Every boss wants to figure out how to make more money fast. In today’s tough business world, it’s hard to find great employees, fewer new customers are coming in, marketing budgets are getting smaller, and costs are always high. Trying to grow the business feels like a tough challenge.
In simple terms, the solution is to sell more to current customers and get new ones, or even better, do both. Here are four secrets to help your business grow.
1. Know What Your Customers Want, Then Go Way Beyond
It all begins with this: Make your customers feel welcome; genuinely enjoy your work; be attentive, empathetic, and caring; have expert knowledge; and leave them feeling great. Always remember, it’s about them, not you.
But here’s the challenge: Let customers share their honest opinions with you about what’s really happening. You need to know every day how well your team is doing, according to your customers.
When you ask customers about their experience, separate the behaviors related to “service” from those related to “sales.” Figure out how your teams use their product knowledge and suggest solutions to solve problems. The best team members are patient, understand needs, anticipate everything customers might need, and always recommend a complete solution.
They explain the “why” and genuinely care about what’s best for the customers. You should ask customers to describe what happened in their own words, not in a quick survey. It really annoys customers when they can’t tell you in their own words what happened, why they felt a certain way, and what should happen next.
2. Never Cut Corners on the Demonstration Step of the Sale
While industry-specific factors play a role, top performers excel in the demonstration stage. Our data shows that customers have high expectations for a comprehensive product or service demonstration. Team members who assume that customers “already know, so I won’t bother” end up losing sales. Customers are well-informed and want you to understand their problems and needs. They expect you to build trust and rapport while presenting the complete solution.
Revisit the training provided to ensure that this step is never compromised. Team members need the skills to confidently conduct demonstrations for different types of customers, such as those with limited time or short attention spans.
Boost their confidence in recommending everything, make sure they understand how to add value, and explain the advantages of choosing your company over competitors. Training should go beyond just listing features and benefits. Customers should feel they are dealing with an expert, and there should be a way for them to express exactly what happened.
3. Have a Laser Focus on Any Problems via Customer Feedback
When you give people a list of 10 things to concentrate on, most will find it challenging to excel in any one of them. The first step is to identify the top priority for each person. Here’s something you can do in this regard.
Ask customers for feedback about their experience with a specific team member. From these results, recognize behavior patterns and provide skill coaching right away. If a team member serves 10 customers but misses a subtle yet crucial part of the process (like cutting corners in the demonstration stage), team-based reporting at the end of the week or month becomes pointless. The not-so-secret trick is to have a “laser focus” on what happened, cut out wasted effort, and start concentrating on one thing per person per quarter.
As team members focus better, they begin to realize they can achieve more with less wasted effort. It’s all about forming new habits to enhance customer experiences.
4. Stop Chasing Scores and Focus on Engagement
This advice might sound surprising, but I’ll stop pursuing scores. We often see leaders receiving bonuses based on customer experience scores, yet there’s a noticeable lack of interaction with the frontline team members who actually deliver those experiences. Additionally, customers aren’t overly concerned about your scores. They want to feel heard, see improvements, and have excellent experiences they can share on social media.
Managers often get too caught up chasing scores without a clear understanding of how to move from a seven to an eight out of 10 and I’m not saying data isn’t important. What I mean is, if you can’t eliminate the guesswork behind the scores and have a clear plan for how to improve, simply chasing scores won’t lead to success.
Consider These Recommendations
When you attend meetings, pay attention to the first topic discussed. Is it about operations, sales figures, customer complaints, or something else? Exceptional teams immediately dive into a recent customer success story. They highlight the behaviors they want to see more of and make people responsible for action plans to address performance gaps.
Highlight these points: What are you doing to enhance your performance? What obstacles do you need to overcome? What skill gaps do we need to address? Who can assist us? Now, let’s go over your plan.
While these strategies might seem simple, putting them into practice is not always easy.
Summary
In today’s tough business world, where finding good employees and getting new customers is hard, marketing budgets are shrinking, and growing the business feels challenging. The solution is simple. sell more to current customers, get new ones, and follow four secrets, prioritize customer experience, focus on the right behaviors, align team efforts with customer expectations, and engage customers rather than just chasing scores.
