Change the customer conversation!
My husband Bruce and I once visited a Toyota dealership to buy a car. The salesman greeted us and immediately brought us to a glass case containing five trophies. They were President’s awards given only to dealerships where all salespeople received a score of 5 out of 5 points for service excellence for every customer all year.
He said, “We have won that challenging award for 5 years in a row, and we want to win it again this year; I don’t want to blow that record. So, if at any point in our dealings together, I do something that would cause you to give us less than a 5 on our evaluation, please tell me immediately so I can correct it.”
This changed everything! He set the expectation of what he wanted to provide and what we should do to ensure he provided it. Not only that, but it made us feel comfortable telling him if something didn’t measure up. What usually happens is that when something troubling happens, customers don’t feel comfortable confronting the salesperson about it. So they leave without buying and we never know why. Or, when the evaluations come out – THAT’s when we learn about what happened – too late for us to do anything about it.
So, ask your customers what will cause them to be WOWed. You’ll be surprised at how often you can hit the mark when you get customers involved early in the conversation to help ensure that you provide them with WOWs that are meaningful to them… and create a win-win situation for everyone involved.
