168: How Good Are Your Touchpoints In Sales

<p>How Good Are Your Key Touch Points In Sales?</p> <p> </p> <p>Jan Carlzon’s book “Moments Of Truth” should be standard reading for everyone in business and particularly those of us in sales.  He talks about taking over as CEO of the Scandinavian Air Services (SAS) airline when the company was failing and had terrible consumer reviews, regarding their service.  With his team, they identified every touch point on the customer journey with the airline, to discover where the gaps were located.  We should be doing the same with our business.</p> <p> </p> <p>Now you might be thinking that is the CEOs job, not the work of a humble salesperson. You would be wrong!!!  The client sees you as their guy or gal inside your company and they expect you to fix everything for them.  That includes fixing things before they even become a problem. </p> <p> </p> <p>The marketing department takes care of the website, the social media, the advertising, the collateral materials, etc.  As a salesperson, you won’t have much input into that degree of detail.  Nevertheless feedback what you are hearing from clients, so that marketing can do a better job of representing the firm to the buyers.  As a salesperson, you can take care of your own social media and make sure that any materials you present to the client are up to date and in pristine condition.</p> <p> </p> <p>Clients do a lot of shopping on-line before they meet us today and that includes looking at our own social media.  What are they going to find?  You in a club doing the limbo dance, dressed in board shorts and a T-shirt, totally off your face and looking outrageous?  Or you in a business suit, looking professional and plausible as a business partner?  You can’t control marketing’s activities, but you can control what you put up on social media and therefore you can control your own professional image. </p> <p> </p> <p>For example, I have two Facebook accounts – one for business with around 5000 people connected to me and one for my karate mates, with about 30 people on it.