The #1 Rule!!!

If you don’t take care of the customer, someone else will.

Came across this from some notes I took back in the 1980’s at my first job.

It was in the top ten of 100 items that I wrote down during an (obviously) company training session.

It was the above rule that triggered me to write this post.

Things haven’t changed, have they? If we don’t answer their question or respond with less than what is needed, someone else will step in and win the deal.

But it’s more than that, right? We have to know who our customer is; what they want; and more important, are (partially) open to hearing what we have to offer.

And that’s just the top of the funnel — which, for some of us, marketing handles for us before passing that lead to us.

But it doesn’t stop — we have to continue down the funnel until we close the deal — and of course, always with that threat of us not nurturing the prospect correctly and possibly losing that prospect to “someone else”.

Which, to some of us, it really the key. I worked for two companies that took the above rule down two different paths.

One of them nurtured the partner after the deal — checking in to make sure that they were still happy, because, a few years later, a new product or a new upgrade would be needed and they wanted to make sure that that same customer (now a prospect again), would want to purchase from them.

The other company, once the deal was closed, disappeared and didn’t show up until the customer reached out and said they needed help (i.e. had a problem with the product/service) or three months before the customer (now a prospect) had to buy the new product, they put the pressure on the prospect to now buy the new product (and yet, that company hadn’t been heard from for over a year (if not years)).

Which one of the above paths was more successful?

I just wanted to remind everyone that taking care of the customer is the #1 rule in our profession. Lose site of that and we will lose everything.

(Product pitch!!!) Illumineto Spark is a great tool to use to keep in touch with your customer — and in fact, many of our customers use Spark to send out a monthly newsletter to keep “touching” them.

Good luck selling!

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