6 Sales Team Management Tips to Halt Customer Churn

Did you know that it’s more sustainable for your business to retain current customers than to push new customer onboarding? Harvesting and onboarding new customers is an expensive process, so it’s better to sharpen your sales team management to ensure higher ROI.

One of the most important aspects of this task is to pay attention to your customer churn rate - the percentage of customers that drop off in a given amount of time.

This post will help you gain knowledge on customer churn by breaking down the concept and discussing its importance. The discussion also incorporates fifteen ways to halt customer churn through sales team management which is directly involved with customer satisfaction.

What is customer churn?

Customer churn refers to the percentage of customers that stopped buying your product or service within a given time frame. The concept is also called “customer attrition” in the corporate industry.

The measurement of customer attrition really comes in handy in the situations where you’re providing a subscription package to your service or investing assets on building a long-term relationship with the clients. SaaS companies are commonly associated with the customer churn concept, but it could be applied to any company that offers subscriptions to their services as well.

Let's make it simple with a practical example. If you’re a wholesaler, your clients should be retailers who have to restock inventories as soon as they sell out, or a new item becomes available. In this case, your customers aren’t subscribers of your product, but they do come back to you to place orders, just like how a subscription works.

To know the customer churn rate, select a period, ascertain the numbers of customers that you had at the starting time and check how many of them have left during the period. Now divide the number of left customers by the number of customers that you began with. Multiply it by 100 to find the percentage.

Why do customers churn?

There are many factors that play a role in customer churn. Some of them are directly related to your services, while others happen naturally.

1. Customers felt unvalued or uncared

The biggest reason customers turn their heads from your service is because they felt unimportant and unappreciated. In the case of large B2B transactions, buyers look for a different kind of approach than just order numbers.

When you fail to make your customers feel valuable to the organization, they’ll automatically divert their business purchase source. This is a long-term issue caused by improper sales team management.

2. Customers were dissatisfied with your service

Unsatisfactory products or services will push your customers to look for an alternative solution. When your business isn’t getting the job done, your customer churn rate will inevitably rise.

3. Customers could just leave the market

Customers leaving the market are also considered as a part of customer churn. In this case, they simply don’t need your product or service anymore and won’t look for an alternative either.

4. Poached by a competitor

Many find poaching unethical and disrespectful, but a lot of businesses acquire new clients by poaching other businesses’ customers. When competitors slide into your customer base and poach them to divert, it extends customer churn.

5. Opting for service from a friend

Sometimes your clients can have connections that offer the same service as you, but due to the “friends and family” discount, their offer may look more lucrative and you’ll find it hard to compete with them.

Does customer churn really matter?

Sometimes customer churn is out of your control. That being said, the majority of customer churn is down to your inability to provide the quality product or service customers asked for. This happens when there’s a lack of communication between customers and the sales team. It’s important to monitor customer churn rates all the time. Once it reaches a certain level, you’ll be continuously losing a lot of money.

You do of course need new customers but onboarding them is a costly process since it requires precious time and resources. Maintaining existing customers costs far less and allows you to reduce the customer churn rate and grow the business more quickly.

Halt customer churn through sales team management

The following are some remarkable sales team management techniques that you can apply to keep customer churn at bay. These will allow you to reduce unnecessary losses and succeed with your business.

1. Encourage your salesforce to get feedback

Knowing how your customers' perspective towards your product or service is essential to make sure their demands are met. Simplify the process of receiving feedback from customers through your sales team. It’s a straightforward and practical way for customers to let you know how you’re doing. A measurable approach would be using surveys and questionnaires.

If you’re a wholesaler, your salesperson should call after every order shipment and make sure the products were dropped exactly the way the customer expected. Make sure your customers know that they’re heard and that their feelings and opinions are valued by your company.

2. Train your sales team to improve customer experience

When a customer expresses the slightest displeasure with your products or service, do your best to improve it. Your sales team should also spare no effort to improve the all-around customer experience.

Take steps for salesforce training so they know how to help customers in every situation. The training should also include behavior management to help indicate how boring or annoying expressions can make the customers feel like a burden.

3. Use sales team management app for a strategic approach

Perhaps your business could benefit from an effective sales team management app. There are three groups of people that can benefit from the systematic sales management approach: sales managers, salespeople and the final customers.

Because sales managers are in charge of an entire sales department and have to be responsible for organizing customer handling processes, they have to use sales management apps.

Salespeople, on the other hand, have to follow and master the customer handling processes through the efficient sales management application. Through automation, salespeople can focus more on potential and existing customers and save the less important tasks for later.

The cloud-based platform provides a pleasant and positive experience to the customers and helps build well-equipped and skilled salesforce and sales managers.

4. Stay on top of customer queries

Every business is full of moving parts. When one of these parts experiences an unscheduled stop or failure, schedules can derail and the whole system can go out of order. You don’t want to show your business “hold up” to the customers, especially in sensitive situations.

To avoid such scenarios, ask your sales team to stay updated. They shouldn’t delay sending email queries and should send over replies as quickly as they can. Having salespeople that are attentive to customer needs and able to provide accurate solutions are the real success of salesforce management.

If you find your sales team making silly mistakes from time to time, put an automated system to avoid these situations as well.

5. Optimize customer onboarding process

The onboarding process influences how a customer’s experience will be with your business. If they find it difficult to even start dealing with your team, they’ll think twice before building a professional relationship.

Optimize the customer dealing and onboarding process before settling for a final process. Your salespeople should help them to move through it smoothly without rushing them. Provide the resources to your sales team that will help to move through the process with confidence. Avoid anything that confuses your customers or the salespeople.

Optimizing the customer onboard process is one of the significant tasks of sales team management, so spend the time required to perfect it and make sure your customers are getting an excellent first impression of your brand.

6. Keep your presence through virtual communication

To keep customers coming back, your sales team should stay present and involved with them all the time. They have to maintain regular contact through calls, emails and social media. This is one of those strategies that generate more sales for less cost.

You could also put dedicated sales reps in charge just for maintaining virtual customer relations. The same person can also reach out for surveys and check regularly for new demands and product feedback.

Informational newsletters are also a great aspect of virtual presence. It’s an informational communication that customers appreciate in needed times. Make sure the emails are values packed and don’t look spammy. Segmenting emails also allows you to distinguish them from spam and reach the clients with valuable marketing materials.