How to manage customers and prospects

1. 15 June 2014 © Ravinder Lohia (Email: ravilohia@yahoo.com) 1
How to Manage Customers and Prospects
1. Manage Customer & Prospect Database - (Create, Modify, Add, Delete, Update, View, Analyze, Classify, Categorize Data) (Name, Phone,
Email, Address, Gender, Birthday, Marriage Anniversary, Hobbies, Likes, Dislikes, Feedbacks (e.g. Praise, Problems, Queries, Requests, etc),
Behavior, Needs, Desires, Income, Assets, Family details, Friends & Relatives , Social and Professional circles, Occupation, Lifestyle,
Profession, Work details, Influencers, Decision makers, interests, Short term or Long term customer, Logs of Purchase Orders, Calls, Meetings,
Actions, Changes in order patterns, Referrals, Complaints, What Customers Value, Expectations, Suggestions, Responses, Paid and
Outstanding Invoices, Agreements, Schedule for making calls / sending mails, etc.). Update record with latest information but never delete.
Audit and update Customer data to remove errors and obsolete data. Analyze customer database to formulate and change or upgrade
business strategy. Secure Customer data, so that no one must misuse the same.
2. Know your Company, Processes, Policies, Products, Services. Know your customer to improve communication skills and increase profit.
Know exactly who your customers are and what they want. Know your Competitors and what he/she offering. Offer & Give Best Products,
Services, Solutions to your customers & prospects- Continuously Improve sale life cycle from ordering, delivering, and closing (invoicing,
payments). Always Under promise & Over deliver. Train Teams on how to manage customers and prospects - Assign Ownership. All
functions in an organization must work to help customer facing teams. Offer rewards (financial & non-financial) to team to motivate for
receiving positive feedbacks from customer. Be proactive, aggressive, realistic, open and honest.
3. Communicate with Prospects and Customers Regularly (Face to face Meetings / Phone calls / News Letters, Emails and other media). Keep
customers actively participating in your products/services. Do not over promote your products/services. Connect with your customers on
social media to share their appreciation (you can set this as public) and grievances (you can set this as private). Respond quickly to all
enquiries, complaints, praises, etc. If you will not respond, your competitor will. Always be polite and nice. Train team on how to
communicate with customer and how to manager customers. Communicate product faults and expected resolution time, before customer
complains. Know how your customers want to interact with you. Be a Good Listener. Listen to your customers. Setup feedback and escalation
channels for your customers. Ensure that your customers feel the communication is relevant and beneficial to them, bombarding customers
with unwanted calls / mails / marketing material can be counter-productive. Wish on festivals, birthdays & anniversaries, and also can offer
something special. Communicate details of products, solutions, services to customer. Timely communicate good and bad news to client to
win trust, and to have long term relationship. Lack of communication is the root of spoiling relationship with client. Sometime we must have
(intuition) ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. Confirm Minutes of Meeting / Key
takeaways at closure phase of meeting. Make simple feedback form with choice of Excellent, Good, Average, and Poor quality checkpoints.
For payment dues follow-ups, send professional but polite reminder letters, make friendly reminder calls and avoid being harsh in
communication. Ask if any reason / problem for not paying dues, negotiate, do settlement and agree for schedule for payments. Use
intelligence to decide credit limit and taking legal action for non-payment of dues as it may further lead to end of relationship with that
client. Continuously Improve positive communication (Verbal, Non-verbal (Tone, Body language, Volume, Appearance, etc.), and listening)
skills of Team, Avoid negative communication. Always make Clear, Concise, Correct, Complete, Courteous, and Concrete Communications.

2. 15 June 2014 © Ravinder Lohia (Email: ravilohia@yahoo.com) 2
How to Manage Customers and Prospects
• 4. Treat your Prospects and Customers as Kings/Queens - Work to Convert leads / prospects to customers. Find first time buyers, and
convert them into regular buyer. Convert acquired customers into loyal customers and advocates of your products, services, and solutions.
They will praise and do publicity for your products. They will bring more customers. Understand customer's business. There might be gap in
Your perception and Actual customer expectations. Customer actual expectation influenced by word of mouth, competitors service, past
experience, and unique needs. Reduce gap by listening and understanding customer's actual expectations prior to sale, and do your best to
meet expectations even post sales by providing best after sales service. Have agreement on scope, timeline, quality, issues, risks,
assumptions, share of responsibilities, force majeure, change control mechanism, escalation matrix, Communication, governance
mechanism, resources, price, support, legal matters, etc. Help customer to achieve his/her dreams and goals. Don't let customer go to your
competitor, understand concerns and resolve that. It is better to retain existing customers then finding new ones. Work to reactivate sleeping
customers or customers who are migrated to your competitors. 80% revenue comes from 20% customers and 20% revenue comes from 80%
customers. Give 20% customers a VIP treatment (Know and Do what they want?). Provide them Best Product/Service. Let them know that
they are Gold class for you, and its benefits. Give Good Product/Service to rest 80% and work to bring them in Gold class. Make your
customers feel special. You can run loyalty programs for loyal customers in terms of repeat or high value orders, prompt payment, length of
relationship, etc. You can offer special discounts to loyal customers. Think from customer's angle to understand customer. Customer is giving
you salary and profits. Customer always want more than expectation, Customer always want to be treated like a King/Queen.
• 5. Offer & Give Best Support to your Prospects & Customers - Care for customer, provide timely support for sold products as per guarantee
/ warranty terms & conditions. Good support leads to further sale & publicity, which in tern bring in new customers. Keep your customer
happy. Provide best after sales service. Act quickly on complaints. Complaints should be handled courteously, sympathetically and swiftly.
Make sure that your business has an established procedure for dealing with customer complaints and that it is known to all your employees.
Listen Complaint, Record Details, Offer & Give Solution, Follow-up for closure. Keep your promises. Remember, customer is never
unreasonable, may be you are not able to fulfill customer's requirements due to certain genuine reasons, try to explain your limitations and
give options to fulfill requirements. Many times unreasonable demands improve your products, which further increase your sales and profits
due to unique features what competitors don't have. Manage anger of customer by LISTENING, UNDERSTANDING, COMMUNICATING
POLITELY. Work towards having long term relationship with customer, and for that you need to accept customer with all its positive and
negative points, accept customer 100% during good and bad moments. Keep up energy during delivery and support phase also as you put on
to acquire customer. Maintaining a client when times are tough is the true test of a relationship. Good customer service can be used as a
marketing strategy to encourage word of mouth and result in a competitive advantage, and grow customer base. Work to keep up reputation
of Company and its brands. Learn from negative feedback & complaints to improve performance, products, processes, services, & solutions.
Search opportunity from complaints. Accept & Respect Feedback. Use closed loop feedback process (Receive Feedback from Customer, Take
Appropriate Actions, Give Feedback to Customer). Keep it Simple. Develop personal relationship with client along with professional
relationship, people love this. Be always available & accessible to your clients and always stay in touch with your clients.