The Problem of Service

The Problem of Service

No discussion of marketing challenges in sales would be complete without mentioning the problem of service. In many industries, service levels tend to decrease as volume rises. When the market is slower, everyone competes for the business at a feverish pace, motivated to action by fear and increased competition. As the market starts to gain momentum, service levels become strained. Order volumes swell and customers begin searching for other options, hoping that changing companies will resolve their need to have phone calls returned promptly and to have a less apathetic service level. Then as the market takes a breather, sales people and sales managers point to the constant outflow of customers that occurred which causes market share to remain stagnant, existing customers to leaving for greener pastures as they are being replaced by new customers. At the end of all of this, the company is left in a similar market share position where it was in the beginning, only with different customers.

Creating consistent service levels is a group effort. Operations and Sales must be service driven and embody a customer-oriented work habit. Sales people must communicate with operations and customers, facilitating service level improvements. Sales managers need to be cognizant of service level fluctuations and help the sales force to communicate these fluctuations to the marketplace, while informing escrow and county managers about potential service weaknesses. When all these things work in systematic unison, service levels tighten and customer attrition slows.

The successful sales manager is one who defines themselves and their company as different, builds a knowledgeable sales force, creates and implements accountability systems, and actively participates in the evolution of service levels. This is an extremely difficult set of tasks in many industries with little to no existing resources for sales managers.

The Problem of Accountability

The Problem of Accountability

Any comprehensive list of the consistent frustrations of many sales managers would have to include the problem of accountability. In many ways, the lack of the ability of sales managers to track and grade performance could be considered the largest inefficiency in the marketing arena of the title business. Too often, sales people focus on entire offices rather than specific target customers, or fill out general call sheets rather than activity-driven tracking reports. It is physically impossible to gauge a sales person’s actual performance without activity-specific business plans and individual target lists. These tools provide insight into a sales person’s strengths and weaknesses and provide aid to sales managers in both market share forecasting and profit projections. When sales people are held accountable to the right activities, their efforts yield more focused results.

Accountability is a difficult discipline in an industry where business originates from so many possible areas. It is sometimes difficult to determine whether a business development officer, a sales person, or some other activity brought in a deal. More importantly, it is difficult to determine who controls a customer over long periods of time as the customer becomes attached to many people and services within an operation. Long-term efforts to secure customer loyalty are hard to track and difficult to quantify, causing many managers to live in fear of a seasoned sales person’s departure. Accountability systems solve this challenge by giving sales managers the ability to measure results, both short and long-term.