Feedback Loops & Sales

Selling is interesting. Its the most easiest thing to do when you have the passion to sell. Sales gives you an high as you get some deal besides the fact that it helps achieve your sales targets. Sales is something which makes you learn about Economy, Industries, Trends and Consumer Behaviour etc. It makes you wiser, intelligent, smarter and develops your personality.
When you sell, there is a process to follow which if you know you do that naturally. one of the most important part of the process is probing. We want to know about our customers which entierly depends on the questions we are asking. Its something like think like a doctor. Imagine how a doctor talks when you visit him as a patient. Talk less and make the customer speak. Many a times to understand what the customer feels most of the times, you need to get into the customer shoes. What is that bothers the customers? What do they care about? What are the challenges? Deep dive into the challenges and then understand why is it so important to them? & what consequences does that have in the customers business? Once you have been able to find our the challenges and requirements your prospects has, you have a fair idea. The next step is to ensure you map value to the challenges telling the prospect that how you can add value and give possible solutions based on the product/service you are selling. Possibly tie them to a specific value to the same. Use examples. It will help you to put your solutions to a value/number. This helps.
Feedback loop is a process in which the outputs are circled back as inputs. In business, this refers to the process of using customer or employee feedback, to create a better product or service or workplace.
In a sales process, feedback loops are simple little questions when you are talking to people and putting them back to the conversation. During this process one of the most important point to be working on is the feedback loops. This is only possible when you ensure its a two way conversation and not one way. This keeps the customers engaged. It helps to get the customer back in the conversation. This is one of the very critical things when you are selling. While you are in discussions with the customer, its important that you use feedback loops. This helps not only in affirmation of the value of what you have sold but also points you in the right direction. So, every product/service you sell, when you map with the customer challenges, your feedback loop will help you know that you are in the right direction and you are slowly pushing the sales to a positve closure. At times, you may get negative feedback loops. In these cases, you can then control the situation and improve upon them. Please take feedback loops as a very important part of the sales process for you to be successful. This creates little moments of buying and you get closer to close the sale. This makes you get closer and closer to the deal. By doing so by the end of your presentation, you are then left only with the last question which you the customer as to what to do next?
“Treat customer objections as requests for further information-Brian Tracy”
Feedback loops are also part of the CRM since they act as an important tool for internal developments to support sales by the help of marketing, process improvements etc depending on the feedback from the sales department.Customer feedback loop is also one of the most effective ways to improve your product or service in accordance with your customers’ needs.Customer Satisfaction Surveys is also a part of the feedback loops, which helps the organisation to know the real pulse of the customer, understand the gaps and work on improvement of these gaps. This ultimately leads to not only customer satisfaction but delight.Employee satisfaction survey helps you to have more satisfied people which ultimately improves employee productivity.
My recomendation to all the sales guys out there, is to effectively use feedback loops when you are selling. This helps you for a gauranteed favourable closure of sales and bag big deals. This also helps you soemtimes to identify additional opportunities and above all gain customers trust for buying. This is true even in your personal life for better relationships. Try it ! Ping me, if you have any questions or suggestions.