Reported by Teri Lammers

Customer Relations;

 

It's fine for your salespeople to develop close relationships with customers, but make sure you don't lose touch. Jim Soltesz learned that lesson the hard way when one of his top salesmen quit to become a competitor, taking most of his accounts with him. "It was an eye-opener," says Soltesz, a partner in Creative Professional Services Inc., a direct-mail marketing company in Woburn, Mass. "We had been in business 16 years, and it had never happened before."

Realizing that he couldn't stop his employees from going out on their own, Soltesz looked for ways to keep the company from losing accounts at the same time. He and other top executives started going on sales calls and bringing customers into the office to show them the company's operations. By creating tighter bonds with customers, says Soltesz, the company now has a much better shot at holding on to them when a salesperson leaves.

Defections aside, Soltesz has discovered other benefits in his new approach to customer relations. "We learned more about our customers, and we found we could solve more of their problems."