How to motivate your people to always give great service

Any small business must have engaged and motivated people in order to compete effectively and survive in today’s hyper-competitive market.

Yet business owners are constantly telling me how hard they find this to achieve.

And, as a customer, I’m sure you notice it not being achieved all around you every day!

The systems in ‘Slow Selling’ and my earlier book ‘Great or Poor’ focus on systems to empower you and your people to deliver a consistent and continually improving customer experience … and thereby to grow profits by being more attractive, having a better reputation and having more loyal customers.

And these same systems work to motivate your people to always give great service as well: in two ways.

First: if you use the same systems to guide the way you recruit, target, manage and measure your people, they will feel treated like the best of your customers.

Second: if you use the systems to guide your systems to deliver a consistent and continually improving customer experience, then this is motivational and accountable in itself.

It’s a double-whammy!

But, to give you some actionable information from this blog, rather than just waffle, here’s an exercise, that I’ve used in all my businesses and I teach all my customers to use: it’s called ‘The value of one customer’…

The Value of ONE Customer

The problem with ‘Slow Selling’ is that it costs time and money to do and it usually doesn’t provide an immediate return on spend: so, especially in tough times like these (aren’t they always?), it can get overlooked for other more pressing matters.

But, please consider this research:

  • It’s at least 6 times as expensive to get a new customer through your door as it is to get an existing one to return.
  • Building customer loyalty is ten times more profitable than cutting costs.
  • Bad news spreads many times faster than good news.

Let’s just consider the possible value of one customer:

 Fill in the blanks and use a calculator! 
If you do a great job, consistently, ONE customer may spend per week / month / year
That’s per year!
And they’d use you for years
That’s Lifetime value!
And … if you’re doing a great job, consistently, each customer would refer someone to you times per year
Over years
That’s a total of referrals
At Lifetime Value! (Use the above figure)
That’s a total of Wow!
Plus your original customer’s lifetime value Now you know the real value of ONE customer!
And wait a minute
What about the cost of a bad customer experience? If you weren’t consistent, how likely is it that this will happen? times per year.
And how many customers might be put off by a bad reputation?  
At Lifetime value of ONE customer
That’s how much in total? That’s a big cost you’ve also saved!

And how much does GREAT and consistent customer experience REALLY cost? Some up-front effort, plus about 15 minutes per member of your team per week?

So the ‘Slow Tip’ is: Make sure you recognise the TRUE value to your business of ONE customer: universal knowledge of this figure is one key ingredients that determines your success (or otherwise).

Action Point is: Run through this with all your team, then write up ‘The Value of One Customer’ on a large sheet of paper and pin it to the wall in a prominent place. Then make sure this tip never comes off the wall, takes pride of place in your induction material for all new team members.

Slow Selling is a UK based not for profit organisation for leaders and managers in independent businesses.

Our systems deliver peace of mind and confidence to caring leaders and managers who have limited time and resources, and want to grow their business … all without sacrificing principles or profits.

To find out more, please click here

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