Beyond Satisfaction: Achieving True Customer Success

Ever wondered how selecting the right clients can transform your business success? Tune into the Toilet Paper Salesman Podcast, where we reveal the secrets to mastering the art of building customer relationships. We discuss treating your job as your own business, making intentional choices about who you work with, and aligning yourself with clients who share your values and ambitions. This approach not only boosts your personal and professional growth but also elevates your skill set. Discover the pivotal differences between achieving mere customer satisfaction and striving for customer success, and learn how to foster enduring, mutually beneficial relationships by prioritizing your customers' goals.

In the second half, we unravel the essential tactics for earning respect and constructing robust client relationships. Learn why training your customers on how to engage with you is key to establishing mutual respect and understanding right from the beginning. With stories from personal experiences, we highlight the critical balance between maintaining respect and recognizing when it's time to step away from disrespectful or overly demanding prospects. Forget about price-driven clients; discover how to secure quality customers who truly value your service. We provide insights on avoiding customers who constantly nitpick, moving beyond price-focused relationships to build more productive and satisfactory business connections.

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Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Link to my website: The Toilet Paper Salesman ™ – Who Says Selling Toilet Paper isn’t Glamorous? ™

Link to my book: Wisdom from a Toilet Paper Salesman | BookBaby Bookshop

Link to buy Toilet Paper Salesman swag: My Store

Link to David Mirarchi's website: David Mirarchi

Link to RJ Schinner Co, Inc: RJ Schinner | Home

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:19

Welcome to the Toilet Paper Salesman Podcast. My name's Mike Merarki, I'm your host and you're listening to Episode 8. Today we're gonna be talking about customers and great customers and how to attract the best customers and how to build yourself a really good customer base. That is gonna be a group of great customers that appreciate what you do and that you can help to build their business. This really has a lot to do personally as well. So if you want to listen in, if you're not in sales, there really are a lot of good tips as far as your life personally in this podcast as well. So stay tuned, listen to the end and you should get a lot of really good tips out of this.

Speaker 1 1:04

Your customers, or who we choose to be our customers and who we choose to sell to, is an actual choice. Just because somebody is in business and they want to do business with you doesn't necessarily mean you have to do business with them, and it's really about taking ownership taking ownership of your business, taking ownership of your life, and by taking ownership, you're accountable to the customers you have, you're accountable to your business numbers, you're accountable to your profitability and everything else that goes along with your business. I always say that, no matter who you're working for, whether you have your own company or whether you're working for someone else you really have to treat your job as your business and if you act as if it's your business and not a job, then you're going to be way more effective in your job and you're going to be way more effective for your company and you're going to be way more effective for yourself. And your customers will notice, because if you think about decisions that you make, if it's a job, it's like well, it's not my money. If it's your business, you're going to make decisions differently because you're going to think about well, if this were my business, how would I act or what would I do or what decision would I make? It's a different mindset because you're thinking as a business owner and guess what? The owner of your business is going to really notice that and is going to really value the fact that you treat their business like your business, because, in essence, it is your business. It's what provides you your income and, for commissioned salespeople especially, it truly is your business.

Speaker 1 2:45

The only thing the company brings is the vehicle to help you to get where you want to go. You can take your customer base and your business and you can make it whatever you want. Your customer base is a direct reflection of yourself. I can go out and ride in somebody's territory and not have met the salesperson and only meet with the customers, and I could pretty much tell you every single thing about that salesperson. If their customers are abusive, if their customers aren't nice, if their customers aren't respectful, that says a lot about that salesperson. Their customers don't pay their bills. I would bet you that that salesperson has money issues at home.

Speaker 1 3:26

Because what happens is is we surround ourselves with people who are like us or with customers who are like us automatically. So you always want to surround yourself with people who have higher skill levels or different skill levels or bring different things to the table. That cliche of surround yourself with people better than you are that really is true and get as many people around you that are better than you as possible, because you'll automatically rise to their level. In wrestling, we always wanted to wrestle with people who were better than us, because, naturally, if you're wrestling with people who are better than you, your skill level will rise to their level automatically. You don't even have to think about it Now in the beginning you might take your lumps, but ultimately you're going to get much better. If you improve yourself and you improve the areas in your life, then people in your lives and your customers will improve automatically. So for the best results, what you want to do is you always want to work on the areas in which you're the weakest. It's almost like juggling. You know you work on one area and you build that up and then another area suffers and then you work on that area and then something else suffers. If you continually work on that weakest area that you have, you're automatically going to raise your level higher and higher overall, if you think about your customers. So now you're picking your customers. You're working on good customers.

Speaker 1 4:52

What's your purpose in these relationships? What's your purpose in making a sales call? Is it just to help the customer be satisfied or is it to bring them success? To help the customer be satisfied or is it to bring them success? You can satisfy a customer right out of business. There's a company that has a tagline on your truck that says success through customer satisfaction. I look at that tagline and I say Is that in the customer's world or is that in the company's world? How about a better or a different saying satisfaction through customer success. Think about the difference success through customer satisfaction or satisfaction through customer success. The latter, satisfaction through customer success, is in the customer's world. Because you're focused on customer success, you can satisfy a customer right out of business. Like I've said, to help them to be successful is really what builds long-term good relationships, as long as the customer is willing to accept that and appreciate what you're doing for them.

Speaker 1 5:57

The next point is that we train our customers on how to do business with us. I teach new sales reps this as we get customers started. They don't know how to do business with your company. They only know how to do business with their current companies and they only know how to do business how they've always done business. If we help them to understand the best way to do business with us, then you're going to set up better relationships right from the start. The better your skills are, the better your customers will be. You need to work on yourself in order to get better customers, because the higher your skill level gets, the better your customers are going to be. And then you're going to see that some of your other customers aren't really worthy of having you as their salesperson because they're just not appreciative. They don't buy enough. They beat you up on price. They're abusive.

Speaker 1 6:51

The next point is my father-in-law had a saying bend over backwards for your customers. Never bow down. This has to do with mutual respect. You always want to go the extra mile for your customer, but there's a time when something doesn't feel right inside. They're taking advantage of you and you become subservient to your customer. You never want to be subservient to your customer, and that goes back to ownership.

Speaker 1 7:17

If you're an owner and you're working with an owner of a company, you're on the same level. If you're an owner of your business and you're working with a buyer, you're on the same level. If you're an owner of your business and you're working with the janitor, you're on the same level. You always want to be on the same level, whether it's the janitor or whether it's the owner. Want to be on the same level, whether it's the janitor or whether it's the owner, because if you can do that, that's really going to help you be effective. And you never know when that janitor is going to own the company, by the way, or become the buyer.

Speaker 1 7:44

Top signals that you should walk away from a prospect. You're prospecting this customer and you know it's an interview. It's not just that you're trying to get the customer on board, you're also determining whether that's going to be a good customer for your company and for yourself. It's a two-way street. Just because somebody wants to do business with you doesn't mean you have to do business with them. So how do you know?

Speaker 1 8:08

Number one is a lack of respect for you or your time. This one customer. We are sitting in our waiting room. We had a four o'clock appointment, 410 comes by 4.15, no buyer, 4.20, 4.25. And I said to my salesperson look, if this guy doesn't come out by 4.30, we're leaving, because we're just not going to wait here. This is a lack of respect. We had an appointment. 4.30 comes. I walk in and say hey, we have to leave. We have another appointment. We're walking out the door, the owner of the company comes running out. He needs to see us and so we sit down with him for 15 minutes and we ended up getting that customer. But it was because we did not allow him to take advantage of us and to not treat us with respect.

Speaker 1 8:52

Issue which is huge is credit. When a salesperson gets an order, that's not an order, it's a loan and it's a really expensive loan because you're getting an order, you're filling it, you're sending the customer product and you're waiting now for payment. So that's a loan. It becomes a sale when the customer pays the bill.

Speaker 1 9:13

Customers to avoid are ones that continually make unreasonable demands. This starts early in the process. Run away, because these customers will only get worse. You got to remember when you're first calling on them they're on their best behavior what's going to happen when you really start doing business with them. The better salespeople pair these customers out. They do not do business with customers who make unreasonable demands. If your prospect is too eager to do business, that is a warning sign that you really need to dig in and understand why they're so eager. Sometimes people are in deep trouble financially and so they'll come to you and be very eager to do business, especially new sales reps. You got to be really careful about this. Make sure you do your due diligence, Make sure you understand why they're so eager to do business.

Speaker 1 10:05

Customers only focused on price or what they're going to get out of the relationship. I remember calling on a customer, walked in, did a presentation. He's like yeah, great, come back next week, I'll have an order for you. I'm like, yeah, great, come back next week, I'll have an order for you. I'm like, okay, this is when I was selling on the street to end user type customers. This happened to be a restaurant. So I walk into next week and the owner sits down with me and he goes okay, your price on this was 50 cents high, I'm going to give it to the other guy. Next item your price on this was 25 cents low, I'm going to give you the order. And so I got an order. He went through every item and if I was high, I didn't get it. If I was low, I got the order.

Speaker 1 10:42

I never went back, because this is not a customer that I'm going to do business with. I am not going to be spreadsheet it. My time is too valuable to have a customer do that to me. I will never sit in line and wait for a customer to give me an order strictly based off of the price, and you shouldn't either, because these are not customers who are going to really appreciate what you bring to the table. Guess what? If your price is too high, you're out, and your price is never going to be low enough, and so you have to build your sales relationships above and beyond strictly price.

Speaker 1 11:16

Finally, the customer always has an issue, no matter what you do. The delivery comes in there's a problem. The invoice? There's a problem. You didn't have the products that they want. Nothing seems to be right and sometimes there's just not a good match between your company and your customers. It does happen. Just move on, because not every customer is a good match for your company.

Speaker 1 11:38

As you have your customer base, you really always need to be looking at it and paring it down because you want to create space. Creating space helps you to continue to grow your business. A lot of salespeople they're starting out, they have plenty of time, they're building their customer base and then they hit a wall, and the reason why they hit a wall is their time gets filled up. So they really need to create space. They need to look at their customer base, pare down some of those that are at the bottom of the list and when you create space, then you need to fill that with good, productive activities like putting on better customers. You can replace some of your lower customers with higher customers. Then your customer base is going to be better automatically.

Speaker 1 12:17

Use the 80-20 rule. Spend 80% of your time on the top 20% of your customers. Top 20% of your customers is 80% of your business, so you're spending 80% of your time on 80% of your business. That's going to help you to be more successful. I can go into a top customer, make one sales call and get a huge sale out of it, versus making 20 sales calls on smaller customers. I'll get more business out of the one sales call. That's where you need to be. You need to make sure that every call that you make is productive and is focused on your best customers and you minimize those customers who are not.

Speaker 1 12:55

Move on from them. It's okay. Never be needy. I saw something on LinkedIn. I saw somebody saying they're desperate for a job. Never be desperate for a job. It was funny because in the LinkedIn article, they're saying well, what's wrong with being desperate? What's wrong? Well, what's wrong with it is that you're not attractive. Do I really want to hire somebody who's desperate for a job? That's not going to be the type of person that I want to bring into my organization. I want to bring somebody into my organization who wants to take ownership and who wants to help the company and who wants to help the company be more successful. Desperation does not do that, and so when you're desperate, when you're needy, you become less attractive and it's harder to pick up customers. It's harder to get jobs, it's harder just because you're needy. And that's all I have for today. If this was valuable, remember to like and subscribe to the podcast Until next time. Who says selling toilet paper isn't glamorous? We sell toilet paper. That's what we do. Thanks a lot and have a great day.