your Customer Performance Indicators Compare to Your Key Performance Indicators?

Making a sale is often just helping a customer solve a problem, rather than “selling,” specifically. What issue are you helping your customer to address? How do you help to problem solve? How do you make things easier for your customers? Is your organization truly customer-centric? How are you measuring this? So often, we measure what works for our companies through Key Performance Indicators, while the true customer focus and satisfaction can be best captured from Customer Performance Indicators (Cronfield, 2020). How do these compare with your Key Performance Indicators (Cronfield, 2020)?

Everyone is Included

Everyone on your team is involved in sales in your organization! Anyone who has contact with a customer at some level has an important role in this process. Is everyone engaged in this? Do your departments work together, or do silos exist? Do members in your firm feel confident and supported as they provide information?

Ask your customer what it is that they truly value as they engage with you. Does this correspond to your internal assessments?

This can be a key opportunity to support each other as a team and to strategize for success as we move forward into the New Year. This may be an excellent time to think strategically about your entire sales strategy as you consider how your customer is impacted. There are any number of ways you can measure this.

• Do you have the right products specific to your customers’ needs?
• How has your supply chain been affected this year?
• How do you compare in pricing within your industry?
• Is it convenient for your customer to work with you?
• How quickly do you get back to your customers (Cornfield, 2020)?

Assessing and Communicating Your Value to Your Customer

Ask your customer for their feedback. How does it compare to your own internal assessment? As you develop more customer focus, you will be able to communicate how your organization drives value beyond price. This can also help you plan and prioritize for the year ahead, which especially important in terms of addressing your marketing and sales strategy, assessing new opportunities, and maximizing your budget. This will help you to stay efficient. You may also begin to notice new and innovative ideas from your team as well. Assess this on a quarterly basis next year to gauge how you are doing.

We are all living with great uncertainty right now in the midst of this pandemic, and it is difficult to make forecasts with any specific accuracy. Your customer is an integral part of your team. Having a proactive and thorough understanding of your individual customers and their needs is essential to customer loyalty. Find out what is really on their mind. Engage your team for ongoing success.

Woodland Strategies can assist you as you create your strategic narrative framework to help you connect with your customers. This will foster ongoing positive relationships with your customer base and create ambassadors for your brand. If you would like assistance with your sales strategy, please get in touch. Woodland Strategies is happy to help! You can find out more here.