On the road again....Ok here I am on another plane ride home from another speaking engagement in another city. I am reflecting upon the experiences and gifts that I have received over the past 5 days. I have had several meetings with groups of CEOs where spoke on the various foundational beliefs of Building a World Class Sales Organization. I have also had a few sessions with salespeople discussing the importance of Smart Selling to Make an IMPACT in the minds of our prospects, customers, and clients. Finally, today, I ran a three-hour session with about 30-40 customer service professionals entitled Customer Service is NOT a Department!

What have I learned this week?

It may appear on the surface that all three of those presentations would be drastically different because of the varying people in each session's audience. It would seem only logical that I would not discuss the same thing with CEOs as I do with salespeople. And of course I would not discuss the same things with customer service people that I spoke about with the salespeople,or would I?

I have re-discovered this week what some of the best companies in today's marketplace know and use. What is this gold nugget of knowledge? Continuity of message!

Some of the main issues (read: pains) that I hear from CEOs regarding the growth of their companies are that there seems to be separate agendas throughout the individual teams in the organization. It seems that as a company grows, it needs more structure, more support mechanisms. Those mechanisms tend to come up as walls that form between departments. Those walls inhibit communication, permeate separate agendas, and inadvertently breed conflict between groups such as sales and customer service or management and front line staff, or operations and sales...the list goes on.

You want to know who becomes the victim of these breakdowns in communication? THE CUSTOMER!

As I delivered my programs to each of these groups, there was one message that was very consistent throughout all three sessions. That message is that Sales and Customer Service are not Departments! Instead, they are attitudes, they are company cultures, environments, and that they are philosophies by which companies make all of their decisions.

The CEOs to whom I speak regularly push their initiatives throughout their companies as best as they can with vision, drive, and perseverance. They do their best to recruit, interview, hire, train, and develop people that will drive the vision.

The salespeople put on their pants each day to go out into the marketplace and drive new customer acquisition. They fight new battles daily in a marketplace that is full of change. Customers buy differently than they did yesterday. Customers have new expectations of the way that we must communicate, build relationships, deliver value, present differentiation and follow up. The salespeople do their best to stay ahead of that change in the marketplace and drive that top-line revenue.

Our customer service personnel strap on the headsets each day to take the calls from and serve our customers needs. They realize that theirs is a thankless job that should be called the HELP department. The customers have demands upon them that must be met faster and more efficiently than ever. They do their best to live up to the company vision and customer's expectations, as set by the sales force.

I only have one problem. They are not really trying their BEST! They are focused on the wrong things! They are focused on their vision. They are focused on their marketplace. And they are focused on their policies of service. (or lack thereof)

SALES is an attitude that starts with the needs of the customer. CUSTOMER SERVICE is a philosophy that is often discussed but oh so rarely delivered. And it begins and ends with the customer!

The proper view to take of the organization might be one of a wheel (like that of a bicycle) with a series of spokes supported by the hub in the center and providing the structure that keeps the wheel itself round (in shape.) Each one of the spokes represents a department within the organization that is both supported by AND intricately attached to the HUB at the center of the wheel, which is representative of THE CUSTOMER. Each of the spokes must be supportive of the CUSTOMER in every way. It is their common denominator, the reason for their existence. The better job that they do in support of the CUSTOMER, the more sound the shape of the wheel as a whole, which, of course is YOUR COMPANY.

The CEOs need to realize that, as Jim Collins would say in Good to Great, “It is important to get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and to make sure that the bus is heading in the right direction.” If this customer-centric wheel model is realized, the CEO will place more importance on the right recruiting and hiring practices to ensure the right people are put into these roles as SPOKES for support. The CEO will realize that the vision that needs to be driven is done so by customer focused staff.

Once those individuals are brought into the company (WHEEL), the training that will go into the sales and customer service roles must be customer centered. Salespeople would be taught to focus on the needs of the CUSTOMER (the hub) and to open them throughout the sales process rather than to attempt to close them. Training will cease to be transaction focused and begin to take on a value-add relationship focus.

Customer service people will no longer be schooled in the policies of the organization, but rather trained in the customer support and solution based philosophy. They will be trained to be proactive, rather than reactive-to be YES rather than NO! They will be recruited for their skills, hired for their attitude, and trained to meet the needs of the customer.

As Rick Rose wrote in his book How to Make a Buck and Still Be a Decent Human Being, the secret to customer service based empowerment for our people can be summed up in a philosophy including the following 4 questions and 1 call to action:

Is it right for the customer?

Is it right for the client?

Is it ethical?

Is it something for which your are willing to be held personally accountable?

If the answers to all the above four questions is YES, don't ask-JUST DO IT!

So tear down the walls and build up your processes, your systems, your strategies, and your tactics to support that CUSTOMER that is at the center of all of our companies. Failure to do so can and usually does results in the breakdown in the structure of your wheel. That leads to a flat tire and a company that is out of shape, out of round, and out of touch with the marketplace.

What I learned this week is that all of us; CEOs, Salespeople, and Customer Service Professionals alike, need to be more focused on the hub of our universe-the customer! In doing so, our recruiting, our interviewing, our hiring, our training, our sales strategies, our personal development, our marketing, our service standards, our responses, our growth strategies, and our RESULTS will take on an entirely different look. We can and will become a company of legend-a company that is raved about! (in the good way!)

Gerry Layo is the Head Coach/Sales Catalyst for Professional Sales Coach, Inc. and CEO (Chief Energizing Officer) of Layo Enterprises, Inc. in Sacramento, CA. Professional Sales Coach, Inc. is a sales and sales management training orgainization that works with and trains thousands of sales professionals throughout the world each year. Gerry is the author of best selling book, Smart Selling-You Gotta Open 'Em Before You Can Close 'Em. For more information on Gerry Layo and more resources to build your sales career, please visit www.GerryLayo.com or email Gerry at Gerry@GerryLayo.com.

Reprinted with permission. Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

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