Every business, regardless of its niche, needs to continuously refine its sales strategy. This refining process isn't merely a matter of change for change's sake; it should be driven foremost by feedback.
Feedback mechanisms (internal and from customers) provide businesses with a direct line into what works and what doesn't. Feedback is a powerful tool for maintaining relevance, improving customer satisfaction, and driving sales. Customer feedback is vital for businesses to understand their customers' needs, wants, and preferences, allowing them to tailor their sales strategy more effectively.
Customer or client feedback can be defined as the information gathered regarding their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a product, service, or overall experience. When a customer provides feedback, they are essentially giving valuable insight into their experience. Whether positive or negative, this feedback can help businesses identify areas that require improvement or areas where they are excelling. It provides both a qualitative and quantitative measure of the service rendered by a company.
How Customer Feedback Influences Sales Strategy
Customer feedback provides businesses with insights into how they are performing. Customer feedback is typically more holistic and encompasses a wide range of factors that contribute to the overall sales experience, such as communication skills, product knowledge, and problem-solving abilities on top of the product evaluation itself. Nothing tells a business whether it is meeting customer needs more accurately than evaluative messages from the customers themselves.
It can also help identify areas for improvement. In many instances, customers are more aware than businesses of potential enhancements to a product or service. Customers are the ones using the product or service, so they are in a unique position to provide insights on what works well and what could be better. Whether it be a functionality add-on to a tech product or a wider variety of offerings in a restaurant, customer feedback often points the way to improvement.
Positive feedback boosts morale and encourages continuity in providing quality service. Negative feedback, while often construed as detrimental, is invaluable in spotting performance gaps that necessitate immediate action. By utilizing both types of feedback, businesses can create a culture of continuous improvement and excellence, leading to greater success and achievement.
Turning Critical Feedback Into Sales Improvement
Leveraging feedback involves maximizing the benefits and impacts of the feedback received. It involves leveraging relationships, resources, and opportunities to facilitate change and growth. This could mean, turning critical comments into a breakthrough product upgrade or amplifying positive feedback to boost a company’s reputation and accelerate progress towards the business’s goals.
Successful companies continuously leverage feedback for their benefit. For instance, industry leaders like Amazon and Netflix extensively use customer feedback to enhance user experience and consequently, boost their sales. These companies can identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to their products and services. This allows them to stay ahead of the competition and meet the evolving needs of their customer base, and ultimately increase their profitability.
Steps to Refine Your Sales Strategy Using Feedback
Refining your sales strategy using feedback can be split into three major steps: collecting feedback, analyzing feedback, and implementing changes based on feedback. Let's delve into each:
Step 1: Collecting Feedback
Feedback could be collected from various channels depending on the customer base and the corporate culture. Possible feedback channels include direct customer interviews, online surveys, social media listening, and usability tests. A comprehensive feedback collection method involves a mix of these channels to provide a balanced perspective.
A significant aspect of collecting feedback is asking the right questions to gather insights that matter. It is important to ask specific and targeted questions to uncover relevant and actionable feedback as its value is largely dependent on the information it delivers. To truly understand the strengths and weaknesses of your sales strategy, the questions asked must be strategic, clear, direct, and open-ended to encourage honest and unbiased detailed feedback.
For example, in Encompass-CX, our customer experience management software gathers post-sale data points, service metrics, support tickets, onboarding assessments, and email exchanges to provide clarity into a company’s account.
Step 2: Analyzing Feedback
Once you have successfully collected feedback, the next step is to analyze the data to unearth crucial insights. This involves carefully examining the feedback and identifying patterns, trends, and common themes.
What recurring issues are pointed out by multiple customers?
Which of the 6 dimensions of a successful customer interaction isn't being met?
How does your $300k client feel about their new account manager?
Encompass-CX's one-of-a-kind scoring metrics on collected feedback determine buyer intent and at-risk customers and accurately pinpoint which customers view the business as transactional, require attention, and are poised for churn. Our software analyzes each touchpoint on a business's customer journey and helps sales teams identify which to focus on to improve customer experience and grow revenue
Monitoring these trends can help pinpoint areas of focus in your sales strategy. By analyzing feedback systematically and thoroughly, you can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of your sales strategy and identify areas that need to be refined or adjusted.
Step 3: Implementing Changes Based on Feedback
After the analysis, the strategic implementation of change comes next. This can involve making small tweaks to your sales strategy, such as adjusting pricing or messaging, or more significant changes, such as introducing new products or services based on customer demand. Prioritize feedback points by determining which aspects, if adjusted, would bring about the most improvement in customer satisfaction and sales. Trivial matters can be dealt with at a later time.
For each feedback point chosen, formulate an action plan that specifies precisely what needs to be done and who is responsible for the implementation. This creates a feedback loop that helps businesses continuously improve.
In my previous blog, How Can Client Feedback Propel Your Business Growth? It was discussed how ultimately, responding to feedback is not just about fixing problems but identifying themes and trends that can propel a business’s growth. Keep in mind that all strategy revisions and plan-of-actions that will answer the issues identified from customer feedback should align with the overall company goals and objectives.
Case Study: Benefits Administration Company Identifies Unique Motivators
In this case study, the Encompass-CX customer experience management application helps DS Benefits increase retention and overall customer lifetime value
The company wants to gain a better understanding of growth opportunities
and customers at risk for churn and accurately measure individual buying values and motivators. The analysis identified blind spots where they may be overestimating their value and the need to tailor services to clients based on what they value most.
The approach is to increase retention and overall customer lifetime value, as well as reduce the percentage of Transactional & Antagonistic client relationship responses year over year. This led to the development of strategies to address buyer motivation, a yield of 57% response rate to surveys, and made the company hit revenue targets in the first year. Learn more about this case study here: Benefits Administration Case Study
“Implementing a client feedback tool has allowed us to focus energy and resources on maintaining brand equity within our existing customer base",
Mike Rao, Principal
The HR Group, A DS Benefits Company
Overcoming Challenges When Leveraging Client Feedback
While the process sounds straightforward, companies often face significant challenges in leveraging feedback effectively. Collecting sufficient and relevant feedback can be a hurdle as customers may be hesitant to provide honest feedback or may only offer superficial comments that do not provide meaningful insights.
To overcome this challenge, businesses must establish mechanisms for collecting feedback that make it easy and convenient for customers to share their thoughts. For instance, provide multiple feedback channels or request feedback immediately after a user interaction. This works best for B2Cs and smaller businesses that want to improve their products and services.
In B2Bs, the difference between an average and a high-performing account team can be their ability to understand client needs.
Many businessmen are willing to sacrifice money for trust, good communication, and an understanding of their company’s goals. Read more here.
Another challenge businesses might face is translating insights into actionable strategies. Consider investing in customer feedback tools and platforms. Encompass-CX specializes in providing in-depth analysis and real-time reporting to help businesses unlock valuable insights that can be utilized for strategic decision-making, drive business growth, and enhance customer satisfaction.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, feedback is key to refining your sales strategy. Leveraging its power can result in an enhanced product or service, heightened customer satisfaction, and a significant boost in sales. By obtaining accurate feedback, analyzing data effectively, and translating insights into actionable strategies, businesses can harness the power of customer feedback to drive continuous improvement and innovation.
Feedback collection, analysis, and implementation need not be a daunting process; with the right tools and a strategic approach, you can harness the power of feedback to transform your sales strategy.
Let Encompass-CX help your business refine your sales strategy and leverage customer feedback! Sign up for the free trial here.
