…is to hear what isn’t being said.
-Peter Drucker

We have assessed hundreds if not thousands of salespeople and the vast majority of them are extroverted in some form (High I being the most common). We have also assessed a handful of purchasing/financial employees who tend to have introverted tendencies (High S or High C being the most common).

I mention this because selling, at its most basic level, involves good communication. Yet there is a natural problem that surfaces when a High I salesperson attempts to sell a High C purchasing/financial/operations person — their 2 styles are the worst possible communication match there is.

The High I salesperson wants to build rapport, be personal and discuss business at some point. The High C buyer wants to jump straight into business, gather volumes of data and go through an extended question and answer session (they question, salesperson answers).

The High I salesperson is trusting and can be emotional. The High C buyer is skeptical and remains analytical.

I could go on, but you get the point. This example provides an extreme mismatch of styles, but each style has its own selling triggers that the salesperson can incorporate into their sales process to clarify their communication. Clearer communication leads to better qualifying and, typically, shorter sales cycles.

As part of our evaluation process, we provide your salespeople with a 1 page Selling Style sheet to assist them in reading and adjusting their style to their prospect’s preferred method of communicating.

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BusinessWeek.com with an article written for me – How to Write an E-Mail Cover Letter. If you have read The Hire Sense for some time, you know I have a weakness for poorly-worded cover letters. This quick Q&A article provides a good intro answer:

Skip the cover-letter attachment, and turn your e-mail message into a cover letter. A great cover letter shares a bit of your background but mostly talks about the company’s need (for a marketing research manager, an actuary, or whatever) and describes why your experience is perfectly suited to the opportunity. One paragraph is the perfect length.

I couldn’t agree more with that advice. However elementary this sounds, checking for spelling errors and proof-reading the text is critical.

To see what happens when those two items are ignored click here.

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Starbucks card brings sales reward caught my eye first because I have a tremendous coffee addiction and read almost any article I find regarding coffee shops. Second, there is an amazing statistic inside of the article:

Most major retailers have been offering gift and loyalty cards for years, but industry observers say few have seen so many of their customers hang on to them as long, use them as often and reload them as regularly as they do at Starbucks.

Almost one in eight customers pays with a Starbucks card these days, Stark noted. About 96 million Starbucks cards have been activated in the United States and Canada since November 2001, and customers have reloaded their cards about 38.6 million times, bringing in $2.17 billion in revenue.

1 in 8 customers use a loyalty card at Starbucks. Now that is customer loyalty. The stat would not be as notable except that the company has brought in over $2 BILLION in sales in the past 5 years through this payment option. $4 lattes certainly help reach that statistic, but the program is an obvious success.

When we define a sale in our hiring process, one of the key pieces of information we collect is expected customer retention rate. Obviously, most companies target 100% retention, but that is rarely the case. Understanding the retention rate is only the first step in understanding the company’s customer focus.

The second step is to understand if the salesperson is responsible for the daily/monthly/yearly interactions with the customer to maintain the account. No salesperson can walk away from any customer they close, but their level of interaction with the account clarifies the amount of time they can spend chasing new prospects vs. servicing existing customers. If the customer is handed over to an inside team, their abilities to maintain and expand a customer account must also be considered.

Customer retention is a multifaceted, complex aspect of any business. Starbucks employs a wildly successful program to retain their valued customers in a highly competitive market. What programs, teams or strategies does your company employ in not only keeping, but expanding your existing customer revenue stream?

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