Your Next Sales Conference - Customer Experience

3 Big, Impactful Ideas for Your Next Sales Conference Part II: The Customer Experience

This is the beautiful Chateau Elan in Braselton, Georgia, where we recently held an annual Sales Conference that I spoke at and facilitated. Boy, do they ever understand how to create memorable Customer Experiences! I had occasion to use their conveniently located Business Services desk on several occasions, and there was none of the usual fuss of logging in, having extra charges posted to the room for printing or computer use, or any of that nonsense. I was always met with a smile and a cheerful and immediate helping hand for whatever I needed.

In this blog post I’ll share the second AHA! Moment from the conference, and in the next blog post I’ll share the 3rd.

The second AHA! Moment: Fine-tuning Every Step of the Customer Experience:

Creating a wonderful Customer Experience is one of the best ways to differentiate your product or service in a crowded market space, by being the path of least resistance, by creating feel goods, or by solving real problems and providing peace of mind. Customers can’t NOT have an experience! It can only be bad, bland, or good, so why not make it good every time?

We introduced the reps to the concept of “Staple Yourself to the Experience” by illustrating how value is created or destroyed at every interaction… from the time a customer goes looking for the product, to the buying process (through a dealer in this case), to the order/follow-through/shipment/delivery process, to finally enjoying the product and telling others about it. The fancy term for all those steps is the Value Chain, but we made it fun and funky by having the reps circulate to each “stage” and brainstorm opportunities for improvement.

Not only was it a high-energy, but 5 solid implement-right-away experience improvement ideas surfaced, and many, many more were captured by our faithful scribes for subsequent evaluation and implementation. A Sales Support resource will be streamlining them into an ongoing series of small improvements, and the reps will continue to be motivated and involved via a quick monthly conference call where they’ll help fine-tune the concepts.

Powerful Team Building and Accountability: Once again, the reps saw how they could directly make a difference in how their products are perceived in the marketplace by creating better experiences at the front end, and how the customer service team (who attended the conference) really supported them on the internal side to create great experiences. In the case of the customer service team, most of them had never met the reps until this session, so some powerful team bonding occurred, with a commitment that the reps and customer service folks would both make each others’ lives easier by providing great experiences at every step of the way. It all adds up to competitive advantage and making it easier to succeed!

Resource: Pick up a copy of my book, Profit In Plain Sight for less than $25 and read the chapter on the Staple Yourself to the Experience to create your own AHA! Moment. If you’d like me to speak at your next Sales Meeting or Annual Conference, simply reach out to Speaking@AnneCGraham.com or go to Book a Keynote for more information.

Question: How do you create lasting team building and mutual accountability to success at YOUR sales meetings?