Your
Career is Tied to Customer Satisfaction
Use
every tool available
By
Jeffrey Hansler, CSP
The
world is rapidly becoming a global economy where past
limitations due to barriers, delivery, and politics are
being swept away. The result is a wide choice of
products and services for businesses and individuals and
fierce competition for their attention.
Reacting
to the economic pressures created by this competition,
companies are downsizing, removing promises of security and
scrutinizing employee contribution. Thank goodness,
you're in sales and marketing.... if you're good.
Marketing and selling is becoming even more crucial to the
success of companies.
Rather
than resist these changes, successful sales and marketing
executives will utilize technology to further improve record
keeping, data retrieval, and documentation of customer's
wants and needs. These same executives will devote
more of their time and attention to understanding these
needs. Their companies will then tailor products to
address their customer’s desires, thus creating specific
markets that spawn new career opportunities for successful
sales and marketing executives.
When
it comes to creating a successful career for sales and
marketing executives, now and in the future, the key will be
to focus on listening and responding to the customer.
Focusing on the customer will keep the sales and marketing
executive in tune with 1) career opportunities, 2)
return-on-investment, and 3) quality of life.
THE
OPPORTUNITIES
The
ability exists today to verify the results of each effort to
gain customers. If you are willing to measure and develop a
successful track record, you will have more opportunity and
more resources than you've ever had before. Better
data, statistical analysis, and communication with customers
will further verify (quantify) your results.
Join
companies that have a commitment to supply products and
services that help the customer feel they are approaching
self-actualization, that final driving need to reach some
internal goal of accomplishment. These companies will
understand the need for continuous investments in customer
communication. If you have this commitment from a company,
you will have the necessary information to target your
efforts. Without a company commitment to customer
communication, you will be in a constant losing battle for
resources.
Besides
choosing companies with customer commitment, it will be
crucial to choose companies that have compatible values to
you. Values not only about the business that they do, but
how they do that business. As more opportunities for
product development and market direction arise, the binding
force between companies and their executives will be
compatible values.
Discerning
customers will forever continue to create opportunities for
companies to niche their products and services creating an
ongoing source of career avenues. Customer retention
and integrated marketing focuses have each been created as a
result of furthering tomer contact. The present and
the future hold more opportunity than ever for those sales
and marketing executives that listen and respond to their
customers.
RETURN
ON INVESTMENT
Many
larger companies are now downsizing, segmenting and breaking
apart. During this time period, and with the large
number of "free agents" many small companies will
spring up. This creates the possibility of building a
fast growth, dynamic winner for tomorrow.
If
you are willing to take a risk and tie your rewards to your
skills, you can have enormous financial gain. Strongly
consider including stock options and ownership as part of
your compensation, because sooner than you think, companies
will begin to swallow up their competitors in their quest
for market control and resources.
Companies
have learned that experience from unrelated industries can
be valuable to your ability to understand customer needs.
So you'll be able to pick your career path in specific
industries without the fear of closing out your options for
the future.
However,
companies are still going to look for relative size
experience and responsibility. Moving to a company
doing less than $10 million dollars in sales is not going to
gain you much credibility with a Fortune 500 company (unless
you turn that $10 million company into $100 million
company).
If
you focus on creating and utilizing new approaches to
customer service, sales support, and customer communication,
the return on investment for you and your company will be
greater. The payoff will be for executives that can
create and implement market inquiry, lead generation, and
selling services that are faster, better, and less
expensive. Look to make maximum use of telecommunications
for the biggest return on investment to your career,
because this is where the greatest savings and advances in
customer communication will occur.
QUALITY
OF LIFE
With
so many opportunities, you will need to do a detailed
self-evaluation of your own personal needs and desires.
Although it may be difficult, force yourself to take the
time to discover what you truly want from your career.
Here
are some key questions to ask your self in determining the
quality of your life and career:
-
What do you like about your current position?
-
What causes you discomfort and why?
-
What would you change and what would you change it to?
-
How could you maximize your contribution to what you are
doing now?
-
Where do you think you want to be?
-
How do you think you will feel once you have reached your
objective?
-
What will be your contribution during your journey?
-
What will be your contribution once you have reached your
objective?
-
What are the skills/experiences/qualifications that you will
need to reach your objective?
-
Have you confirmed these assumptions?
-
How much time will it require to achieve your objective?
You
are going to need to constantly invest in education with
both time and money, and your evening and weekend reading
will continue to be critical to your success.
Sales
and marketing will remain a game of "What have you done
for me lately?", but by focusing on addressing customer
needs and making the extra effort to align yourself with
companies that fit your belief system, you will gain more
during the next ten years than in the past 30.... if you're
good.
#
# # # #
Jeffrey
Hansler is a professional speaker, author, and consultant.
He is a frequent speaker at association events and is the
author of Sell Little Red Hen! Sell! He can be reached at jhansler@oxfordco.com.
Click
here for a .pdf version of this page
Click
here to access our article request form to secure
permission to use or reprint this article
©
2004 Jeffrey Hansler All rights reserved |
