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ARTICLE
Just today I received another e-mail asking if I would like to attend a sales masterclass. I’m bombarded with e-mails, Facebook adverts, LinkedIn pop-ups - there is a huge amount of content out there on how to be a sales machine. A quick check on Amazon tells me that 20,000 books available to purchase match with the search term ‘sales’. That’s a lot of written word about sales, and I have no doubt that a lot of this content could help you and your business to achieve more sales. However, I’d like to ask you a question: do you like being sold to? No. Didn’t think so.

I’ve known some of the best sales people to have ever graced a sales floor - from people who have become overnight stars who crashed and burned just as quickly, to those who sustained long careers as Sales Managers, people who were just as successful but over a much longer time span. I consider myself to be a sales person, have had many significant successes over the years, and have been lucky enough to learn from some of the brightest minds. Indeed, my employers back in my banking days were more than happy to send me on plenty of sales courses - anything that meant I could make them more money!

Yet, despite all these years spent learning the ropes, being taught about the sales process from multiple angles: how to open, how to close, use of body language and voice tones, not to mention all the sexy one liners you hear about, the one subject that I keep returning to as a starting point is customer service. For me, there is a cart and horse principle at work here - without brilliant customer services skills, any sales person will fail. Yes, they might get that sale, but how long does Mr or Mrs ‘gift of the gab’ last? And do their sales numbers stick?

A huge revolution in banking sales came when my employers started to measure retention. All those ‘sales stars’ suddenly found their numbers were different to what they were used to. You can sell all the bank accounts, mortgages, credit cards in the world, but if they remain unused 6 months after opening - well, there wasn’t a need for the service in the first place. So it was a bad sale. And therefore, didn't count!

For me, customer service is the horse that should come before the cart - great customer service will drive great sales - always. It will ensure that your customer not only signs up, but wants to buy from you so much that they will want to buy more, and will want to tell their friends to buy from you, they will have an active interest in your doing well. Instead of you selling, your customer is buying, and that’s a very different proposition. Because we all like to buy stuff, don’t we? More importantly, we like to buy stuff from people and brands we like and trust. This is all very obvious and yet the same search on Amazon for the keywords ‘customer service’ will produce about 5% of the number of books. This is crazy. If you don’t get the basics of customer service right, you will not achieve as many sales, nor retain customers, let alone convert them into ambassadors for your brand who will recommend your services to their family and friends.

In order to get customer service right, you need to focus on how you present yourself, and your business, to every customer. And, crucially, every potential customer. Every single person you serve is an opportunity to get customer service right. This is also true of every single person you come into contact with. The number of stories I have been told of poor customer service over the years, by people telling me what they did in certain situations who were actually proud of their negative approach, beggars belief.

Within months of starting my career as a DJ, I was told “You’re the best DJ I’ve ever seen”. Indeed, my first ever booking (a kid’s party) generated another booking within a week from a parent who stayed. And yet, looking back, I know that by the measure of what us DJs call ‘DJ skills’, I was terrible. I doubt I was even the best DJ in the room at any of my early parties! But what I am good at, what I have a proven track record in, is customer service. Hopefully this article will give you an insight into my approach. My aim is to give you a framework to use for checking how well you interact with the people who have the potential to change the success of your business.

THE 4 PILLARS

I have organised my approach to customer service into 4 pillars:

- Choose to be there
- Be present
- Always on stage
- Reflect your customer

CHOOSE TO BE THERE

The first pillar of customer service starts the moment you walk out of your front door in order to set off to work. First of all, you have to go to work, of course. For many different reasons you may not actually want to be doing that. It could be that you have worked a lot lately, and that you’d rather have a night in at home. Or you may have one of ‘those’ customers, you know the type. Perhaps it’s a venue you don’t enjoy going to, a horrible sound limiter, an F&B Manager who loves to bark orders at you, I’m sure you can think of many more reasons yourself.

But you are the entertainment – and very often, much more besides. Your attitude is fundamentally crucial to the success of your business. Be the most positive person you can be, decide to be in work mode, and show the world how utterly incredible you are. You have to be there, so no matter what, be there in all your brilliance.

And leave that Facebook forum negativity behind! “Yes sir, I know you’re running late, I’ll do my best to set up as quickly as possible so that you can get some of the lost time back.” [Not: “My contract says I need an hour to setup so you’ll have to wait for me."] “Yes ma'am, I have a charger for that phone, leave it with me" (or "no ma'am, I’m really sorry I don’t have a charger for that otherwise I would help"). [Not: “It’s not my job to charge your phone!”.] “Oh, silly me, I went to the toilet, came back and there’s a drunk person behind my decks. Why don’t we have some fun with that?” [Not: “Get out from behind my expensive gear before I turn the music off and ruin the party”.] All of these scenarios I have seen discussed ad nauseam on Facebook forums with most responses ranging from things that will definitely ensure they won’t be getting a repeat booking / referral to potentially causing them to end the night in a cell! Your attitude is crucial to how people see you, get that right, and you win friends.
The full review can be found in Pro Mobile Issue 99, Pages 48-52.
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