BLUM & Linear Consulting hosted

“Creating Customer Engagement that Delivers Loyalty & Revenue Growth.”

In this month’s newsletter, I wanted to share some insights from a recent interactive seminar we ran with BLUM UK focusing on creating dynamic customer engagement. The group comprising of twelve companies from different sectors, worked together, sharing their common challenges and collating their best practice ideas. The link to the attached document summarises some key insights and practical tips from the day to assist in implementing your own highly-effective customer engagement program.

Amanda Hughes the Blum Customer Experience Centre Manager introduced the day by describing the journey they have been on since identifying a need to engage more profoundly with every aspect of their customer network. She told the group how creating the Experience Centre had added real value both to distributors, retailers, installers and customers, enhancing their loyalty and helping drive revenue growth.

One key business driver behind making the investment in the Blum Experience Centre was the realisation that customers didn’t know the ‘WHY’ behind the company’s culture, products, people and passion, everything that differentiates them and adds value to their customers.

Following a review of these Best Practice ideas, Peter Holland and Amanda presented, the theme, ‘How to Create a Customer Engagement Program’. This highlighted some key challenges and pitfalls to avoid, together with insights on how to attract, develop and retain ‘Life-Time’ clients. Then as group we discussed planning the journey and the specific steps to ensure a successful implementation across the company.

After lunch the group enjoyed a tour of the Experience Centre and saw first-hand how Blum have engaged successfully with both their direct distributors, retailers, installers and end-users, enabling them to listen and engage in ways they simply could not have done in a formal meeting environment.

Feedback from the group was very positive and they all enjoyed the opportunity to network and share ideas with like-minded peers together with receiving some fresh ideas and innovative content to develop their own customer engagement programs.

At the conclusion of the day, we were all better informed and enthusiastic to make some positive improvements to our own engagement plans in 2019.

Following the success of these events, next year we will be developing a number of additional seminar themes focused on driving customer value and maximise sales growth.

Peter Holland

In this article, I’d like to share with you some powerful winning strategies to ensure your 2019 business plan gets the results you desire. I’ve used this approach with dozens of companies and seen the dramatic impact it’s had on their performance and results.

In thousands of boardrooms around the world, budgets and business plans are being agreed and finalised for 2019.

Much thought and diligent research has gone into formulating these sales strategies to hit next year’s objectives and financial targets.

The strategy or ‘what we’re going to do’ part is often done very well. But it normally results in a business plan document that is cumbersome and often difficult to communicate and implement easily.

So, here is my question to you.

What have you done to ensure your plan is clearly communicated?

Can it be easily implemented?

Have you answered the question… “How are we going to achieve this?”

This is the question everyone will be asking themselves.

Frequently, over the years I’ve seen companies set new budgets and targets without any real explanation of how the sales team are supposed to deliver them.

This lack of detailed planning is responsible for many good business plans being poorly executed, and producing only mediocre results.

What’s the impact on your business if the sales strategy is unclear?

An unclear sales strategy is Opaque to the rest of the company. Often, it’s so poorly communicated that when you ask the staff, they struggle to articulate it and, as a consequence, they can’t see how their daily actions affect the achievement of key objectives, which leaves them demotivated and disengaged. Not good for productivity or staff retention!

However, there is something far worse and that is a Translucent sales strategy, one where people “think” they understand what needs to be done, but it’s not completely clear. Individuals are left to decide for themselves which path to take to achieve the goal.

This is dangerous as it causes confusion and conflicting approaches!

Only a Transparent strategy that is clearly communicated and fully understood is of true value.

So, how do I create this type of transparent winning sales strategy?

The answer to creating a transparent and pragmatic sales strategy lies in clearly identifying the key sales objectives needed to achieve your business goal.

Then reversing back and selecting the most effective sales activities to achieve these objectives.

Finally, pick some key metrics to measure the chosen activities so you can monitor your progress and keep on track.

The diagram below shows this reverse engineering process, practise using the technique to sharpen your skills.

Here is a R-O-A-M action plan template. This one-page document gives you a clear strategic overview to communicate with your team and a practical action plan to fully implement it.

This is not a dusty business plan but rather a live, working document that you can review frequently to monitor your progress and ensure you are on track to achieve your results throughout the year.

Having this clarity enables you to give your sales team clear direction on how to achieve their sales objectives. You can then manage the team by focusing on the right metrics and predictably link the business results desired in the boardroom with the sales activities on the ground.

Without this direct link, it’s almost impossible to get clarity and control over the implementation of your sales strategy.

It will also stop your sales managers drowning in a sea of data, as it focuses their attention on the few metrics that really matter. Ultimately, you will be on the right track, creating a clear set of operating instructions to drive the sales team to consistently higher performance.

This clarity enables the sales department to join their peers in finance and production as a professional management discipline.

What is the impact for senior management?

Instead of a myopic focus just on results and the analysing of sales figures, senior managers can now get an understanding of how these results were created. This is significant because it empowers them to take corrective actions midcourse through the year if the sales activities are not producing the desired results. As opposed to waiting for an improvement only to find that time is running out and the year’s strategy has not produced the expected results.

A key factor in achieving this high-level of performance is the investment made in the sales management team. The diagram below highlights how the role of the sales manager is pivotal in ensuring that the strategy is well communicated and tactically implemented.

Smart companies are becoming more and more alert to the fact that they need to invest in developing their sales managers and not simply assume they can promote good salespeople to sales management without giving them the required support for a completely different role. By nurturing and growing their talent they are then in a position to multiply their skills, knowledge and experience throughout the team.

So, in a nutshell, I want to encourage you to take action now before the end of this year. If you take your business plan and crystallise it down into a clear R-O-A-M action plan you will be in an excellent place to hit the ground running in Q1.

Communicate this plan to your entire company, let them see the vital role they play in both implementing it and in achieving the company’s 2019 goal.

Develop your sales managers with the tools and skills to successfully implement the plan with their sales team on a daily and weekly basis.

Companies that take the time and effort to do this significantly achieve high sales performance and consistent results month in month out.

It would be great to hear your own thoughts, experiences or questions on the business planning and implementation process, drop me an email at peter.holland@linearstructure.com

Here’s to making 2019 your best year ever!

(original content created in collaboration with Amanda Hughes BLUM.)

The way companies and individuals buy products and services today has changed dramatically. Today, customers no longer want to buy from salespeople they want to speak with experts who can add value and help them quickly achieve their objectives.

Today, instead of salespeople qualifying which customers they want to approach the reverse is more often the case. It’s the prospective customers that are pre-selecting, qualifying and identifying you or your company online before deciding to engage with you.

With this fundamental change in mind it makes sense to re-visit how you view ‘Customer Engagement’ or your ‘Customer’s Journey’.

For many businesses, their interaction with customers is a linear process, where a lead enters their sales system, is provided with a solution/quotation and then the opportunity is either won or lost depending on whether the customer accepts or declines the proposal. But today’s smart companies realise this approach is a wasted opportunity to add value to customers and create life-time clients and consistent revenue growth for themselves.

But to achieve this first, a mind-set shift is required. From one that views engagement with customers as a ‘transactional’ affair that happens on various occasions, to an ongoing continuous cycle. Where engagement can have a series of various points. Ones where the customer can be engaged not just in one area but potentially in several areas all at the same time.

Let’s look at some of these stages in more detail.

How are prospects attracted to you?

In a word, expertise. They are looking for people who are experts in their field to assist them achieve their goals. Publishing your expert knowledge across as many relevant platforms as possible is a vital step in creating awareness and attracting people to you. The possibilities are endless when it comes to writing articles on your website and posting content consistently on social media. Engaging in forums or social media groups where your prospective clients are active and offering to answer questions and give quality advice all help to raise interest in the value you provide.

Smart engagement starts with smart conversations.

When you do interact with your audience is there a strategy? What’s your goal and how is it measured?

Are there any guidelines in place for the team, a common language or a consistent approach?

Salespeople with a focus on differentiating themselves and adding value, start by understanding what exactly their customers want to achieve in their businesses in the next 12-18 months. With this kind of insight, they can then begin to create meaningful solutions and ideas that will support the achievement of the customer’s goals.

Don’t stop once you get the order!

Once your solution or proposal has been accepted the sale doesn’t stop there, it’s just the beginning. Now is the time to really build a quality relationship with your new customer, ensuring they are getting results and fully benefitting from your product or service.

Start developing and protecting.

Once your customer is happy and getting good results consistently, start looking for other opportunities to help them. Are there some additional features or services they could now implement to create additional value? Are there other internal departments or individuals that would see value in the work you have done, that you could extend your help to?

What additional services could you provide that would add value?

One client I know provides an audit service free of charge to their customers to help them optimise their manufacturing process. Another provides support by creating social media content that their customers can use to market their expertise effectively. None of these additional services are directly related to the customer buying more product. However, they are highly valuable to the customer and create brand loyalty anytime the competition come calling!

Leverage the experience.

If you have worked hard and invested time to ensure your customers have received real value and results from your work together, now is the time to leverage it.

So often we could leave a customer who has bought a product or service without asking them if we can create a case study to help other people in a similar situation. Nothing is more valuable to you than their personal testimonial and their referrals to other customers you may be able to help.

This last step of leverage joins the first step of creating interest and attraction, because as you use these valuable case studies and testimonials it drives the circular motion forward continually, generating sales growth consistently.

Avoid the Pitfalls.

However, creating this continuous client engagement is not without its pitfalls so let’s discuss a few to avoid:

Don’t assume you know what your customer’s want.

Ask them how they want to communicate with you. What works best for them?

Do they like it when you pick up the phone?  Do they prefer an email?

Do they like autonomous interaction through your website?

How often would they like to see you in person?

This will be different for different customers so personalise it.

Survey your market, what are your competitors doing in the same sector? How are other sectors approaching communication and engagement?

Data is King.

When you communicate, is it tracked anywhere?

Have you educated your sales team on the information that is valuable and relevant to record in their Customer Visit Report and CRM data?

Do they know what a meaningful insight looks and sounds like when they hear one from their customer?

This is foundational to creating meaningful engagement but often it is overlooked. There is no process to follow everyone is left to decide how this should be done resulting in inconsistent information being captured across the team.

All departments and at all levels.

The engagement needs to be across all departments and at all levels.

You can’t look at communication and engagement in isolated cases, so it needs to be consistent, from David in Sales to Bob in accounts, to Jane in Customer Service. It also should include senior management interaction both with their peers but also with the customers to ensure they have their finger on the pulse!

Create customer teams with an individual from each department allocated to the customer’s account. This allows you to monitor and review success and then deal promptly with any issues on an ongoing basis with the customer across the whole company.

Also, take the time to ensure you have your CRM integrated into all departments so that it delivers ‘one customer view’ this is vital to join all the dots and make the customer feel your service is truly special.

Listening is crucial to understanding their needs, what challenges are they facing, which additional services could be offered to help overcome these.

Involve key partners in decision making, “We are thinking of doing this, how does that feel? Would you benefit?

Amazing Customer Engagement means that sometimes you are in danger of your customers assuming you are available any time any place anywhere.  Be Clear and manage expectations.

How to plan effectively for maximum impact throughout the company.

Do your homework. What is your customer journey now, where are the weak areas, where have successes come from?

Look back at some case studies. Good and Bad examples.

Map out the process clearly so each department seeing where they fit in.

How to ensure it gets implemented correctly.

Set up a working group, all departments, and at all levels so this is not a top down initiative.

Be clear that if it means new policy’s or new procedure that people might not react in the way you intended, manage change effectively and plan for this.

Be clear about the reasoning behind it, what do you hope to achieve by this new way of working, communicate this with the team so they see the value to the customer.

Take a phased approach, don’t go Too big, Too soon. Don’t over promise and under deliver. Small steps consistently implemented will deliver better results.

How can you generate real internal team engagement?

Let them be part of the changing culture, allow them to create it themselves and have input.

Action Steps…

Start work today on improving your customer engagement, publish and share your expertise everywhere you can. Focus your salespeople on discovering their customers key objectives and using this insight to create solutions that directly support their achievement. Support, implement and review continually to make sure customers are getting results.

Leverage your success with case studies, testimonials and referrals to drive momentum and see continual sales growth!