I strongly feel that the Sales Performance of Sales people should be measured in terms of the Buying Experience of the Prospects measured through an Index. Let us call it Buying Experience Index [BX Index]. You are hearing this Term for the first time ever. I take pride in coining this term. I coined this term to enhance the buying experience of customers.
Sales people should not be measured in terms of the achievement of their sales quota. What happens when sales people are measured only in terms of their quota achievement ? They tend to focus only on bringing in more business and not focus on customer experience in their buying journey. They tend to strictly follow their own sales process without any concern or care for the buyers’ buying decision process or the importance of aligning with the prospects.
The Sales People mostly focus on low-hanging fruits and do not invest their time and effort towards business development such that it continues on a self-sustenance basis. In an ideal world, Sales/Orders should automatically start flowing in without any effort whatsoever. For that to happen, the Buying Experience of the prospects need to be taken care. Well that is a lot of effort in itself. But it is worth investing your money, time and energy in enhancing the Buying Experience of the buyers.
What should the Buying Experience Index capture ? How will it be measured ? How do you define such an index ? Let us try to define it first.
Prior to that, let us see What is Buying Experience ? The experience of a prospect or a buyer during his journey of the Buying Decision Process that starts with the Need Recognition and finally concludes with a purchase [or not].
Buying Experience Index [BX Index] : An Index where all companies will be benchmarked based on the Buying Experiences their customers and others are going through during their journey of Buying Decision Process.
What should the Buying Experience Index capture? A partial list.
- Did the vendor’s organization come up in the first page of organic search on major search engines ?
- How easy was it to visit their website and their pages / accounts on major social networking sites ?
- Was the information that you were looking for, made available on their website and was it easy to locate ?
- Was it easy to reach their sales reps ?
- Were you able to access case studies in your Industry ?
- Was a demo made available to you ?
- Did you get access to the fact sheet of the product or service that you were interested in ?
- Did you get the detailed pricing information with no hidden costs ?
- Did the Sales person listen to you and understand your needs ?
- Did he help you with whatever you wanted ?
- Was he able to provide you the value that you were looking for ?
- Was he courteous, responsible, professional, knowledgeable etc ?
- Were you able to get a feel of the product or service ?
- Did you get a trial edition of the product ?
- Were you able to use it to your satisfaction ?
- Were you able to access user guides and other documentation easily ?
- How easy was it to reach their customer service people when you had a problem ?
- Were you able to get customer references ?
- Did the sales person address your special concerns / needs ?
- Are you satisfied with your Buying Experience and how likely are you to refer your friends to this vendor ?
How will the Buying Experience Index [BX Index] be measured ?
It will be measured using latest technologies and a survey of customers in various industry segments.
How will Buying Experience Index [BX Index] help you ?
- It will help you exceed your buyers’ expectations
- You will be setting a new trend in your Industry
- Prospects will flock to you since they are buying an experience and not a product or service
- You will have shorter sales cycles
- Less customer churns
- More customer referrals
- More deals
- More brand equity
- You will be perceived as a leader in your industry
- You will get to understand your competitors better, get to know the various options that your prospects have and most importantly you will get to know why your customers bought from you and why some prospects didn’t buy from you and how to address them quickly
More on BX Index soon. Watch this space.
