Win lifelong customers by being unreasonably accountable
It’s critical that we understand the practice of RELIABILITY as it regards sales specifically and business in general, on our way to winning lifelong customers. It’s doubly crucial that we guard against the misconceptions that exist around this very important ability.
First we need to look at how people respond to the notion of being accountable for whatever the best next action entails – no matter what. What I often observe, when raising this ABILITY, is that people reject it. What I’ve learned after many years of managing people in the disciplines of sales and marketing, is that people hear accountability but they think responsibility. They respond negatively because they’re defending themselves from being blamed for an undesired result. Let’s define the two words in the context of sales.
Responsibility – Being responsible for something in business has two meanings. The present-tense is that we own the performance of an assignment, project or team. The past-tense is that we were the cause for something that happened.
Accountability – Being accountable for something in a business sense means that we own whatever happens next. We are in charge of the best next action. Whether we caused the problem or not we step up to own the solution.
Rob is one of the most customer-centric people I’ve had the privilege to work with. His nature, in life and in business, is to be unreasonably accountable.
Early in his career, Rob worked for a company that offered component manufacturing and supply chain services to a myriad of technology companies. His customer was a prominent computer manufacturer and he was competing for their business with a deeply entrenched incumbent service provider. In this case Rob had convinced the decision-maker to trial his company’s storage devices and was having an initial order shipped from Raleigh, North Carolina, to the customer’s location in Norfolk, Virginia. Ironically, because the incumbent was managing the project Rob was, in effect, delivering product to be used by his competitor.
As luck would have it, the shipment of the storage devices was damaged in transit. Rob, of course, immediately got on the phone with the project manager (his competitor) in the hopes of understanding what happened so he could determine his best next action for resolving the problem. The competitor was unclear about what had happened and was generally unhelpful. Rob hung up the phone with no more clarity about the situation than before he made the call.
Rob had a manager who instilled in him a lifelong discipline that “if you have a problem, get to the problem.” After brief consideration about how important it was to satisfy this prospective lifelong customer, Rob decided to get to the problem. He was able to get co-workers to complete tasks he had been assigned and he got in his car to drive the 184 miles to Norfolk, Virginia, so he could see firsthand what had happened to those storage devices. He not only was able to resolve the issue but he demonstrated the act of being unreasonably accountable to the decision-makers. That best next action led to Rob winning the business and, more importantly, his actions led to winning lifelong customers.
Being unreasonably accountable is about taking the best next action when our customer needs help. When our customer has a problem, whether we caused it or not, if we’re capable of helping – we do it. We step up because we want to help our lifelong customers – not because we want accolades but because we’re unreasonably accountable.
©2015 Rick Wong – The Five Abilities® LLC