STUDENTS' CORNER - 178

Helping hand is the symbol of a successful salesman

The strategy adopted by a company to retain its customers with it is in a simple language customer relationship management.  There cannot be any business man who has not understood the great significance of the customer.  Customers make the business possible. In marketing dynamics as well as in organizational behavior, the primary slogan is ‘Customer is always right.’

Without relationship, no one can live; to live is to be related of course personally or professionally. Relationship generally implies understanding between two persons, two communities, and even two nations. Without understanding one another a relationship cannot last long. This is true of business

Business houses do not want to lose the customers they have earned; they focus on both the customers and the potential customers. To retain the customers, all that they have to do is to satisfy their needs adequately in terms of quantity and quality. Once a customer leaves the company in the sense that he ceases to be your customer, it is said by the business analysts that restoration of the customer is almost impossible. It is also said that acquiring a new customer is cost effective compared with the restoration of the exit customer. All this point to the basic fact of all marketing exercises that customer relationship management is a very essential task of any company. It simply means the company must strive to know the needs of the customers and try to more than satisfy them. All the initiatives taken towards the goal of satisfying the customers are known as Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Let us briefly see what the sales representatives must do to establish a working relationship with the customers. First of all, he must learn to view things from the point of view of the customers. It means he must be almost exactly aware of the affordability of the customer. That is, he must make the customer understand that he is truly considerate towards the customer in not trying to sell costly things to him in order to give better business to his company and better image of himself as a salesman to the company. He must be quite aware of the fact that the individuals also have their budget like his company or the big corporate and he must for certain know that budget influences all the economic activities of the customers also. A fool and his money are soon parted. It is a popular saying and you must not look upon your customer as a fool ready to part with his money for the sake of your selling abilities.

There are some more strategic points in this regard and we shall see them in our next session.