Danish companies lose customers and millions in turnover due to lack of sales awareness

Danish companies use enormous amounts of resources on getting new customers, who could be lost again immediately through one single false move from an employee. In many organisations mere coincidences are actually and suddenly putting employees into direct contact with customers. Considering the large amounts of money being invested in acquiring customers, it is an unnecessary gamble not to enable all employees to manage and prioritise sales as a conscious act.

The number of actual salespeople in companies is decreasing, and more customer tasks are being transferred to other departments in the companies. The salesperson is still important, but the word 'sales' is no longer highly ranked in the operations that are handling more and more daily contacts with the customers. Sales are not being perceived and imagined strategically across the organisation. Therefore the companies are not utilising their customer potential, and worse, they lose good and existing customers.

This cannot be the case. Sales management must have the possibility to impact the entire organisation, and the value(s) of the sales must be accepted in all company operations. This requires an improved joint effort between general management and sales management. Time and money has to be dedicated for in-depth work with the customer at the centre in individual departments, and sales need to be a qualification everyone is trained in. Customers and sales have to be a natural focus in every respect. The title of “Salesperson” should be something that anyone who is involved in customer contact should feel proud to have attached to their name or job function.

Where does it typically go wrong then? The telephone is a critical point. Basically everyone knows that the incoming telephone is an important function, and usually it is clear, who operates it and how an overflow is handled. But even though the understanding of customer service is actually there (albeit not always implemented) with many companies, you might very well hear someone say something like this: 'I don't know where our salespeople are, but I can put you through to a mobile.' Yes - and leave the customer to their own devices.

Is this because the word 'salesperson' is taboo for some and is too close to prostitution? This attitude must be changed. The same goes for this attitude, often adopted by salespeople: 'Things would be so much easier, if we didn't have to bother with all these customers and could just do our job'.

When it comes to implementation and servicing of products things can go wrong as well. Can you imagine how the customer feels when he hears something like the following from a Service Engineer: 'Tell me, WHO in our company sold you that?” and “We are constantly getting new salespeople.' This implies of course that all those salespeople were useless!

The engineer, product developer and service technician may be perfect ambassadors for the company through their high level of specialist expertise. But professionalism can lead to pride resulting in an inflexible attitude, and combined with the pressure of business, these employees may unconsciously become 'terrorists' in their own organisation destroying customer relationships and by no means gaining the customer's trust for additional sales.

The debtor function is an example of an operation in an organisation with basically no customer contact. However once a month those customers who haven't paid need to be contacted, but considering the bad payer's next purchase is very far from the debtor bookkeeper's mind – they have a job to do; getting the money. 'I really don't care, who you are - I have an unpaid invoice'. Again, a customer relationship built on arduous efforts is being pushed straight into the danger zone.