ALIGNING with CUSTOMERS: The Fortune is in the Follow up!

Customer Alignment is a foundational competency for training sales teams. 1. "How do you treat your customers" and 2. 'How do your customers affect your organization's bottom line". This article talks about aligning with customers.

Without customers there would be no organizations to employ you as a Trainer. Without recurring and new sales revenue, the organizations will not be able to stay in business. Sales training and your ability to teach a sales team how to align their customers is pivotal to the success of your training program and your organizations sustainability.

Your Sales Training objective is to teach the team to align sales with the customer buying process. Focus on the customers wants by asking strategic questions about them. Build rapport and establish a common emotional experience with that customer to win their trust. Their answers will give you the information you need to make the sale. Learn how to attract and win the RIGHT prospects and customers. Separate the curious from the serious so that you are not wasting your time or theirs - talking about things that are not facilitating your sales goal. You have to ask them for the order eventually! Make sure your conversation is moving the sales process forward. When training customer alignment strategies, your curriculum must be centered on how to build customer relationships first and then the processes. Analyzing sales processes do not engage people to buy. What Best Practices can you teach to align customers and maximize sales opportunities?

What Do Customers Want?

1. High quality products sold at reasonable prices (Give a Price Comparison and Quality Check)

2. Tell the truth about how the product or service is made. (Check the label or ingredients or warranty)

3. Tell the truth when delivering marketing and advertising campaigns. (Where is the Proof?)

4. Listen to the customer during communication and restate to understand.

5. Give reasonable options to return a product that is unsatisfactory

6. Deliver what you promised ON TIME.

7. No arguments when a customer service complains about returning a product.

Best Practice Training: Customer Alignment

1. Teach customer service and sales teams to builds relationships with customers

2. Teach the importance of loyalty, trust, respect, positive communication

3. Teach how to create an enjoyable experience during the sales process.

4. Teach customer service skills that handles existing customer calls quickly

5. Teach how to identifying and resolving what the customer wants and needs.

6. Teach suggestive selling to support an increase in revenue.

7. Teach how to create new business revenue from existing customer referrals

8. Teach how to create a strong value proposition during the sale

9. Teach active listening skills for mutual sales agreement

10. Teach customer service excellence as a measurement for quality and performance.