Here is the inescapable reality: your front-line employees are the direct link between your company and your customers. To achieve your goal to go from good to great, your employees will need the following skills and knowledge, led by you, to establish a company culture centered on your clients.
The four letters of T.E.A.M. should take on real meaning for all your clients and will be of utmost importance to their success and your business. When you link these letters of your leadership with the (work) of your employees, it creates T.E.A.M. (work).
Trust
Your customers must have confidence in your employees. Your employees must have the knowledge necessary to respond well to your customers’ requests as well as having the skills to effectively communicate messages according to the types of customers they meet. A fundamental knowledge is how to communicate differently with introverts or extroverts.
Also, the expertise of your current and future employees must clearly establish that in addition to knowing the characteristics, advantages and benefits of the products they offer, they are also able to establish the direct link of their solution to the very nature of the earth that machinery will have to work to maximize its yield. In just the same way, as a leader you need to convey an attitude of trust in your employees.
They need to possess the confidence that you “have their back,” in situations of customer engagement. When operating in an environment of trust, your employees will perform with greater confidence when representing your dealership brand.
Empathy
Empathy is not a natural quality in all humans. Some of your employees have it and others don’t. But one thing is certain: the customer wants to deal with employees who are emphatic to their issues.
As a decision maker, you will have to assess the relationships of your employees with your customers, make the corrections and provide the adequate training to improve the empathy of your employees toward your customers and, in some cases, keep good employees who can’t be emphatic away from your customers. Don’t forget: the lack of empathy of your employees toward your customers will make them flee.
Alignment
Being aligned with the demands of your customers provides clear and precise indications on our processes and procedures to serve them well. This is one of the most difficult points to realize because the processes and procedures of a company are there to facilitate the task of our employees. But they often become an irritant for our customers by their lack of understanding.
Employees rarely explain our processes and procedures to their customers, which can be a source of dissatisfaction. You must continually evaluate your processes and procedures to be customer-centric for all your departments, take corrective measures, train employees on new measures and see the reaction of customers to their satisfaction. Alignment takes discipline. If your employees are not aligned with your leadership strategy and goal setting, they will perform in an inconsistent manner.
Alignment means communication. You need to set clear and consistent opportunities to communicate with your employee team routinely, so alignment is maintained in dynamic circumstances. Be prepared to adjust when situations dictate. It’s an ongoing process.
Motivation
For an employee, motivation can be linked to a goal to be reached, a bonus or to a specific title or recognition. But for a customer, the motivation lies in the fact that the customer comes back to the company to make other purchases of products or services.
Research and experience show that customers are loyal to a business and provide referrals to other customers when the business is successful in motivating the customer to stay loyal. You must ask yourself the following question: How?
You must take care of your customer as a human being and their investment (in your product or service) by systematically monitoring the use of your product or service. This is the key that will motivate your customer to follow you.
Bottom Line
If you take care of your team-oriented employees with Trust, Empathy, Alignment and Motivation, your employees will work to take care of your customers in the same manner. Through T.E.A.M. (work) your customers will stay loyal to you and your employees too.
The secret is you working as a team. At MAC, we call it T.E.A.M. (work), and it works.
Do your own analysis with the T.E.A.M. acronym and take the lead to correct any deviations that you find.
At MAC, we say: If you take care of your T.E.A.M., your people will take care of your customers.
This article was first published on farm-equipment.com.