{"id":3202,"date":"2017-05-21T06:02:36","date_gmt":"2017-05-21T11:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/?p=3202"},"modified":"2017-05-20T20:08:04","modified_gmt":"2017-05-21T01:08:04","slug":"lost-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/lost-opportunity\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Allow Lost Opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lost<\/a>Have you ever been a lost opportunity?\u00a0This\u00a0story is about a\u00a0vendor that\u00a0was approached with a request for quote. Truly a good sales opportunity is where the customer finds you. No prospecting, just find out the pain point, position and convey a value-based price.\u00a0Be responsive and the sale is made.<\/p>\n

This Story<\/h1>\n

A sales person had recently left a firm.\u00a0A senior executive had the former employee’s email forwarded to him. A current customer wanted to purchase services from the vendor firm. The VP\u00a0did not have the time to be responsive. That was the first error.\u00a0Former sales employee’s email should be forwarded to a responsive sales manager. Perhaps it was beneath\u00a0the VP’s\u00a0pay grade.<\/p>\n

Selling products and services –\u00a0and selling brand –\u00a0is\u00a0everyone\u2019s job.<\/p>\n

In this story days went by.\u00a0Then the VP emailed to set a sales phone call\u00a0the following week.\u00a0The VP missed the call. That was the second error. No email, no request to reschedule, no follow-up apology for missing the outlook calendar event – nothing. Two more weeks went by.<\/p>\n

Another contact was called to ask, \u201cwhat\u2019s up?\u201d\u00a0 He shared an apology from their delivery team,\u00a0and let on that there was a\u00a0developing service gap. The other contact inadvertently revealed\u00a0that the unresponsive VP had contributed to the exodus of several people at the company, as well as customers. Everyone recognized the collateral damage this VP was doing. Frustrated, they shared the truth with customers. Is that wrong? Yes.<\/p>\n

The other contact\u00a0said she would try to motivate the VP to call. An email was received another week later saying, \u201clet\u2019s schedule a time.\u201d By then another vendor\u00a0is actively engaged. The customer has goals and deadlines to meet.\u00a0The customer’s response to the VP’s late email says that another vendor is now submitting a quote.<\/p>\n

Opportunity Lost or Found<\/h1>\n

The senior executive now has two options. A better senior executive takes action. He would pick up the phone immediately, apologize with out excuse for his error and solve the problem\u00a0immediately. A lesser senior executive hides.\u00a0He sends\u00a0a rationalizing\u00a0email with excuses, and even\u00a0suggests it was the customer who\u00a0 missed the appointment.<\/p>\n

The lesser\u00a0VP does not work to win-back the business. He dismisses it saying, “good luck with the other vendor.” There\u2019s only one way for a customer to take this lesser response. That the VP is not interested in meeting their needs in a brand driving\u00a0customer experience.<\/p>\n

I like to call the better executive’s approach to\u00a0solving the problem: “the Nordstrom approach.” Call now, put immediate action in gear to ensure that the situation is resolved and that the vendor\u2019s brand is protected.<\/p>\n

How many times does it happen that a Senior VP thinks that participating and engaging with customers is below their pay grade? What will happen to the referral business this client had been sending the vendor?\u00a0 what will happen if they are asked to complete a survey, or Google review?<\/p>\n

For opportunity, it\u2019s never below anyone’s pay grade. As the old Chinese proverb goes, “There are three things that cannot be \u000brecalled;<\/em> a spent arrow, a spoken (broken) word, a lost opportunity.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Have you ever been a lost opportunity?\u00a0This\u00a0story is about a\u00a0vendor that\u00a0was approached with a request for quote. Truly a good sales opportunity is where the customer finds you. No prospecting, just find out the pain point, position […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[63,4,8,100],"tags":[12,26,125],"class_list":["post-3202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-customer-user-experience","category-leadership","category-strategy","category-transparency","tag-design-thinking","tag-servant-leadership","tag-unintended-consequences"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Lost-Opportunity.png?fit=345%2C342&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p25ukk-PE","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3202"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3215,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202\/revisions\/3215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}