This should not come as a shock … Markets are becoming more competitive and products are rapidly commoditizing.

Against this backdrop many service organizations are trying to upgrade their sales capabilities as part of an overall commitment to growth. They have recognized that the success of their growth strategy depends on increasing customer acquisition and loyalty.

Therein lies the  dilemma: how to acquire new customers and increase the number of products and services purchased per customer, while maintaining the high level of service customers have come to expect. For years organizations have served their markets and their customers with a high level of personal “touch”. Despite more aggressive competition and little clear differentiation, many service organizations have managed to maintain their reputation for providing a high level of customerfocus. At a time when most consumers feel “like a number”, this has great appeal.

This article will focus on how your organization can leverage this strength as a measurable competitive advantage and increase the number of “net promoters” within your customer base—a key customer  loyalty metric developed by Frederich Reichheld of the Bain Consulting Group.1 Increasing your organization’s number of “net promoters” is a leading indicator of the level of customer loyalty to  our organization and a  key driver of profitable revenue growth. In our Establishing Competitive Advantage series of articles we provide a blueprint for building a bridge between superior service and results-producing selling, a strategy that will transform your organization into a service-selling culture and increase the number of your customers who are net promoters.

In a pure service culture, organizational and employee behavior is contingent on your teams’ skill at responding to customer inquiries. However, in a service-selling culture employees proactively   seek to understand customers’ wants and needs and increase the value created in every customer experience. Service organizations who have not made this transition will find organic growth difficult. In fact, enjoying a positive customer-service reputation does not guarantee you will be the first choice by consumers.

In order to achieve significant growth, organizations must enhance their ability to skillfully identify the specific wants and needs of their customers and demonstrate how their products and services can fulfill them. However, most customers don’t want to be sold—but they do want to buy.

By helping your service-selling teams develop ethical, customer-needs–focused behaviors they will provide more value to customers and build stronger emotional satisfaction in the buyer-seller  relationship, a key prerequisite to building loyalty. The most progressive of organizations, across industries, have made significant investments to improve the proactive needs-focused selling behaviors of their service team. Others have chosen to emphasize a more reactive cross-selling approach. Whatever their choice, and despite their best efforts, these investments have netted very little in the way of bottom line results. So you may want to know …

Why are many service organizations generally resistant to sales initiatives?

Does service have to suffer in order to develop a sales culture?

Why is it so difficult to build a bridge between service and selling?

The successful transformation from a service culture to a service-selling culture is challenging. Many service organizations have struggled with the notion that embracing a sales philosophy is in  the best interest of customers and as a result both leadership and employees are resistant to adopting a sales philosophy.

For decades consumers have been wary of salespeople trying to persuade them to buy their products since many salespeople are often more concerned with making a sale than fulfilling a customer’s  needs. This is evident in consumer surveys conducted by the Harris and the Gallup organizations that routinely ask consumers to rank the most trusted professionals to give advice. Salespeople typically rank at or near the bottom of the list.2

This negative view of selling has created a cynical perspective within the leadership teams of many service organizations. Although these leaders may still be committed to growth, they appear to be resigned to the idea that executing a growth strategy will force superior service to take a back seat. Many have come to believe that building the bridge between service and selling is too difficult, too expensive, and/or too traumatic to their cultures.

In some cases, organizations have chosen to invest in more controllable efficiency projects. They have focused on new CRM systems, marketing gimmicks, or telesales contractors. As a result, efficiency has actually replaced effectiveness as the key driver for their growth initiatives. Although these initiatives occasionally succeed, they are still dependent on new service behaviors to make them work. And it’s unusual for an organization in any industry to “save” its way to revenue growth. In our experience, to successfully transform a culture, you must implement solutions that engage the hearts and minds of your employees. To accomplish this, they must learn to embrace the definition of selling and service as one and the same.

John P. Kotter, the renowned change expert and author of the bestselling book, The Heart of Change, states that the key factor in a successful change initiative is the behavior of people. As Kotter points out, without changing employees’ feelings and beliefs, their behaviors will not be sufficiently altered to overcome the many barriers to large scale change.3 It is therefore essential for leaders to implement strategies that will impact their people at the emotive level and help them develop positive beliefs about selling—if you hope to gain their ‘buy-in’. Skill development alone will not produce sustainable behavior change.

Once employees believe that selling and service are both noble activities that focus on identifying and fulfilling the needs of customers and creating value for them rather than pushing products, you can achieve increased results. The notion that selling is about convincing someone to buy a product or service is a bias that most people share. However, if selling is redefined as doing something for someone, your team may give themselves “permission” to create more value for customers. When this is accomplished you will be on the path to transformational change.

As the competitive landscape becomes more difficult and products look and sound more and more alike, the effectiveness of your service-selling team is still the critical success factor for revenue  growth and customer loyalty. Those “moments of truth” with your customers can be your competitive advantage and leveraging them can become the foundation for your growth strategy. If you can build the bridge between service and selling you will enable your team to find and close sales opportunities while they are delivering extraordinary service.

Once your team consistently approaches service and selling as two sides of the same coin, you will have solidified your commitment to maximizing the value you create for customers. The more value you create for customers, the greater your competitive advantage will be.

It’s really that simple. Building the bridge between service and selling can be the most significant asset to your growth strategy.

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Notes:

1. Frederich Reichheld, “Loyalty Rules!,” Harvard Business School Press, 2001

2. Harris Interactive, Inc. 2006 Survey of 2302 Americans.

3. John Kotter, “The Heart of Change,” Harvard Business School Press, 2002

For more detailed information on implementing a service-selling process

that reinforces your values, see our other white-papers at:

www.IntegritySolutions.com