This photo triggered me to write this article.

There is so much relevance in this statement no matter what product or service you buy or sell. When I relate to buying a Rigid Inflatable Boat, outboard engine and boat trailer you want an excellent after sales service, isn’t it. After all there’s a lot of hard-earned money involved. A solid company always takes into account the cost of after sales services. Patrick Maes from CPI-Commercial Performance Improvement, summarizes it as follows:

Customer service is the new selling. Therefore make sure that your customer ends up in the service experience of your organization as quickly as possible.

This means that a company big or small, has a process, a flow to empower that service. This is an investment in client loyalty.

The ‘value delivery’ is the moment for companies to start up and cross selling. Put your focus on repeat purchasing.

We maybe know someone in our circle (or maybe you) who has or had seemingly infinite discussions with a company, with or without the intervention of lawyers. Word travels fast and these ‘stories’ get spread fairly easy, publicly on the net. I’m not convinced that this last decision is the way to go as if not deleted these stories will haunt the company forever. Even after a new management has been installed. Opinions are another thing.

So inform yourself before spending money on a RIB configuration.

A good seller first listens to the potential client. Listen to the seller, ask for the SLA (Service Level Agreement). Also lay your ear to listen and ask questions in existing channels that offer some kind of authority. And chisel it in stone that a deal that sounds “to good to be true” nearly always ends up in (high cost) miserie. Hence the photo above.

[Photo by Graham Teede]

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