Winning in the marketplace comes with a lot of hard work and sustained effort.
It is easy to fall into the habit of winning. Though it is a great feeling, one should be very cautious about a few things.
This winning habit could make your sales teams feel unbeatable, which could lead them to slowly become arrogant in their dealings with your customers.
This change is so slow and subtle, that it becomes very difficult to notice unless you actively look for it.
This could slowly lead to your customers starting to feel that doing business with your team is not easy or smooth. This is early indication that you are getting in the danger zone.
If unchecked, this could slowly lead your customers to feel being bullied, resulting in them dropping thier business with you at the first possible instance.
Some early signs that should warn you of this could be
- Customers complain that doing business with you is getting more and more difficult.
- Winning in the market becomes the single most important thing for your sales team that they want to do it at any cost.
- Customer satisfaction starts going down for no obvious reason.
- Your sales continue to grow despite a slowing economy. This could either be due to the great value proposition that you have for your customers or due to your sales teams squeezing business from your customers. You need to be able to see the reality and adjust instead of believing one to be true than the other.
- You start losing customers for no obvious reasons to hitherto unknown competitors.
No customer will come forward and tell you how they feel about doing business, unless you start noticing these little things.
Nothing can be as damaging as finding this out late, as by then, there is nothing you could do to correct it.
The more successful you are in your market category, the more prone you are to this challenge.
Do take time to notice and react.. Do you agree with my observation? Share your thoughts on this post by commenting below or by tweeting to me at @rmukeshgupta.
