Why my business doesn’t have a sales department: Vinomofo co-founder Andre Eikmeier

We have a rule we live by at Vinomofo: A sale is not a sale when the customer hits the buy button. Nor when they submit their payment details. A sale is a sale when they’re sitting back on the couch, enjoying a glass of the wine they bought.

And by “enjoying”, I mean they’re happy with the way it tastes, they’re happy with what they paid for it, they’re happy with how we got it to them – no buyer’s remorse, 100% happiness guaranteed.

Anything short of that means we haven’t honoured our relationship with that customer. We’ve disappointed them somewhere along the customer experience, and they may not order again. Nor are they as likely to recommend us to their friends.

If we get too excited about that sale at the point the money hits our account, are we going to put as much effort into fulfilment and customer service as we did into driving that click of the buy button? Not likely.

But from our customer’s perspective, clicking that buy button only put them in a state of vulnerability. They’ve given us their money, and they don’t have the goods yet.

This is when they really need us to step up – they need clear communication, they need to know when to expect their wine, and they need reassurance that should anything go wrong – including simply not liking the product – they’ll be looked after.

So important is this way of thinking for us, we do not have a sales department.

We’ve got a customer department, and that includes our content and communications team, our sales team, our fulfilment team and our customer service team. Together, they are responsible for the entire customer experience.

How closely do your content, communication, sales, fulfilment and customer service teams work together?

How closely do you think your customers relate those experiences?

How much effort do you put into driving that buy click, relative to everything that comes afterwards?

Here are my tips for changing the way you think about a sale:

1.Define a point in the customer experience when you have truly delivered, from the customer’s perspective.

2.Figure out who in your team is involved in delivering the customer experience to that point

3.Appoint someone responsible for overseeing the entire customer experience

4.Define your benchmark for that customer experience, and communicate them across your team

5.Make sure everyone is working cohesively toward this benchmark, and understands their role in delivering this experience, and the interdependence they have with all teams involved.

*Original Article: http://www.brw.com.au/p/marketing/why_andre_business_doesn_have_sales_IRAh9XpJeUy4IoPcQS5OCN