Companies constantly overwhelm us with offers to deliver “professional, the best and unique” services. Today’s oversaturation of such content causes a decrease in trust towards sales departments. Meanwhile the model of the “non salesman- salesman” is increasingly desired by the market. Customers want to feel comfortable interacting with a representative and not be immediately seen as a source of income. Such an attitude usually brings only short-term cooperations. Besides, isn’t it just disrespectful to the people who trusted us? Remember, there is always a human being on the other side, so don’t compromise your success on a level as important as customer trust. Let’s treat our customer as we ourselves would want to be treated in a business relationship.

Focus on customer motivation.

Effective sales teams focus on learning about their customers motivations, so it’s a good idea to ask yourself some basic questions first:

  • How do I treat my client? 
  • Why did it contact us? 
  • Are they satisfied? 
  • Why did they choose to work with us? 

So trivial, but how vitally important. Insights and the desire to find answers to these and similar questions open our eyes to many elements which we would not think have such a significant impact on the customer’s decision-making process.

Tactics, analysis or feeling – what to look for in the sales process.

Innovatika’s proven tactic is the Won&Lost analysis modeled on elements of the 5 Why method. This is no different than looking at a specific project more closely than usual and drawing conclusions: what caused it to succeed or fail. The 5 Why method, created by the Japanese inventor Sakichi Toyoda, was designed to find the causes of problems, to get to their source and to solve them effectively. For our own purposes, we have modified this process with the goal of discovering the real reasons why our client ultimately decided to work with us, or why they did not.  Investigating this step-by-step tells us what we did right during the sales process. And it also lets us see what may have contributed to the customer’s abandonment of our services. A customer’s rejection may well mean that there was something missing on our side – that’s what we want to find out by applying our modified analysis. Thanks to it we are able to identify mistakes made by us and improve the sales process, which should not be just a fixed, rigid element. First, let’s consider what elements contributed to the final offer. Some examples are: our involvement, responsiveness, time, the quality of the offer, the way the meetings were conducted. 

Let’s ask ourselves questions – why did these things work or why didn’t they work?, a few times to each of the elements until you get to the source of your success or failure in these areas. You can come to some really interesting conclusions. Be sure to consider all aspects and actions of the teams that were involved in creating the project. In this case, curiosity is the first step to success.

The chart above shows an example of the beginning of the analysis of a selected and won project. Based on the element of time, by applying this analysis, we already know that our strength is time planning. At this point it is important to nurture this asset and not let the quality drop in this area. The second element that is extremely important to us is the information that our materials provided a high value to the customer. After conducting an in-depth analysis, we know that we listened very carefully to our client’s voice and responded to their important needs. Additionally, we placed a strong emphasis on high quality in the materials we sent. 

By capturing such information in practice, we can devote our attention to elements that require improvement and greater commitment on our part. Taking into account each such element separately and breaking down the project into its first elements we come to the sources of our successes and failures. In this way we can easily eliminate shortcomings and improve the quality of our services. 

Where is the space and time for such discussions and presenting the analysis of obtained results? There are many solutions, as well as heads in the company. In our case lately, the sales status works well. 

  • It fits perfectly as a complement to the analysis of the sales process, which becomes a permanent element of every meeting. 
  • Discussions held during or after the workshop on the above-described analysis lead to further conclusions, expose more deeply the strengths and weaknesses of the sales process and indicate elements which are still worth working on. 
  • It is a space for creative brainstorming and a lively discussion. 

Customer trust, it’s a key to success.

The customer’s trust is the biggest chance he gives us. Through an appropriate analysis of the won or lost threads, we can gain huge layers of knowledge about ourselves. This knowledge flows through, sometimes imperceptibly, the organization. Today’s saturation with content means that the quality of the product, but also the company itself is carefully monitored. Therefore, the statement: quality, not quantity, is appropriate here.