Success - The Quality of Our Professional Role

The Succes of Winning Customers

The coin of quality has two sides. One side is the quality built into the product or service. The other side is the quality of the sales experience as perceived by the customer.

Too often, we think only of the first dimension of quality - that which is intrinsic to the product or service itself. This leads to thinking that quality is the responsibility of someone else in the organization. The customer's perception of quality is the responsibility of the sales professional. This responsibility includes everything we do in our relationship with the customer, more importantly building rapport and trust, as well as efforts to improve the performance quality of the product or service we sell.

As the person most frequently in contact with the customer, the salesperson has the responsibility of acting as as data conduit from and to the customer. Our credibility with information receivers gets tarnished when we transmit only opinions. What counts are data.

Data are useful not only within our won organization but also in discussions with the customer. The performance of the entire successful relationship is how the customer rates the quality of his or her experience.

To achieve the highest level of quality for customers, you must have quality relationships within your organization. This requires the following type of relationship thinking:

• Internal customers. Everyone delivers a prodcut or service to someone else. That someone else is a customer.
• Involvement. Everyone is involved on quality because everyone has a contribution to make.
• Teamwork. Input is sought from teams, and contributions are made by teams. Individualism is out. Teamwork is in.

The more you understand about how quality is achieved, the better you are able to sell your product or service in a meaningful terms to the customer.

Sales quality starts with finding out what the customer wants. What the customer wants keeps changing; the road to sales quality has no end. Quite simply, quality is whatever the customer says it is.