Listen to the Voices In Your Head: It's Your Customer

Is that little voice in your head telling you something? Maybe you should listen.

I am not talking about the voices who tell you that you are really and alien prince or that you want to be a vampire and spend your life playing ball with Edward….

I am talking about the little voice that comes over your headset when you are doing monitoring with your reps. It’s the customer and he’s telling you something.

We all do monitoring, although not nearly enough. Most of the time it is to help coach reps on how to improve their calling techniques. We focus on openings. Did they get past the gate keeper? Did they talk too much about features and not benefits? Did they advance the process forward or just let it languish? This is great, but don’t miss the opportunity to hear what your customers are telling you.

Take time to listen to the customer. Listen to a series of calls on a campaign or call blitz and don’t listen for the rep, but listen to the customer. Is he telling you that cash is tight and there is no budget? Did he tell you that if he could only reduce the time it takes for raw materials and components to become shipped goods by 10 percent he’d be a hero?

Did the customer give you hints about how he perceives your product or service? Is it as a commodity: He knows what he wants and what he should pay? Or, does he need you to help him understand what he needs and what it will cost? Is he telling you something about your competition or lack thereof?

All this is great information, but what do you do with it. I suggest a three stage approach.

First, just start listening to calls yourself or with your team leads. Weed out the good, the bad and the ugly. Figure out what information is helpful and what is just customer rantings. Try some small tests with your team in a controlled environment to see what happens.

Take it to the next level: Build a process. It doesn’t need to be a complicated 5 level Visio document supported by a $100K software implementation. A simple one that gathers specific information and shares it with key stakeholders is most effective. It should be repeatable and adjustable.

For example, at my previous company one of my top Sales Managers led a weekly review with the Demand Gen and Marketing teams of key calls relating to the campaigns that were in play. It was scheduled for every Wednesday at a specific time. The manager prepared a set of 5 to 10 calls they could listen to and the team reviewed them and discussed the implications to messaging strategy, offers and potential next steps. The result was a drastic improvement in quality of campaigns, campaign messaging and alignment around goals and objectives.

Third step: add more structure by looking at what specific elements you want to review. Week 1 could be competitive information: Week 2 offers; Week 3 messaging. Invite the stakeholders from marketing, vendor management, demand gen or vendors themselves, to help improve calls and messaging. Make sure that stakeholders have accountability for improving something and bringing something to the table. There can be no passive players. Marketing should come with specific questions around messaging: Demand Gen Services about tactics and vendor management about the quality of leads adherence to BANT. Everyone is an owner, no benchwarmers.

I strongly recommend linking it to any learning plans or systematic improvement initiatives you might have in place. Have a road map and direction in mind and use these reviews as a check of progress. Document progress and share with other organizations to replicate the best practices.

Now what? Get started. Take the initiative and have a pizza lunch to listen to calls. Learn about what those little voices are trying to tell you and build a systematic way to share it with your colleagues. No one will think you are crazy for listening to voices – you may even become and evil genius customer advocate!!!!