Are you meeting your client's expectations?
It Starts with Your Client’s Expectations.
When a client agrees to be your client they have a reasonable expectation that you will help them take care of their needs.
They expect your team to be the experts. Which includes identifying risks and opportunities the client may not even know exists.
To fulfill this expectation, your entire team must identify client risks and opportunities. Too often, this is deemed as a task reserved for your sales positions, but it’s your service team that’s often talking to clients.
It’s the service team that hears when a client is moving, changed jobs, has a new grandchild, or many other life events that could create a risk or opportunity. Thus, your entire team must understand that fulfilling clients’ needs and wants is a priority. We call this Service through Selling.
While Service through Selling can lead to additional sales, its core is understanding that your agency has the accountability to listen, ask questions, and take action on any risk or opportunity they uncover. The action that is taken must ensure that someone on the team educates the client on the risk/opportunity and allows the client to make a decision.
How does an agency owner instill a Service through Selling mindset with the entire team?
- Challenge Your Team's Point of View - It requires a productive point of view for everyone on the team to see selling as serving clients. If they see it negatively, your client may have risks or opportunities that are not addressed. Your team should view Service through Selling as a way to care about your clients.
Tip - If you want your team to adapt a Service through Selling mindset you must first communicate your expectation that everyone is responsible for identifying risk and opportunities with clients.
- Train on Service through Selling - Train your team to listen, ask questions and take action. Your team must learn to listen for the life events that allow them to ask questions about the risk or opportunity. Once they understand the risk or opportunity, they need to be trained to take the correct action. The correct action has to take into account licensing and regulations as well as your business model.
- Keep Service through Selling Alive - Use emails, team meetings, and individual conversations to keep Service through Selling a part of day-to-day work. If your team doesn’t talk about Service through Selling it won’t be top of mind. There are many distractions and service work that will take over.
Tip – Have non-sales team members share success stories of how they identified a financial gap or risk and what they did to build a more solid relationship with the client.
Service through Selling isn’t something you implement just to sell more. It’s what you implement to provide consistent and exceptional service. It builds relationships, shows that the agency cares enough to listen, protects clients from risks and allows them to maximize opportunities.