Retaining business is among the toughest jobs distributors face today, but aligning your team to deliver on your value proposition is a key step in that process, according to Larry Davis, CEO of AgoNow, Tulsa, OK, in 5 Tips to Retain Customers in the Age of Transparency.
"It's common for the operations team to have a different world view than the sales team," Davis says. "That has to change. Get your entire team on board. For some, this will require a dramatic cultural shift."
Reprograming a hardwired company culture isn’t easy, but teams must adapt or get left behind. E-commerce has steadily increased transparency by putting pricing, customer service successes and failures, and product availability in the spotlight. Aligning sales and operations will help to focus increasingly valuable resources – and help strengthen customer retention.
"If your sales and operations teams are not aligned, your limited resources and capabilities will be running in different directions," Davis says. "In other words, you can't pay the operations team to drive low cost and low inventory and pay the sales team on growth."
Read more about preventing customers from going elsewhere in 5 Tips to Retain Customers in the Age of Transparency.
