Until quite recently, even though we recognise that buying a new home is one of the biggest investments anyone makes, the key commercial driver was simply called ‘customer satisfaction’. Granted, our industry has upped the ante on this aspect of business and there are many examples of attempts to become ever more creative in how to surprise and delight every customer.
We wholeheartedly believe in the concept of world class service. We set our stall out with this being our compass as we navigate how best to help companies we work with to excel in delivering real customer experience to real people.
In today’s world of keen focus on a great customer experience, good enough is…..well, not good enough!
With this in mind, we want to help you to focus on the key elements in the sales manager’s role that will help you to drive up customer experience in your area of the business.
Knowing Every Customer
We know that people move home for many different reasons, some happy – some not so. Even for the most excited purchasers, there is a healthy dose of stress, worry, work and, usually, some financial sacrifice and we know just how unique every story is. Despite recognising customer uniqueness and individuality, we find that it is typical in our industry to adopt a corporate process for ‘how we handle every customer’. This causes sales teams to funnel customers through the prescribed process without enough curiosity about the customer, their back story and the current priorities in their life.
Being world class changes this approach and let’s face it, if you want 5* reviews, you have to show both curiosity, care and compassion with every customer whilst being alert for what is not being said. As a leader of a winning team, it is vital that you lead the way in modelling world class behaviour and shift the culture, setting the bar higher.
At Ellare, we believe and want to share with you our passion for everyone in business to be Professionally Human. To deliver a professional experience in a really human way.
In our knowing every customer lesson within the Managing Experience module, we will stretch your thinking, and change how you approach the mundane. We will explore with you how striving for a world class culture across all functions will help you to be part of the best and most fun places to work! It’s not just the customer who wins, you, your team, your company win too!
Service Delivery
Closely linked to knowing every customer, is the drive to deliver everything with bespoke excellence. We see this manifesting on two levels:
- What happens during normal everyday processes and interactions
- Responding to the unexpected.
We will help you establish beyond-the-norm standards for tackling both the work day and the quirky happenings in your team. We will share with you how to create team players, people around you who genuinely strive to be the best. We want you to be brilliant, we’ll help you show this with responses to situations in a way that is professional and human – representing you and what you want your brand to stand for.
Experience over Process
World class is not the result of fantastically slick processes so we will share with you how, by establishing and implementing a robust customer centric journey in your area of the business, you will achieve strong results and begin to define what 5* service means in your business.
This goes right back to the main principle in our Driving Sales programme – as a Sales Manager striving to stand out from the crowd, it’s not just what you do but the way that you do it that makes the ultimate difference.
By the end of this lesson you will understand:
- The value of an established customer journey
- Ways in which to introduce that journey if it doesn’t exist in your business
- Ways to coach it in more robustly if it exists but isn’t yet delivering the results you need
- The even greater value of nurturing the professionally human behaviour that support the processes
- How to have fun getting there!
Site/Sales Relations
A fundamental aspect of your role and the success you will achieve is in the vitally important relationship between Sales and Production on site. In this lesson of the Managing Experience Module we will equip you to:
- Assess the existing relationship between your sales consultant and the site manager
- Identify any gaps and improvements
- Position yourself with the production manager to model winning partnerships
- Review ways to improve the experience of visitors to site
- Nurture customer centric decisions and communications.
This is the true shop window and the strength of these relationships can make or break your bid to live out your brand aspirations in public view!
Connect with your allies
You need allies, people you can work well with, who have their own accountability but are invested in yours too. In this lesson we will look at two types of allies that you need to foster and influence positively so that you can deliver the best possible experience for every customer.
We will show you how to:
- Build and influence a strong network of internal co-operation from your colleagues
- Develop winning reciprocal links with external associates and partners.
We will provide you with a ‘black book’ template showing the different departments and external organisations we believe you need to work closely with for mutual success.
Nurturing strong and respectful professional relationships should be second nature to you. These networks will serve you well personally as you grow your reputation as a leader of excellence. We’ll look at real examples of times when you will need to be able to reach out to both your internal and external network to deliver those beyond the norm experiences we have been championing.
As in everyday life, the best relationships reflect give and take. We will challenge you to finding ways in which you can serve your colleagues to help them in their own functions, with timely and professional delivery.
Brilliant solutions to customer complaints
It is a natural part of life that things go wrong. Even with the best processes in place. An important part of your role is to minimise how often things go wrong and to take immediate and positive action when they do. In this lesson, we will show you how to:
- Set high standards and model them daily within the team
- Create a safe environment for your team to tell you when something goes wrong
- Take personal responsibility for remaining with the problem until you are sure it is resolved
- Work with the sales consultant and the customer to identify possible solutions. Be confident and creative about what you might suggest
- Tell your Sales Director immediately and keep them informed of progress
- Ask for their support or authority if you need it
- Ask the customer for feedback after the problem has been dealt with. Agree to draw a line and move on together
- Monitor closely the rest of the journey, make a special effort with your team to particularly delight this customer
And, that’s just the overview! We have so much to share with you.
Dive in to Ellare, have a good look round and do get in touch if there is anything at all we can help you with.
Module Includes
- 1 Lesson
