What do you do when you are on a sales call and your topic changes direction unexpectedly? We have all been on calls and your entire pitch is pulled off track. It’s common to hear customer complaints about issues you weren’t aware of or prepared for.
When your freight meeting goes in a different direction don’t back away from the conversation, engage in it. These are surefire signs a customer needs help with their supply chain. In most situations SEKO has a solution. The following 10 questions will help you uncover unknown opportunities when meeting with any customer.
In the Deep Dive class we go into detail on how to create a bundled solution for your customers based on business needs we uncover through a series of questions. Amanda Bohl, Joy Vest, Charlie Enright, Carrie Leszka, and I can help you put together a solution for any customer. Finding your customer’s needs involves asking the right probing questions, and listening carefully to their answers.
Your ultimate goal should be to build a clear, complete, mutual understanding of the customer’s needs. You may remember Rhonda talking about the difference between open and closed probes. In order to dig deep and allow the customer to lead the conversation, ask questions that require an explanation, instead of a yes or no.
1. How are all your carriers managed?
With this question you are looking for the level of transportation management control. Are they using a manual process? Are they using a shipping system? How satisfied are they with the existing management system? Guide this conversation into discussions about how one portal to see all their shipments, like MySEKO, can help with carrier management.
2. Do your shipping locations follow a routing guide?
This question allows the customer to think about their processes align with established guide rules. Does each location make independent decisions? Do they follow the routing guide? This will determine if you should pursue discussing TMS.
3. How comfortable is your team with choosing the most efficient mode of transportation for each shipment?
Based on how they answer this question, or how much they seem to understand about it, you can discuss what TMS can do to alleviate some of this uncertainty.
4. How does your team receive tracking information?
The customer’s comfort level or ease of their tracking and tracing abilities is a great way to bring up our MySEKO application.
5. How much control do you have over inventory?
This is a good way to change the conversation to the topic of warehouse management.
6. How does your warehouse determine the difference between fast or slow moving products?
Asking open ended questions gives your customer the chance to elaborate on how their warehousing is done. This will allow the opportunity to address other issues they may be having regarding warehousing, giving you the chance to set up a WMS pitch, along with basic freight.
7. How difficult is it for you to introduce new products into your supply chain?
A great question to uncover a need for Supplier Management.
8. Do you currently sell your product online?
SEKO Storefront is an application that is a great product for customers if they are already using SEKO for their warehousing or shipping. A storefront application enables web sales and can be new to a company, allowing them to easily increase on-line sales. This could even be a gateway in providing several other services for your customer.
9. Is there anything you would like to have more visibility into?
This is a question that sounds like it should be asked first but actually is best to ask at the end of a meeting. Once your customer has an idea of where there may be other needs, they are more likely to think off the top of their head and reveal pain points, setting you up for several other conversations.
10. How do you measure your suppliers?
This question may lead into a Supplier Management conversation. In SEKO’s Supplier Management technology, users can pull customized performance reports per supplier.
The questions above should spark discussion on other topics to help you to determine what other solutions may fit. Even if you are unfamiliar with a new solution, it will allow your customer to verbalize business needs. You can then absorb what the real issues are and bring this to the IT team for analysis. It will be important for you to determine through probing questions whether or not your customer is in control of their supply chain or if their supply chain is in control of them.
If you engage in these questions with your customer, we are here to help you interpret their responses and help to bundle the perfect customized solution for them.
Thank you,Tom Madzy
No comments:
Post a Comment