“If we rely on value alone, we’ll get considerable success. Then if we add constant and careful cultivation of the other arts of maintaining and building upgoodwill, we shall be vastly superior to our competition.”

Sounds good advice. And when you consider those words were said by the founder, John Lewis himself, in 1917, you realise that quality customer service and goodwill were part of the culture of the organisation nearly 100 years ago.

Quality in a product or service is not what you put into it, but what the customer gets out of it. National Express, a UK travel company, encourages passengers to text them about their experience while riding on their coaches. This enables the company to deal with the needs of customers instantaneously, and builds goodwill with the customer base quickly and easily.

But how do you actually build goodwill? Can it actually be built? Marketing author Dr Bill Nichols thinks it can.

Dr Nichols says that there are six levels you can go through to build goodwill with a customer. He starts with the base level,

1) Service Satisfaction. It goes without saying that unless the customer is satisfied with your back-up service, goodwill will be severly dented, if not destroyed.

2) Utility Satisfaction. That’s all-round satisfaction with the products, service and quality that is offered.

3) Brand Commitment. If they are committed to the brand, it’s natural that they will feel happy and contented when they buy from you.

4) Relationship Commitment. When a client is committed to the relationship, they are more likely to see you as a partner than as a supplier.

5) Fairness. This means the client feels they are getting a fair reward fo the long-term relationship with you.

6) Pleasure. This is the emotional connection they have with you and your company. If they feel contentment in the relationship, they are less likely to look elsewhere for price differentials and the like.

What struck me more was that these two last factors, along with relationship, brand and utility satisfaction, actually rank higher than service satisfaction in terms of building customer goodwill.

In other words, you don’t have to be the best at service delivery as your clients are looking for more than just a good service. Perhaps it is taken for granted when paying for a service that it will actually be delivered well and as promised? I think so.

Dr Nichols’ ideas help us to see how goodwill can be built through a series of levels. Think of ways that you can enable customers to feedback their feelings about your levels of service. Your clients are in the best position to tell you what they want in terms of product, service and back-up. Listen and learn!

Happy Selling

Sean

Sean McPheat
The UK’s #1 Authority On Modern Day Selling
MTD Sales Training

Have you downloaded my latest report “The Sales Person’s Crisis”? Over 10,000 sales pros have.

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It’s happened to me on a number of occasions, and I can’t always remember it when I want to later on. My suggestion is to carry around a small journal, specifically for these times when you hear someone say something profound, or you think of something that will be really useful for your next call.

Maybe you’re driving along listening to the radio and someone says something that you want to remember. Get yourself a small recorder where you can quickly record these ideas and then transfer them across to your journal when you next stop.

How about all those ideas from training courses you attended and forgotten about? Find the workbooks and copy some of the great ideas you picked up on the course into your journal.

Be on the lookout for great quotes that you see when you’re out and about. Then use them when you have the chance with customers. Different creative ideas will flow from these quotes and your journal will quickly build with new thoughts that will drive your motivation and encourage you when things aren’t going exactly to plan.

Those creative ideas will breed others, and soon you’ll have ways of covering off objections you may hear. When you turn a customer round who had an initial objection, write down exactly what you said. Maybe that could work on another customer who comes up with exactly the same objection.

Also, think about what you learned during the day. Every encounter with a customer creates a learning opportunity and if you can be creative with one prospect, you can spread that thought process to another similar situation.

Can you imagine any of your competition doing this? It’s just another way to stand out from the crowd. And that can only be good for business!

Happy Selling!

Sean

Sean McPheat
The UK’s #1 Authority On Modern Day Selling
MTD Sales Training

Have you downloaded my latest report “The Sales Person’s Crisis”? Over 10,000 sales pros have.

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…

If you are not using this tool to spy on the competition and to conduct rapid research then you are missing out BIG TIME!

Happy spying!

Sean

Sean McPheat
The Sales Jedi
MTD Sales Blog

MTD Sales Training

Have you downloaded my latest report yet? “The Sales Person’s Crisis” has been downloaded by over 10,000 sales pros and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss this unique report that lifts the lid on modern day selling!

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…

“Can you give me 10 of the most effective closing lines to use at the end of the sale?”

“Should I use the assumptive close?”

If I had a pound for everytime someone has emailed me with one of those questions then I’d be on my yacht writing this blog post!

Sales people get hung up about using “closing statements“. They assume that no matter what has gone on before that by asking for the business in the write way that it will compensate for it!

Now that’s just ridiculous!

I’ve even been asked to run workshops that include all of the closing lines under the sun! And they were not even interested in anything else! (I declined!)

The key to getting sales is to make your prospect and client interactions so effective that closing is just a natural progression of your discussion as opposed to a seperate “I’m now in my closing phase!”
approach.

The quality of your opening, the questions you ask, how you listen, how you uncover issues and pain, how you present your solutions and how you build up a relationship with this person are all far more important than learning a fancy closing line.

If you get the basics right then your prospects actually close themselves and it all it takes is a:

“Does this make sense to you?”

or

“In your opinion, is this something that you’d like to go with?”

If you’ve done your job properly upfront then asking these type of questions are just a natural next step in your already non-threatening two way discussion rather than entering into “the close”

Happy Selling

Sean

Sean McPheat
The Sales Jedi
MTD Sales Blog

MTD Sales Training

Have you downloaded my latest report yet? “The Sales Person’s Crisis” has been downloaded by over 10,000 sales pros and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss this unique report that lifts the lid on modern day selling!

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…

And yes, don’t get me wrong there are some out there but in all of my travels around the world and having come into contact, trained and witnessed literally thousands of sales people in action, there are a lot of sales professionals who would be done under the trades description act if they indeed did call themselves a sales pro!

I really think there are some defining factors that make it easy to tell the difference between a “salesman” and an incredible “sales professional.”

So how can you tell an amateur from a professional?

Here are 10 thoughts to get the ball rolling:

1. Amateurs are nothing but order takers. They don’t actually HAVE to sell.

2. A sales professional has clear objectives and knows what outcome they want to achieve at each stage of the sales process.

3. Amateurs “wing it”

4. A sales professional has a plan and a proven method for success

5. True sales professionals are always well prepared for any situation. They can adapt their presentation at a moments notice and still achieve their goals

6. Sales professionals are viewed by their clients as trusted advisors

7. Amateurs talk too much

8. Amateurs think about the commission more than the need to help the next prospect

9. Sales professionals analyse their numbers, understand their numbers and refine and modify
their approach

10. Amateurs don’t listen to sales improvement cd’s or improve their knowledge

So, how many of those do you do?

Are you a pro?

Or are you “The diet coke of sales professionals?”

Happy Selling!

Sean

Sean McPheat
MTD Sales Blog
MTD Sales Training

Telephone: 0800 849 6732

Have you downloaded my latest report yet? “The Sales Person’s Crisis” has been downloaded by over 10,000 sales pros and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss this unique report that lifts the lid on modern day selling!

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…

Well, I don’t know whether you are aware of this but there is a neat little tool called AutoText in outlook that could save you a shed load of time and at the same time provide you with some consistency in the way that you write and respond to emails.

It’s called Autotext on older versions of office. For those of you who are bang up to date with their Office versions it’s called Quick Parts.

Now if you find yourself typing the same old email messages when responding to prospect and client enquiries then the AutoText function could be your saviour!

AutoText/Quick Parts is to your opening or closing paragraph (or any piece of text come to that) as your email signature file is to your company address, telephone number.

With the click of the mouse you can instantly insert some pre-written text into your emails without opening any other emails or copying and pasting from a word document or template.

Ok, enough of my ramblings. Here’s how to use the tool.

Now you might have different versions of Outlook and the screens may look different but you’ll get the gist of what I am about to cover.

So you’ve got some text that you would like to use at the beginning of each email when you respond to an enquiry.

Here’s what you do to set it up and then I’ll tell you how to use it in your emails.

THE SET UP

Highlight the text you would like to use:

Now if you are using an older version of Outlook you need to click on AUTOTEXT and then select NEW

Then, enter a name that you would like to call this piece of text. In the example below I have called it XTTG4 Reply so you know what it relates to:

If you’re using Quick Parts. Open up a new email. Click on Insert and then Quick Parts and then it’s basically the same from hereon in.

HOW TO INSERT THE TEXT YOU HAVE JUST SET UP

Ok, so when you go to write a reply in the future you can call up your AutoText in two ways.

Firstly, if you just start to type what you called it i.e XTTG4 Reply and a box will appear above the text. Just click enter and WHAMMO! all of the text will appear!

An alternative way is to select AutoText from the menu bar and then click on AutoText and then select the name of the text you want to insert.

Job Done!

Now if you’ve got a newer version of Outlook the function you need is called QUICK PARTS and you get to that from the INSERT tab on the menu bar after having opened a new email to write.

It’s a really useful tool to use. Personally I’ve got about 20 different messages set up and it saves me a ton of time and makes sure I send an optimised email reply that will give me the best chance of success.

Happy AutoTexting!!!!

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Sales Training

Telephone:
0800 849 6732

Have you downloaded my latest report yet? “The Sales Person’s Crisis” has been downloaded by over 10,000 sales pros and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss this unique report that lifts the lid on modern day selling!

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…