Street Smarts: Everybody Sells
Your work force can become a secret weapon for closing sales.
Published June 2004
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COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLEI've long believed that, in any company, everybody sells. By that I mean that everybody plays a role in the sales process. Whether people work in operations, customer service, or even accounting, they have an impact on customers, and that impact -- good or bad -- will influence the sales force's ability to close deals and retain accounts.
The effect, in other words, is indirect. I always figured it had to be. I couldn't imagine how people outside sales could be directly responsible for landing new accounts. But about three months ago, my employees taught me a lesson that has changed the way I look at selling.
It was actually my wife, Elaine, who got the ball rolling. We'd been hearing some complaints from customers about the response they'd received when they phoned in, and Elaine -- who, among other things, is our head of human resources -- was determined to do something. She found a company that specialized in training phone representatives and arranged to have a trainer fly in for three days of workshops. The company claimed that everyone could benefit from the program, so Elaine decided to include all 60 of our full-time salaried employees, about half of the on-site work force at our box-storage business.
The investment wasn't peanuts -- $10,000 for the trainer, plus the paid time of all those people -- and I was skeptical that we'd get much out of it. It's extremely difficult, I've learned, to foster long-term changes in behavior. I figured the effects would last about three weeks. Still, I don't like to discourage people from trying new things, and Elaine felt strongly. Plus, I have to admit I was curious to see the employees' reaction. Most of our people come from inner city neighborhoods where they've had limited educational opportunities. Nevertheless, they took to the workshops with enthusiasm. They clearly loved having a chance to learn new work skills. As the trainer took them through lessons on subjects like telephone-answering techniques, they listened attentively.
Afterward, Elaine looked for ways to maintain the momentum. She and Noelle, the executive in charge of customer service, made up forms for people to fill out, reporting what they'd learned, what they'd enjoyed, and what additional help they'd like. In addition, Elaine bought a set of 16 short videotapes from the training company to help stimulate further discussion. Her plan was to hold five hourlong sessions every two weeks, with 12 people in each session. She would show a tape and ask participants to talk about the issues it addressed. She also decided that each session would have people from every department. The idea was to let participants spend time with employees they would never get to know in the normal course of business. Elaine thought something interesting might come of it.
I didn't attend the sessions, but Elaine and I talked in the evening about how things had gone. She couldn't get over the enthusiasm people brought to the program and the camaraderie it engendered. The participants loved to be called on, she said, and they loved to tell stories -- about their own experiences as customers, about ways they could apply the techniques they were learning outside the business, about things that had happened in the company.
At one meeting, a customer service rep named Denise singled out a warehouse worker, Chris, for praise. The week before, she said, he'd gone out of his way to make sure the right boxes were delivered to the right customer on time. The customer was relieved to get them and praised the company's performance. Denise passed along the compliment, which neither Chris nor the rest of the group would have heard about otherwise. Making those connections between members of different departments turned out to be a major benefit. Despite our best efforts to build team spirit, people didn't really get it until they sat in a room talking to employees from other parts of the company. Suddenly, they had a sense of the problems other people had to deal with, and they saw how work flowed through the business. It became clear how the drivers depended on the customer service reps, and how the reps depended on the warehouse guys. In the process, people began to think in terms of the company as a whole rather than focusing on their own pieces of it.
Elaine also used the sessions to reinforce the customer service message. "The company isn't paying your salary," she would say. "The customers are. They just funnel it through us." She reminded people about the bonuses they earn when we hit a new level in our box count and our policy of doing a 110% match of 401(k) contributions. "It's the customers who make that possible," she said. "When you see Norman or someone else giving people a tour, those are usually prospective customers. We want to make them feel welcome. That means smiling and saying hello."
In six months, we received more comments, calls, and letters of praise than we had in the previous 14 years.
