You are here: Home / Archives for Customer Management

Does Your (Potential) Customer REALLY Know What They Want?

September 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A couple months ago, Creo Quality met with a community in Central Indiana to discuss their interests in pursuing life sciences opportunities. The people we met with quickly acknowledged “life sciences” sounds good but they had little to knowledge of this industry or the opportunities available. This community wanted to explore life sciences because of recent economic pain and stagnation of their economy.

We talked about what Creo Quality could do to help them. Heads nodded and the people sitting across from us said “Yes, this is EXACTLY what we need to do.” We also told them how long this would take and exactly how much this would cost. Again, positive affirmations: “Your fee sounds very reasonable. This shouldn’t be an issue.”

Creo Quality provided a proposal, detailing exactly what our approach would be, along with specific deliverables. Follow-up after delivering the proposal was positive still. A couple weeks later, crickets. After playing phone and email tag, I finally talked to a live person. “Yes, we’re still interested. It’s been a busy few weeks, but we should be ready to move forward very soon.”

A few more weeks pass. More phone and email tag. And then, finally, a response:

“Jon – After careful consideration and review of your proposal, we would like to move forward with part of this now. The outcome of this will allow us to carefully consider the next steps we should take. We are willing to pay you less than 1/3 of the original proposal.”

What this potential customer fails to understand (or maybe understands very clearly), the work effort required to give them what they want is way more than 1/3 of the total effort. So we told them no.

Just when I think I’m beginning to understand the Creo Quality sales process, we get this curve ball. From the first conversations with this potential customer, we had every indication to believe the only thing holding this project up was signing on the bottom line. Maybe that should have been a real clue. The other real clue is very obvious now: this community has no idea what “life sciences” really means nor what their place should be in this industry.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Filed Under: All, Community Tagged With: ,

Do You Understand Your Sales Process?

September 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Understanding my sales process has been a long and difficult process. Okay, maybe I still don’t understand it, but I know more today than when I started Creo Quality a few years ago. Here are some things I’ve learned:

  • The sales cycle for Creo Quality services is way longer than I would like. The cycle is at least 6 months and in most cases 12+ months. This means I needed to meet prospects 12 – 18 months ago for business today.
  • It’s worth the risk to approach medical device start-ups who don’t have funding today for the chance that they get funding down the road.
  • Don’t sell services that don’t fit the Creo Quality niche. And I have almost committed this mistake several times in the past 18 months, as recently as last week.
  • Find the pain of the prospect / customer as quickly as possible. And realize what the customer / prospect identifies as their pain is seldom the true source.
  • Sometimes it is better to walk away, even if the customer needs fit our niche.
  • The relationship with the customer almost always peaks at the beginning of the relationship.

So many businesses truly understand their sales process. Most don’t have a process either. Do you understand your sales process?

Enhanced by Zemanta
Filed Under: All, Strategy vs. Tactics Tagged With: , , ,

Why Do Customers Buy From You?

September 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I like to believe that our customers hire us to help them bring their medical products to market. Further, I like to believe they are leveraging our expertise in business development, operational efficiency, and project management.

But are these the reasons our customers hire Creo Quality?

I believe customers hire us because of our experience and customer service. You hire us because we’re upfront and honest–even if the news isn’t warm and fuzzy. You hire us to help facilitate and bring different functional groups within your organization together.  You hire us because we get things done.

Why do your customers buy from you? Chances are they aren’t buying the exact products and services you are selling. They are buying something you probably don’t know about. Want to find out? Ask them.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Filed Under: All, Misc Tagged With: , ,

Thank You Angela 407125

December 23, 2009 By Leave a Comment

We had a disaster at our house earlier this week. One of our satellite receivers is not working. We called the customer service number to get this resolved. They really need to change the name of this to “we’ll kinda help you but not fix your problem”. It’s one of those automated systems. You know the kind: “Thank you for calling. Please state the problem you are having.” After several attempts and several minutes, they finally get us connected to a live person.

The customer service representative did her best to help us, but could do no more. She put us on hold for several more minutes and connected us with another department. Another customer service representative (Angela 407125) was very patient and tried to be helpful. I was a bit upset–okay, angry. I took it out on her. Definitely the wrong thing to do. So I asked for her supervisor and told him that Angela did a great job being calm and trying to difuse the situation.

But while talking to the supervisor, the other satellite receiver which was working just fine prior to the call, stopped working. He had to transfer me back to Angela. (Oh, and I did apologize to Angela for my behavior and told her she is doing a good job.)

After several more minutes of troubleshooting, being put on hold, and more troubleshooting, Angela could not help. She is sending the solution (gosh, I hope) overnight. In summary, prior to calling customer service, we had one good and one bad receiver. After the call zero good and two bad.

I don’t blame the representatives. They are doing the best the can to help people like me. I imagine they get to hear a lot of grief and anger from people. But I do blame their customer service process. It’s terrible for customers. The call lasted nearly 40 minutes, solved nothing, and might have created additional technical issues.

Unfortunately, this example is all too common today. I think customer service is a lost art. Is any business out there working on fixing this?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Filed Under: All, Misc Tagged With: , , ,