Sales Begin in Service

How often is the Sales on one side of an organization while the Service & Delivery is on the other?

How often does this ‘divide’ lead to the loss of possible business, more tension between the groups, and bad service experiences for the customer?

At Perfect Solutions, a leading management consulting outfit the physical separation between Sales and Service / Delivery was so big that they called it the Berlin Wall.

In a bold initiative to bring these warring groups together, the promoters toredown thephysical wall separating Service / Delivery from Sales .The sales staff was worried. They were afraid new business prospects might be turned off by what they saw and heard in the Service & Delivery department. The delivery team was equally concerned, scared of frequent and negative criticism from their colleagues in the sales department.

Does such a situation exist in your organization?

When you hire the services of a training agency say for a training program for your staff you interact with their sales team to explain your need, understand their expertise, infrastructure facilities and the training outcomes and then negotiate commercial terms with them before hiring their services. When do you meet the trainers who would actually deliver the training program? Do you wait until their first program fails; trainees express dissatisfaction or complain of training sessions being ineffective and boring? By that time it will be too late.

How would you feel if the people in Sales introduced you proactively and personally to the trainers? Won’t you prefer knowing and interacting with the training manager and the trainers on one on one basis before you ever needed his assistance? You would feel good.

A proper, positive and proactive introduction to the Service / Delivery department can have a huge impact on the experience and satisfaction of the customer. Because good service begins in sales and a good sale begins in service.

If a training agency or professional is providing you world class service experience and tells you about a newer solution that is trouble-free and getting great reviews, would you be interested in at least learning more about it? Would you trust this person to be telling you the truth? Would you be willing to see or try a demonstration?

‘Good morning, Mr. Raj. It was a pleasure doing an outbound adventure-training program for your managers. By the way, we have a new product – War Game, from our associates, which we are introducing in India for the first time. War Game is executed through Adventure Based Learning Methodology (ABLM). ABLM is a war simulation scenario drawing from the strategy and tactics applied during military operations. Participants in this learning intervention are placed in a highly competitive and uncertain environment where the need is to achieve a pre-determined objective. I thought you might be interested in knowing more about this brand new training product…’

Incidentally, ‘Perfect Solutions’ are doing more than just tearing down the walls. They are changing the compensation system to pay sales team when customers get great service, and pay Service/Delivery people when the sales team sells more. It’s a great way to get people customer focused and make all new sales begin in service.