[Cover Story] At our Company 'Sales' is Not a Four-Letter Word

In the old days, loyalty was valued. Customers chose providers and as long as the service was satisfactory, they not only stayed, but often referred the company to friends and associates. But in today’s business climate, where customers can search alternatives online with a few pecks of the fingertips, “satisfied” is rarely good enough. Loyalty has become an undervalued commodity and referrals must not only be earned, but also — to the dread of many service and sales personnel — requested.

It is the mastering of such referral requests by your staff that can help a company not only survive but profit during turbulent times. And, according to Dennis Fox, founder of The Client Development Institute, Reston, Va., and presenter of a standing-room-only “referrals” session at NPMA’s 2008 PestWorld conference, it is a mastering which requires a top-down approach, an earning of the recommendation and changes in company culture as well as individual’s personal belief systems.

Comfortable with sales. One of the most fundamental aspects is the company-wide realization that, regardless of one’s title or position in a company, “it is everyone’s job to sell,” Fox said. In his training programs, Fox emphasizes the concept by defining the terms sales and service. What is sales? “It is fulfilling people’s needs and wants and creating a mutual exchange of value,” he says. What is service? “It is fulfilling people’s needs and wants and creating a mutual exchange of value.”

Linking sales and service into a single definition helps people understand that the two are not contradictory but actually work in tandem to make customers feel valued. And it is this value that helps generate customer loyalty to generate referrals.

It’s not that employees don’t understand the importance or value of referrals, said Ron Helming, sales and management training specialist for Western Industries, Parsippany, N.J. “But it’s because, for a lot of people, there is a disconnect between what they know they should be doing and how they feel about doing it.”

It’s all about getting to the emotional level, the unconscious paradigms, of decision-making and bringing one’s internal belief system in line with intelligent rationalization. “Changing people’s behavior is not an overnight deal,” Helming explained. “That takes time.”

High-profit customers. However, he said, working on such changes is time well spent, even in relation to the cost of time. Compared to money spent on advertising, “referrals are terribly inexpensive.”

“Most of my selling is done off referrals,” said Presto-X Vice President of Sales Ken Christianson, Omaha, Neb. Referrals are a much more productive means of reaching the sale, because they “warm” the calls, make it simpler to get in the door, shorten the selling cycle and provide for a higher closer ratio than even incoming prospect calls, he said. To gain these customers, you don’t have to spend advertising dollars, time on the phone or create marketing programs.

Helming also attests to the warmth of a referral. “If you’re getting referred by somebody who knows somebody, it makes the call that much warmer.”
Noting that at least 10 to 15 percent of the company’s sales comes from referrals, Christianson said that referrals also generate more profitable revenue.“They are better customers; they are more loyal. They are less of a price-conscious client.”

Christianson also agreed that it can be difficult to get technicians to ask for referrals. While much of this is due to the fear of rejection, he said, it is also because they don’t always have confidence in when or how to ask.

As a result, both Helming and Christianson conduct ongoing training and education in requesting referrals to continually reinforce the concepts, emphasize the importance of gaining customers’ trust and develop employees’ confidence.

Five Simple Steps. As such programs are developed, Fox cautioned it is critical that managers see it as a long-term process and cultural change rather than as a “quick fix” or one-shot training program. While it’s not easy to change behavior and maintain a cultural transition, Fox, said, “The process to effect such change is simple — even if it’s not always easy.”

Thus mastering referrals and incorporating to this profitable revenue stream into your organization can be accomplished in five simple steps:

1. Start at the top.
2. Earn the referral.
3. Build a culture of confidence.
4. Train personnel to ask.
5. Ask for the referral.

Start at the Top. It all starts with the buy-in of your management team, an agreement on what is value to your customers, and a commitment to the long-term process and maintaining the change.

Do you really know what is important to customers in this industry; or what makes your company and your service technicians great? Is it on-time service? Elimination of pests? Knowledgeable technicians? Prompt response?

While all are commendable attributes for customer satisfaction, they have also become the general expectation of today’s pest management customer. “Customer satisfaction is now commoditized,” Fox said. “What everyone says makes you a great service company is now the (customers’) expectation.

“No one will spend a cent more because you tell them you will give them ‘good’ service.” In fact, he said, records show that even a customer holding a 96 percent satisfaction rating will switch providers for a few dollars in savings.

Thus, a first step is for management to determine what one’s customer really values; what will generate the loyalty that will inspire referrals?

Internally, management needs to understand the reticence most people have toward asking for referrals. Often this hesitation is based on long-held internal belief systems, which may or may not have a basis in fact.

Overcoming internal beliefs, such as those based on negative perceptions, requires a long-term approach to getting to the root of the belief and changing the paradigm. In addition, the company needs to ensure that it has — or creates — a non-punitive culture, “an atmosphere to grow people’s spirits,” Fox said, in which employees can comfortably learn, take baby steps, make mistakes and grow. Providing such an atmosphere allows employees to open themselves to behavioral changes by which they are not only willing, but are excited to seek referrals. In this way, Fox said, “Loyal employees beget loyal customers.”

Earn the Referral. Before the service provider — company or technician — can begin to seek referrals, the right to ask must be earned. That is, your firm must go “beyond the expected” to offer proactive service and communication.

Beyond the expected would include looking for and communicating areas of need that the customer may not have noticed; paying sincere compliments about the home or business; asking proactive questions — about other needs or future plans; asking “Is there anything else I can do?”

The difference is in the details — how the customer feels about the service you provide. “Satisfied customers receive value,” Fox said. “Loyal customers feel valued.”

Feeling valued is a matter of perception. Understanding what it takes to make your customer feel valued can be as simple as asking. This concept is reinforced by the now-classic book, “Customers For Life” by Carl Sewell, “If you give customers a chance to talk, and if you’re willing to listen, they’ll tell you exactly what’s important to them…The only thing that matters is what the customer wants. And the only way to know for sure what they want is to ask them.”

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From Satisfactory to Valued
Do you provide satisfactory value to your customers or do you go the extra step to make your customers feel valued? To assess your own service, rate yourself honestly on how often you do any of the following extras that clients do not expect.

Sincere compliments — For residential customers, this can be complimenting them on home care, garden or pets; for commercial, it may be family pictures in the office or the business’ great reputation.

Proactively asking if the customer has any special concerns about environmental or safety issues, etc.

Looking for areas or conducive conditions that may have not been noticed around the residence or commercial establishment and tactfully pointing them out.

Asking about other needs or concerns they may have, related to the immediate problem or not. For example, if a customer called about wasps, ask about other potential pest concerns.

Asking about future plans/needs that could be a factor in their decision-making process. (“Are you folks planning to stay here or move in the next year or two?”)

Summarizing any important items on which you’ve agreed, to ensure there is mutual agreement and understanding about their needs and concerns and your service.

Asking: “Is there anything else that we can do for you today?” before leaving.
Adapted from Mastering Referrals During Turbulent Times, Earning the Right to Ask, Part 1, Dennis Fox, www.clientdevelopmentinst.com.

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Culture of Confidence. “Attitude is definitely connected with ability,” Fox said, and both need to be in place for a person to willingly act. Information can be relayed and skills can be taught, but the willingness to act also will be based on how the person feels about taking the action. Thus, the first step in building the confidence to ask for the referral is determining what is causing the person not to ask.

“In order to have a behavior change, you have to get change from inside out,” Fox said. A person can be motivated and really want to take an action, but if there is a voice inside expressing doubt, the insistence of that internal voice can prevent the person from acting. “I could have an emotional short circuit that makes me reluctant to do something I want to do,” he said.

One of the most common objections to asking for referrals is the technician’s response that he shouldn’t have to promote himself — “If I’m good, people will recommend me.” Fox’s response to that: “It is not the clients’ job to volunteer referrals to me. It is my job to let people know who I am and what I do well.”

There are in fact 12 scientifically proven forms of call reluctance, Fox said. Among these are worries about taking social risks; over-analyzing/underacting; reluctance to mix business with friends or business with family; and referral aversion. “But whatever your irrational issue is, it’s irrational because not everyone else has it.” These outward expressions of the issue, however, will generally be an excuse to not act. As Fox says in his class, “Check off your favorite excuse”: It wasn’t the right time, I didn’t want to be too pushy, I was too busy, etc.

Translated to root case, these excuses often boil down to unfounded fears, such as losing standing in the customer’s eyes by asking for something they may not want to give, or legitimate reasons, such as not having a good system/skill set in place to know how to best approach the question.

Once a root cause has been determined, the person needs to be taught how to disengage from the fear. Fox teaches participants to challenge their inner critic by asking themselves four questions:

1. What evidence do I have to support this?
2. What alternatives do I have to refute this?
3. Can I lessen the intensity of this feeling now?
4. What reasonable action can I now take?

“It’s a way to battle your own irrationality,” Fox said. “We invent all these things in our heads.” Once a person has learned to challenge themselves at work, it can translate to all parts of their lives, he added.

But it takes time — it is often said that it takes 28 days to change a habit; whether or not the specific number is accurate, the fact of gradual growth, ongoing change, repetition and belief in the fundamental cause are all important to any lasting behavior change.

Eventually Fox said, people realize that they never had to have any of the negative feelings. “Most of us get stuck because we think we have to feel this way.”

Helming has found the system of challenging internal beliefs to have a great impact on increasing Western employees’ willingness to ask for referrals. “It really does have to do with people’s value system,” he said. By challenging their beliefs in what they are capable of doing, and dealing with their internal dissenters, Helming has found that they are able to break down the barriers that people erect against asking.

One way of challenging these is by bringing them into the open, he said. “The way to get behavior change is to bring it out, talk about it, and get people’s points of view.” Find out what the roadblocks are, discuss how to overcome them.

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Six More Tips for Referral Success

1. Measure results. Asking for even one referral a week is progress and a confidence builder for the service person who had never before taken the initiative to ask. But this self-confidence and willingness to ask can be further expanded by tracking not only performance, but also results. Seeing that his actions have brought an additional $X to the business can encourage an employee to up his level of activity.
2. Be selective. Not every customer will give referrals — or is even a good candidate for referrals. And not every referred prospect will become a customer. Rather, it can be advantageous to follow the “like begets like” idiom and the 80/20 rule of business: Understand that not every company will be a fit for your business, rather focus on your top 20 percent of most-valued, most-profitable customers.
3. Reward Referrals. According to PCT’s message board, many pest companies that seek referrals also give “rewards” — to either or both the employee and referring customer. This could be in the form of a percent of commission or simply peer recognition for the referring employee. For customers, it could be a discount on a future service, a small token or a thank you note.
4. Timing isn’t everything. There is little agreement on the “right” time is to ask for a referral. Some experts recommend the request be made immediately after the sale when the customer is feeling good about the purchase; others say that this is “too much too soon” as the customer has not had a chance to experience your actual service (or product). What virtually all will agree on, however, is that you have to have provided the customer with a value about which he feels delighted, gratified and/or self-valued.
5. Follow Up. Always, always follow up on a referral. You can defeat all your efforts by getting names from a customer then not bothering to follow up with these prospects. Not only will it look like you dropped the ball, but the customer can feel that her trust has been violated if she has told her friend or business peer that you will be calling and you never do.
6. Say Thank You — Again. Even if a customer is rewarded and thanked on-site for his referral, a follow-up thank you note will say volumes about your extra care, and keep the value of your service top of mind for that customer. It may also remind the customer to speak with the referred neighbor or business about you — further warming your call.

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Train Personnel to Ask. Christianson finds that a show-and-tell approach to training works well at Presto-X. In addition to providing examples of wording that can be used, managers go out on customer calls with the technicians and ask for the referral themselves. “We like to do it for our people so they see how it works,” Christianson said. “It has good impact when you can do it in front of people to show them how.”

Providing guidelines for making the request can be helpful for field personnel, Fox said, giving an example of a referral request for current clients. Ask:

• Do you have a few minutes? I would like to get your thoughts and feedback on the service we’ve been providing. (If the client says she doesn’t have time, ask if she’d mind if you take a few moments after your next service. If the client does have the time, continue:)
• Are we meeting your expectations in terms of the service we are providing?
• What do you like most about our service?
• Is there anything we can do better?
  If all answers are positive, continue:
• I would like to offer our services to others [in your neighborhood/in this mall/in this industry]. Who do you know that [may benefit from our service/has concerns about their current service/etc.]?
  (The key, Fox said, is to make it easy for the client by suggesting categories to trigger ideas. A customer who feels valued will want to be helpful, but may not be able to think of referrals off-hand.)
• Thank you! When I call/stop by there, may I mention that we are working with you?

The close should then include a final question as to whether there is anything else that can be done for them, then a final thank you for their business.

Ask! After following the step-by-step process of feeling that one is backed by company support, learning how to ensure your customers feel valued, gaining confidence in oneself to ask and being trained on how to ask — it is now time to act.

In many cases, the trainee will have initiated a referral request prior to going through the entire process, and any such action will serve to increase his or her long-term confidence. But even a baby step at this point is commendable, Fox and Helming agree. “If someone had never asked for a referral and starts asking once a week,” Helming said, “that would be moving the bar.”

As in so many aspects of life, the real key to getting employees to ask for referrals and getting customers to give them is to follow motivational speaker Tony Alessandra’s “platinum” rule, Fox said, “‘Do unto others the way the way they want to be done unto.’ The secret is how we treat the people, how we honor them.”

The author is a frequent contributor to PCT magazine. She can be reached at llupo@giemedia.com.