There are many merits of having loyal customers; they purchase more – and more often – than comparatively fleeting customers. Moreover, you don’t have to spend as much money to convince them to buy from you. Therefore, they can prove the lifeblood of a thriving business; however, it is not always obvious how a loyal customer base can be built up. Salesmanship can play a big part…

Spread the ethos of customer care throughout your company

It might not surprise you that your customer service is powerfully influential on how loyal your customers are. Thus, many of the hallmarks of good customer service – such as dealing with unhappy customers calmly and keeping in touch with customers – can go some way towards cultivating stronger loyalty in customers. Better still, they could often recommend your company to other people – and, as a result, help your firm not only sustain itself but also grow.

You could even get to know your customers personally, Entrepreneur advises. Most customers react very positively to this. Your efforts here could extend to knowing that a particular customer has a cat and, whenever in contact with this customer, asking how the cat is doing.

What you might not have realised, however, is how far-reaching customer service can be within your business. You shouldn’t just leave the responsibility of this service to a specific department labelled “Customer Service”; instead, you should be “organising your entire business to focus on the needs of customers” says Marketing Donut.

Should salespeople really be customer service professionals as well?

The short answer to that question is: of course! All staff who are regularly in touch with customers ought to know how to look after them effectively. Being at your company’s front line, this staff must always be professional and efficient in their image.

As staff that often contact customers include salespeople, they should be aware of how to listen to customers and so enable themselves to use intelligence, not aggression, to seal sales. There are simple ways that you can encourage a higher standard of customer care in your sales team. These include leading by example. It is also a good idea to utilise positive reinforcement by giving rewards when customer service is excellent.

However, to inject more customer service nous into your salespeople, the right kind of sales training could help. This could also be useful if you want your customer service personnel to learn sales skills. Thankfully, in either situation, we have training that can help.

Why our training can be very useful

At this point, you might be worried about even putting “customer service” and “sales” in the same sentence. Couldn’t customer service teams too easily come across as pushy “sellers” after being put through sales training? This is a common concern among businesses; however, it is possible for your personnel to learn selling techniques that they can use without compromising the quality of their customer service. Rest assured that our training in sales and customer service can encourage this.