In recent years, we’ve seen many organisations become increasingly reactive to their customers when it comes to sales and service. At the same time, the market is getting tougher, and you can probably guess which companies that will win the battle for tomorrow’s customers? That’s right, it’s not the reactive ones…
Max Kolthoff, management consultant at Lime Intenz, works daily to help clients develop the best possible behaviours in sales, service and sales leadership.
Curious about his thoughts on how to succeed with proactive sales and service in the future? Take a look at the video, or get in touch with Max and his colleagues at Lime Intenz straight away.
Curious but not really in a movie-watching mood right now?
Let’s sum up what we’re talking about in the video.
A proactive mindset
What we’ve seen in recent years is that many organisations have become increasingly reactive to their customers. This means that it’s the customers who contact the organisations and not the other way round. But in the new business environment, those who are proactive are the ones who will win tomorrow’s customers.
Proactive vs. reactive
With a proactive mindset, you recognise problems before they arise and you’re actively looking for solutions to act on. With a proactive mindset, you are always one step ahead.
With a reactive mindset, you adopt a passive approach, reacting first when the problem or situation arises. At that point, you deal with it and then return to the passive state.
How can this be demonstrated in a customer service call?
For someone working with customer service, this can be translated into service behaviour vs. sales behaviour.
Service behaviour = Reactive
Sales behaviour = Proactive
Labelling service behaviour as reactive has nothing to do with the quality of the service. But when we talk about increasing your sales, you need to make the most of every customer interaction given.
Service behaviour
When a customer contacts you and asks a question, you answer the question and solve the problem. In other words, you respond to the needs that the customer presents and is already aware of.
Sales behaviour
When a customer contacts you with a question, you answer the question, of course, but you also use this opportunity to find out more about the customer. You activate needs that the customer didn’t knew they had, and open their eyes to new possibilities.
In the video Max talks about two real life situations where he, as a customer, encountered different responses.
So, with all of this in mind, is your organisation proactive or reactive?
We’re proactive but eager to learn even more!
We’re reactive and ready to make a change!
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