The Rainmaker Minute: Challenges We Face Study - Challenge #5 - Getting Everyone in the Company to support the Customer Experience.
Earlier this year, Mark Mitchell, who co-authored our book RAINMAKER, and I conducted a study to learn what Building Materials Sales Forces are being challenged with this year. 146 organizations participated. For the next few blogs, I will provide insight on what we learned. I will share what you said were the top 5 challenges you face, with a brief commentary on each.
Challenge #5 – Getting Everyone in the Company to Support the Customer Experience
While leaders found this to be the 5th most important challenge they face, salespeople ranked it number one.
Today, everyone sells. Everyone in the company is responsible for Customer Experience. I can understand why salespeople felt that this was the #1 challenge. Many salespeople we talk to say they spend a significant portion of their time doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work to ensure customer commitment are made. That takes away time from pursuing new opportunities.
Let’s face it, if you are an operations-oriented company and are not customer-centric, you simply will not survive long-term. The best companies are truly customer-centric. They listen intently to the customer and shape their practices based on anticipating what customer requirements will be. They measure the Voice of the Customer and the Voice of the Employee to establish alignment and focus.
What are you doing to create a Customer Experience Culture company-wide? THINK ABOUT IT.
This is the end of the blog series on Challenges being faced today. Sometimes they feel daunting, and some are. Experience shows that those companies who accept the challenge, and tackle these relentlessly, one item at a time, will make progress and ultimately create lift for their organizations.
Happy Selling!