Customer service and marketing aren’t complicated, but done well can make all the difference between closing a one-off sale and establishing an ongoing relationship that will turn a client into an advocate and bring them back time after time.
Sales expert Brendan Bailey, who is Victorian Sales Manager at Stockland – one of Australia’s biggest retail and residential developers – told the TurfBreed National Growers Conference there was no secret to sales.
“It’s all just about talking to people,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter what you do, doesn’t matter where you are, we are all salespeople. And the sooner we move with the times and progress and understand that’s a really key important role in our life, both when we’re employing people and when we’re selling, it will make life easier.”
Brendan said he had been in sales all his life, starting at the age of seven when he sold tennis club raffle tickets for the princely reward of a can of Coke, Mars bar or a hotdog.
His first paid gig was working in a Frankston butcher’s shop at 11, where he learned to make sausages and pickle pork but, more significantly, the Italian owner taught him the importance of customer service.
According to Brendan, the five customer service basics are:
- Serve them quickly
- Get to know your customer
- Give advice and guidance
- Keep them informed
- Build trust.
Building on the generational attributes outlined earlier by keynote speaker Jill Briggs, Brendan said Millennials in particular – those born 1980-1994 who make up the biggest proportion of consumers – “have a short tolerance for dickheads, people who don’t listen and don’t give them good customer service”.
“They often won’t give you another chance,” he warned.
“They will research the wazoo out of it, they will find somebody else, they will drive further, they will pay more, they will do whatever to get a good experience. Self-service is partly due to poor service but it’s more about efficiency and making (their) own choices. All they want to talk to a human for is to remind them the decision they made from their research is correct.”
Brendan said there was no greater reward in life than helping people, so it was important to try to match potential customers with the product that best suited their needs rather than “selling something” to them.
“Customer service basics are not difficult: answer the email, call or website enquiry,” he said.
“They’ve come to you, so half your job is already done. Serve them quickly, answer their enquiry, get to know them by asking questions so that you can match them with the product as quickly as you can.
“Keep them informed. If you say you’re going to ring them back by two o’clock tomorrow, ring them by two o’clock tomorrow. If you think there’s a chance that you can’t ring by two o’clock tomorrow, say two o’clock Wednesday and ring them by five o’clock tomorrow.
“All of those things put together build trust.”
The next step was to harness the joy of a satisfied shopper and convert them into a lifetime advocate who would share their positive experience with a Google review and help drive ecommerce sales for lawn care products.
Brendan highlighted the increasing role of online resources in the sales process, referring to consumer research that showed:
- 81 per cent research online before buying
- Consumers spend an average of 79 days gathering information before making a major purchase
- 60 per cent of consumers start their research with a search engine
- 92 per cent of people trust recommendations from people they know
- 72 per cent of consumers also trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
- 92 per cent of customer interactions are phone based
- 35-50 per cent of sales go to the vendor that responds first.
He urged growers to make the most of assets such as the myhomeTURF website, which hosts more than 300 educational articles and information about TurfBreed varieties that’s easy to understand.
“People buy for different reasons but create value, build trust, give them great customer service, and the money doesn’t matter,” he said.
“It really doesn’t matter. People love what they love. And they love you making them see value in it regardless of how expensive it is.”