How to Keep Your Best Customers

This blog post is about three things:

1. How to keep your best customers
2. Webinar – How to increase sales with Social Media data
   
3. Trigger Buzz#7 – Getting called before the competition

In my lost blog post I asked how the #4 Sales 2.0 Tool – Lattice Engines – can be of most value to organizations so they don’t lose sight of existing customers while focusing resources on new customer acquisition.

My answer to question is ” when there is a change in sales people responsible for an account.

What typically happens is the existing sales person has a relationship with the decision makers and influencers in the account.

That relationship is created by:

• The salesperson having an understanding of the expectation level of the customer
• Doing their best to make sure the customer stays satisfied
• Having a very open communication channel which results in the decision makers and influencers complaining when things aren’t done to their satisfaction

BUT THEN SOMETHING HAPPENS” The outside sales person changes. That single event creates two challenges:

1. The new sales person does not have an understanding of the customer’s expectations and as a result these expectations are not met and the customer become dissatisfied
2. Customers are less likely to complain because the person they felt comfortable complaining to is no longer there

Here is the BIG dilemma, You typically gain customers up one at a time based upon the individual Trigger Events that get them to buy from you but when you lose a customer facing employee like an outside sale person that single event often results in losing multiple customers.

So when a new sales person takes over I think it’s critical they go see the decision makers and influencers in the top account and ask the following three questions:

1. What did my predecessor do well that I need to keep doing
2. What does the competition do well that I should start doing
3. What does nobody do that you wish everyone did

Whether you’re a salesperson trying to separate the signal from the social media noise or a marketer trying to leverage existing social media investments, this webinar is for you.

In this interactive session, we’ll show you the real world of B2B social media intelligence and how to systematically tap into social media streams to:

• Translate social media data into sales opportunities
• Identify the patterns that predict which customers and prospects are getting ready to buy
• Build targeted campaigns that get the buyer’s attention based on their business context

Date: February 8^th – 11:00AM PST | 2:00PM EST
Host: Lattice Engines – Predictive Sales Intelligence
Speakers: Jeff Cohen, Craig Elias, and Peter Guy
Registration : http://bit.ly/TheGoldenTweet

Tonight: How to be the first person decision makers call when they Searching for Alternatives