"What You Do Speaks So Loudly, I Cannot Hear What You Say"

I use a lot of ink to talk about sales as a service that you provide to your prospects; a service that can differentiate you from your competitors. I teach the importance of follow-up and how to use responsiveness to deliver value to your customers and win more orders in less time.In fact, being responsive and value-based follow up are such easy things to do. These are activities that are under your direct control. There are no pre-requisites for responsiveness and effective follow-up. Just consistently do these two simple things and your sales will take off.And, yet, it seems that every day I encounter examples of unresponsive follow-up and unintentionally bad sales service that could easily be avoided.In my first book, Zero-Time Selling, I described an incident that happened to me a few years ago. A prolonged drought had driven what seemed like several million thirsty ants from my backyard into my kitchen. They were marching in thick black undulating rivers across my white tile floors. My wife, kids and dogs were freaking out. I needed help.I opened my laptop and searched online for a local exterminator. The first company listed at the very top of Google's paid search returns claimed to have an organic, technological solution for exterminating pests that was safe for people and pets. Perfect! My dogs would appreciate that, and the ants would hate it. I picked up my phone and entered the number of their 24-hour customer service hotline. I was ready to buy.The “hotline” offered up a recording that claimed that everyone was busy helping a customer, so it invited me to leave a message for one of their friendly customer service technicians. Then, the exuberant female voice on the recording proudly trumpeted: "It's our company policy: your phone call will be returned within 24 hours. Guaranteed!”Wow. Twenty-four hours. They thought that was fast. My thought was, “I have ants all over my house and they want me to wait a day just to get a call?" I called the next pest-control company on the list. A live person answered the phone and set me up with an afternoon appointment for that same day.That first pest-control company I called, which was a big brand name, had the perfect opportunity to capture my business. But, like a lot of companies, they prized their own convenience over good customer service and tried to turn that into a virtue.Instead of helping me they communicated three negative messages to me and all other prospective buyers:1. Your call is not that important to us. In fact, you won’t even speak to a live person when you call.2. The only guarantee we can offer is that we won’t call you back until tomorrow. What’s the rush? We've given ourselves 24 hours to do it.3. We need to have a company policy in place to force someone to call you back at all.Many companies fool themselves into believing they are offering great customer service when, in fact, they are advertising and delivering the opposite. Have you fallen into this same trap? You may think you are fooling your customers but to quote the great American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, "What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."Before you start to believe that a 24-hour response time to a customer or prospect is even remotely acceptable (which it isn't), think about the level of service you deliver from their point of view. What do they need from you to be successful in their jobs and lives with the least investment of their time possible? That is the standard of service you need to provide.