Tag Archives: Manage

How to Walk In Your Customer’s Shoes

Most coaching and sales training programs highlight the importance of empathy in establishing solid customer relationships. Empathy is defined as “the capacity to participate in the thoughts or feelings of another”, or put more simply, “the ability to walk in another person’s shoes”.

But management guru Peter Drucker says, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”.  So how do you measure your empathy in an effort to take it to a higher level?

We recommend you use the Empathy Index to measure and improve your empathy.

Quite simply, review every oral or written presentation or communication to calculate your Empathy Index. Count the number of words or phrases that talk about your customer, and divide that figure by the number of times you’ve talked about yourself or your stations.

The figure is your Empathy Index, and your Empathy Index goals should be a minimum 1.5. In other words, you should be talking about your prospects a minimum of one and one-half times for every time you talk about how great you or your products are.

Don’t be discouraged if your first few attempts reveal a negative Empathy Index. It’s normal for salespeople who are excited about what they’re selling to talk too much about themselves, their ideas, and their products.

Improving your Empathy Index over time will strengthen your advertiser relationships in a world where your competitors continue to babble on about themselves and their offerings without empathy.

Being Productive in 2016

 I understand how busy multi-tasking sales managers can be today. I also understand it’s pretty easy to get bogged down pouring over spreadsheets, creating forecasts, reading fiction (a.k.a. call reports) and a long list of other paper-shuffling and data processing tasks.
            But there is one activity you should consider this year that will only take one hour per week that will produce more revenue for your stations.
            Simply identify your top 50 clients and meet with them face-to-face, one per week, without an account executive.
            You might do it over lunch, breakfast, or invite yourself for a tour of the client’s business.  During each meeting, plan to achieve the following three goals;
  1. Thank them for their business. Your top 50 clients want to feel like your top 50 clients, and feel their business is appreciated.
  2. Ask them how THEY are doing. Use these face-to-face meetings to keep your fingers on the pulse of the market. Look for bright spots you can share with your sales team, and problems your stations might help solve.
  3. Ask THEM how you are doing. How can your station, your rep, and you, serve them better in the coming months.
           Do this with one client per week, and I can guarantee you’ll be a better manager, and book more business in 2016.
Sincerely,

Wayne Ens

ENSMedia Inc.

705-484-9993