Business Tip: Street Smarts - It Takes a Company

If your best salesperson leaves, how do you make sure you don't lose your best customers, too?

A while ago, I received a message from a reader that brought back some bad memories. He wrote: "I know you believe that, if you run your business right, departing salespeople shouldn't be able to take your customers with them. So what am I doing wrong? I give our project managers and salespeople a lot of freedom to serve customers. After a year or two, the employees walk off with the account. Each time, I get the same feeling in my stomach that I have when I receive a letter from the IRS."

Developing that kind of esprit de corps took some time. For openers, we had to make sure the salespeople understood the inner workings of the business. So we had them spend time inside the business, answering customer questions on the phone and putting boxes on shelves. New salespeople didn't do anything else for the first six to eight weeks after they were hired. By the time they finished their training, they knew the whole operation and could explain to a customer exactly what happened in every area of the company. What's more, they knew the operations people personally and understood what each person did to contribute to our success.

As the barriers between departments broke down, something interesting began to happen: Employees throughout the company became more visible to customers. The salespeople played a key role here, often bringing operations people on sales calls. As a result, when customers had issues they wanted to discuss, they didn't have to contact the salesperson and then wait for him or her to come back with an answer. They could go directly to the employee or executive who could give them the answer right away. Granted, the customers usually had a closer relationship with their salespeople than with other employees, but the customers knew that servicing the account wasn't the salesperson's job. If there was a billing problem, they went to the accounting department. If they needed to talk about storage or delivery issues, they called the operations person. If they had a question about their contract, they got in touch with me or Louis Weiner, the company president.

When that happens -- when customers see the business as a whole -- the danger of losing them to a departing salesperson goes away. Not that they will necessarily stay with you forever. You still have to give them great service and do it at a price that keeps you competitive. But they aren't going to leave just because a salesperson moves to another company. It has been many years since we lost a salesperson to a competitor, but if we lost one today, I wouldn't worry for an instant about him or her taking customers along. Our customers know that their satisfaction depends on a team of people. No matter how close they may be to the salesperson in question, they are going to say, "Well, I hope you're happy at your new job, but I don't know these new people you're with, and I do know the people at CitiStorage. They do a great job for me. Why would I leave?"

Source: Norm Brodsky in Inc. Magazine.