At first
glance there seems to be a glaring difference between sales
and service. Certainly the financial reward benefits one
position far more than the other. Another difference is the
training each representative receives. The main job of sales
is to convert a prospect into a customer. Once you have made
that sale that is where customer service comes in. Usually
when something has gone wrong with the sales process and the
customers trust has taken a hit.
There are many ways in which a sale can be made. There is
the overcome all objections method. This is where you are
prepared to convince your prospect that whatever doubts that
they may have are groundless because your product is just
that good. Many times the result of this type of sale is the
buyer gets a huge case of buyer’s remorse and returns the
product.
The next method is to sell on price. You do this by finding
out what your competitors are charging and lower your price
to beat theirs. On the surface this seems like it might be a
good idea. Overall, this lowers the perceived value of your
product and the brand of your company. The other thing that
happens is, it sets up the expectation in your customer's
mind that you will always lower your price for him/her. By
selling this way you will always undercut your own profits.
Then there is benefits selling, which of course is the best
way to make a sale. It sets you up as a partner in your
customer's mind. You become a trusted consultant in solving
their problem. This strengthens your company by enhancing
your brand and sets you up to come in and solve their
problem over and over again.
This is where sales and customer service really mesh and
become one. In benefits selling, you are really selling by
serving your customer's needs. When a customer service rep
is taking care of a problem, they are re-selling your
company to that customer. For whatever reason, they have
lost faith in you and your company. The service rep has the
ability to look at the problem, look at the product and its
benefits, apply a solution and convince the upset customer
to believe in you once again. On top of that, a really good
customer service expert can then up sell or add products on.
Is there really a difference in sale and service? You bet!
Service is the life-blood of every business and every
service person sells your company every day.
That is why a service mindset is so important to anyone who
owns a company; most especially in the online world. Your
customer doesn't have an opportunity to get to know you face
to face the way they can offline. That is not having the
ability to walk into your store and assess for them self
what you are all about. It's all about the credibility you
set up initially, which is why you style of selling becomes
so important. It's easy to fall into the trap of believing
so much in our own products and solutions that we don't
really listen to what our prospective customers are trying
to tell us. Then, we perceive a softening and we jump on the
price; questioning whether our price is too high. This is
where belief in our self and our creations becomes
important. Mostly though, we need to trust that if we have
listened not only to what our prospect has said, that they
will realize how much our solution will benefit them.
