Although keeping a sales promise is necessary to improve customer service, many people in business experience the problem of being able to make it happen. Most of the entrepreneurs I have dealt with think that it takes a million dollar investment in infrastructure to achieve this; hire more staff, transportation equipment, or raise your inventories. But the reality is different.
The key to fulfilling a sales promise lies not in creating more infrastructure, but in making smart sales promises; promises that your business can fulfill.
For example, if you have a car repair business and tune a vehicle in an average of six hours, you should not promise the customer that it will do it in four hours, because this would be like having a sales strategy with the motto: try our service and…. be disappointed.
Although less and less, there are still some micro and small companies that fail to fulfill a promise to sell, and this can be explained for the following reasons:
- ? They do not know their real responsiveness and limitations. They make sales promises without analyzing the limitations of the business based on their previous sales. Many entrepreneurs think that if they promise what they can actually deliver, customers won't buy there because the competition has better response times or because the competition makes more attractive promises (even if it doesn't deliver).
It is important for you to know that clients do not evaluate real time, but compare against the promise made; To resolve potential problems in keeping your promises, review the following examples:
Case 1: The customer enters his auto repair business and the manager promises to tune his vehicle in three hours. The client shows up to pick up his vehicle on time, but it takes two hours before it is delivered. Result: After missing two hours, the customer is disappointed with the service they received.
Case 2: The client presents himself to the business and the manager, thinking that a tuning is done in about six hours, promises to deliver his car in six hours. When the client shows up to pick it up, he only waits a minute (to be charged and receive his keys). Result: The customer is satisfied, as the promise of sale was fully fulfilled.
Despite the fact that in appearance for the client it is less than five hours than six, the truth is that the latter will only evaluate that he did not have to wait, or that he lost two hours of his valuable time. After long talks with various clients I have corroborated that in most cases they do not refute the promises of sale, since they are not the experts in the field and can understand that the times vary according to various circumstances (pending work, technology, inventories, etc.).
What is clear is that a customer will take into account the promise of service to plan their next purchases and, since today time becomes scarcer, the fulfillment factor becomes more important, since fulfilling the correct and timely promise will allow you to optimize your time.
Best of all, by managing your customers' expectations at your convenience, not only can you meet them, but you can manage them in such a way that you can even exceed those expectations. How to do it?
- Get the idea that to make a promise that suits you, it must take more time than usual, because the analysis must be conscientious. Identify average times (manufacturing, delivery, limitations, personnel, equipment, infrastructure, etc.). Once you know your average times consider extra time for unforeseen events. It is preferable to exceed the expectations of three clients and only reach those of one, than to reach the expectations of three and disappoint one.
Keep track of each sales promise to find out which customer you should consider the longest and achieve what you promised. Try to carry out these recommendations; You will see your promises begin to be fulfilled, your customers will notice better service, and your sales will multiply.
