Share the burden
You want your employees to build strong relationships with your customers. But make sure you’re not just relying on one person to handle a particular client.
“In too many businesses I’ve been in in my life, you get this environment where you hear from your top salesman that, ‘The customer will only deal with me,’” Toombs says. “I go crazy. That’s the last thing you want is to be held hostage by one of your salespeople who has a relationship and won’t bring anybody else in from the company to see the customer. Then you are in big trouble. We team sell up and down the organization and I think that’s our strength.”
Toombs brings up his vice president of marketing, Gregg Renner.
“The customer knows about MiTek, not so much about Gregg Renner,” Toombs says. “If Gregg were to leave the company tomorrow, we’d miss him dearly, but in fact, life would go on.”
You need to avoid the situation where one person has all the knowledge about a single customer because if that person leaves your company for any reason, you’ll be in a lot of trouble with that customer.
“We have written reports that we publish that literally confirm what’s going on,” Toombs says. “We spend a lot of time together and we talk. As much as we’ve got some exceptional sales guys and they get paid very well, part of their job is to provide access to their customer to anybody who needs to go see the guy from MiTek. That’s good for the customer, good for the company and, at the end of the day, good for the salesman.”
One of the ways that MiTek promotes the team-selling approach and encourages open dialogue and knowledge sharing about customers is through competition. Customers are brought in and provided a demonstration to compare a MiTek product to that of a competitor.
“We’re very big on presenting our products and services in a positive manner,” Toombs says. “To me, that’s the best thing in the world to have a customer say, ‘Show me what you can do.’ We relish those opportunities. You learn like anything else that you do one thing well and you do something else not so well. You get the right people involved and it’s been a very good situation.”
Customers become more familiar with your business through these types of demonstrations and they also have a chance to interact with other people if they only have one primary contact. It’s a fun and effective way to put a different face on your company and get another set of eyes and ears pitching in to help support a customer.
“We actually relish kind of a Pillsbury bake-off,” Toombs says. “And I’m proud to tell you, when it occurs, we win a lot more than we lose.”
You can take your own steps to make sure you’re not falling into the one customer, one touch point mode by getting out and talking to customers yourself. When you do, make sure you’re the one setting up the conversation.
“I always insist on meeting customers,” Toombs says. “What I do, which has been accepted now but initially it’s not popular, is I pick the customer. By that, I mean, I don’t allow our guys, as much as I trust them totally, to set me up with customer friends where I’ll just hear all the good stuff. I’ll say, ‘I want to see this one, this one and this one.’ … Get your customer list, get your prospect list and literally make your salespeople mad at you. But grab the telephone and call these guys and go see them. Believe it or not, the customers are thrilled to death to have the CEO come in and say, ‘Hello,’ and ask, ‘How can we make your life easier?’”
