In order to be able to talk about importance and relevance of the after-sales topic, firstly it is necessary to understand two concepts.
The first of them is very basic and simple. All companies and all professionals, at some point, are salespeople. In other words, they sell something. If you haven't realized this yet, you need to quickly assimilate this idea.
Businesses sell products, industries manufacture and sell products, farmers sell products, among many other examples. Although, There are also those who sell services. Lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects, all of these and many others sell services.
So, one can understand and take as true the fact that, if everyone sells something, everyone deals directly or indirectly with people.
These are people who, when making the decision to make a purchase, are establishing a relationship, and here we already enter the basis of the second important concept: relationship.
If you can understand that there is a buying and selling relationship between you and your client, even if you work with services, and that from the moment you price and execute your service you are establishing a relationship with your client, you are ready to continue reading.
What is after-sales? When does it start, and when does it end?
These questions prepare us to enter another level of understanding, which shows that we need to establish processes and metrics so that it becomes possible to answer questions of this nature.
For our market reality, I like to say that the best definition of after-sales is the one that says that if It's about showing the customer what your company's real intentions are in the relationship with them., is the science and art of acquiring and retaining customers, and thus developing profitable relationships with them.
The purpose of all this is ensure continuity and quality of the service provided after the sale, consolidating customers, and making them providers of new sources of business.
Well, here we have already managed to distinguish and demystify the wrong idea that people have when thinking about this topic. After-sales is not synonymous with problems, after-sales is not technical , after-sales is relationships.
Knowing this, we can bring some market data that show us how critical this issue is, simply because it is almost completely neglected within companies, which over time, without a doubt, will often lead such companies to a state of ruin, or even complete bankruptcy.
Philip Kotler He said that “it costs five times more to capture a new customer than to keep existing customers satisfied”. Unhappy customers can speak ill of your brand or your company, at least for ten people.
If these ten people produce a speech of dissatisfaction to at least five more people, we would already have an exponential growth of people with a negative image of your company.
One of the main reasons for the bankruptcy of companies today is lack of communication with your customers after sale.
Note that it is extremely necessary to build a value, a culture of thought and structuring a routine of activities that go against the little importance given to after sales.
Now, to complete the knowledge base necessary for those who wish to delve into a new level of results in the after-sales world, a third pillar must be ed: the concept of culture.
But after all, what is culture and what relationship does this have with the topic we are dealing with?
By definition, culture means a set of structures, practices, beliefs, which differentiate and characterize one society from another. Culture is something that is intrinsic to each one of us and that was formed by the environment in which we were born, grew up and developed.
Culturally, going without clothes is normal for an indigenous tribe, but for those who live in the urbanized world, this is abominable and can even be indecent. Who is wrong? Nobody!
They are different cultures, both are doing automatically, perhaps even unconsciously, what has been inserted, marked, recorded, every day since the beginning of their existence.
Take all this, and bring it to our business reality, to arrive at a “corporate culture"There needs to be a series of planned events. First a need and perception must be felt, and this must generate an action.
Action, in turn, generates a set of activities that become a routine. From routine, which is not always pleasant or easy to establish, over time it must give way to discipline, which when applied responsibly becomes a habit, and finally habit is what leads us to a well-founded business culture.
To turn the mental key regarding after-sales, you necessarily need to go through this entire process, plant today, to harvest tomorrow.
After-sales to become proactive and no longer reactive, needs well-structured processes, a well-coordinated team, and a mindset aligned with the same purpose. When you and your team reach this understanding, you will be ready to begin the transformation within your company.
Formation of the customer's vision
There are five indicators that we need to understand about the companies, to be able to make an after-sales department a great ally of the Sales team, and thus generate even more business.
Perception
A customer's perception is formed by the value he perceives about things around him. And these things are included in four subgroups: environment, service, access and security. We will go into detail later.
Motivation
Motivation concerns what led the customer to the exact moment of making a decision. In this case, the decision to purchase a solar energy system for example. We can also divide this indicator into four main subgroups: need, stimuli, desires and impulse.
Learning
A customer's learning process is directly related to the degree of ease or difficulty encountered by them during the process of using a good or enjoying a service. We divide this indicator into two groups: experience and use.
Memory
A customer's memory consists of the formation of a process that is divided into developing preferences, acquiring knowledge and storing experiences, all related to some “brand”.
Post-purchase behavior
All of this leads us to the last indicator, which is nothing more than the sum of all the previous ones. This behavior generates a certain specific result, which reveals to us how efficient and performative the resulting relationship between our client and our service or product has been.
Dissatisfaction, retention and loyalty are examples of outcomes. When the customer identifies with our brand, they will always have an intention to purchase.
From this, we can begin to create a long-term relationship, extending the customer's “lifespan” within the range of products or services we offer, establishing recurring and predictable revenue for the company.
The opinions and information expressed are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position of the author. Canal Solar.
