THE commercial approach if you want your client service to sell more.
Part 1.
Client-facing companies are always under pressure to hit a target.
It inevitably leads to conversations including sentences such as:
“We need more proposals out”
“How is our forecast looking this quarter?”
“These clients are a big opportunity for us to cross-sell our other services to”
“New Client Acquisition is a priority for the business this year”
Results-focused, proactive, conversations. And perfect to have with those teams who are sales professionals – the BD’s, SDR’s, Sales Enablement and so on.
But, what about the rest of your potential sales force, all those that are client facing? Try motivating client service teams by focusing on these types of discussions and you won’t get very far. And here’s why:
They are fundamentally different in focus and priorities. They are also different as people.
But the challenge remains. You need both your sales and client service teams to contribute to growth. The question therefore is, how do you drive motivation in client service teams to go out there and proactively do this?
Before we answer this, we need to back up a bit, and explore the cause.
Client service, and also related technical teams, are brilliant at delivery but historically been less focused, and therefore now less experienced, at developing accounts. This is because:
They previously weren’t asked to, or recruited to, do it.
Simple preference. Their preference is to deliver great work, not necessarily focus on finding it.
Client-facing companies are now pushing against these preferences more and more by asking these teams to cross-sell, grow contracts, retain higher numbers of clients, find new people in the client to speak to and so on. It’s now a critical element of any business plan, and it’s now a real challenge to resolve.
Now, not to be too dramatic about it, but we’ve found the solution.
At 4twenty2 we have been working on bringing these two seemingly contradictory positions together for the past fifteen years. We’ve helped thousands interact with clients in a way that enthuses and builds habits for the team and is welcomed by your clients.
This thinking has now been distilled into a fundamental approach that underpins everything we do. And we want to share it with you.
It is called Unified Commercial Excellence, UCE:
Unified: All your client-facing people are energised to be commercial, because this is what your buyers want you to be
Commercial: Becoming a go-to agency by guiding your buyers to the right solution that leads to greater success for them and you
Excellence: Everyone following simple frameworks to be consistently brilliant with clients, meaning a win-win outcome every time
This works for anyone who works with clients. It works because clients see and feel the difference (and like it), and client teams feel energized by it.
It’s also the perfect time to evolve your approach in this way. This is because the way clients are buying has fundamentally changed during the last five years. The ways client-facing companies can now interact with clients, through multiple channels, has grown. No longer is it as daunting for client facing teams to develop their commercial skills. There is huge potential for these people and we’re hugely excited by it!
The great thing for Client Service people is that it’s also easy to get started. We want to kick it off with just two simple steps that will get them in the right position to start unlocking that potential:
Step 1: Knowledge.
Simply knowing that their clients want them to be commercial, but in the right way. In fact, clients would be disappointed if they weren’t.
Give them that fact and it gives them implicit permission to be braver, bolder and look at things differently.
Step 2: Moving position
Armed with that piece of knowledge, which is confidence-inspiring in itself, they will be able to move position to one that their clients will be delighted with:
These are a couple of steps to get you started on the journey.
We’ll be sharing a lot more about this over the coming weeks and months. As always though, feel free to drop us a line to find out more.