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October 24, 2013 at 12:25 AM
Call me crazy, but when I spend money doing business with people, I expect them to treat me well, to follow up with me and to have processes in place to ensure my needs are met.
I recently received the following note from a salesperson at a company I’ve done business with for years: “My name is Tim Sales [name changed to protect the guilty]. I am your new rep. Let me know if you need anything else.”
In the same email, I saw a note from my previous rep to Tim: “She is yours now. She is great. I guess they never moved her out of my name. She is in Nor. Cal.” I’m glad someone thinks I’m great, but, boy, did I drop through the cracks or what?
If you don’t care about me, I don’t care about you. What annoyed me most about this situation was that I had referred people to this company. If they don’t care enough about me to ensure that I don’t slip through the cracks, I no longer care about referring people to them. Clearly, their processes are broken, and I only refer people (especially my clients) to companies I trust will treat them as well as I would.
I’ve met with key people in this organization, who told me referrals are an integral part of their business-development strategy. Odd, then, that my calls and emails haven’t been returned. As the old saying goes, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
Nothing is more important than caring for your clients. Yes, you have a busy schedule. We all do. But to salespeople, clients are like gold. If you want to keep your clients and — just as important — get referrals from them, you must stay in touch, take care of them, help them with problems, introduce them to people they need to meet and become a sales advisor they know they can trust.