Turning Satisfaction Surveys Into Sales Leads

That's the message Vince Lamb, vice president of managed services at TIG, a $282 million solution provider in San Diego, delivered to solution providers attending the "Customer Satisfaction Equals Profitability" breakout session Sunday at XChange '07. "We use our back-end customer satisfaction surveys to lead with as a sales wedge for new business opportunities," Lamb told a standing-room- only audience.

John Krikke, sales manager at Krikke Computer Services, a three-person solution provider based in Burlington, Ontario, said he plans to do a more formalized customer satisfaction survey and use it to better market his company. "When you just talk to a customer and ask, 'How are things going?' they'll say, 'Great' while they are writing a PO to your competition," he said. "This is a way to use customer satisfaction surveys to stay in the customer's face."

Lamb said TIG collects the data and then shares it with customers during quarterly business reviews. "Everybody is looking for a differentiator," he said. "The customer satisfaction surveys give you tangible proof that you are doing well and help you gain credibility with the client."

In addition, Lamb told solution providers that sharing the surveys with clients helps TIG better position itself to go after higher-end services in existing accounts. "A good customer satisfaction survey can help show the customer the differentiator of why he does business with you," Lamb said. "You can then use that together with the quarterly customer business reviews to talk about higher-end services."

Lamb also said the surveys can be a change agent to help service and salespeople change their mind-set. "They can serve as cultural switch to help shift the mentality of your organization from a product to a solution sell," he said. "It takes people out of the order-taking mentality of 'I sold you something; I'll see you the next time you want to buy something else.' "