Customer loyalty is the most important aspect of your job in sales. When I started my second company in pharmaceutical sales the representative before me was being promoted. He had done a good job in his territory and was being given new responsibilities.
I took over his territory where he had build up years of customer loyalty. And the manager who was the manager before my time with the company was good at establishing loyalty when he worked that territory with the rep I was replacing. So I was taking over a great territory.
I did have trouble with one of the hospitals I was taking over however because the representative that covered that hospital was fired by the company because he was deemed not to be working the required eight to five routine. His market share was good but he was not working the hours he was supposed to work.
The problem the company had was that there was nothing in the company procedures saying sales reps had to work a certain amount of hours. But the company fired him anyway. The rep chose to sue the company. He ended up losing in court because the court determined that the company had an implied work hour requirement. The company soon put one in place in writing. But the rep that was fired had such company loyalty that many customers agreed to boycott the company.
I had the unenviable job of calling on some of his former customers in my territory. One head nurse made accusations about the fitness of our products and removed her patients from our products and switched them to competitor s products. We were mainly a nutritional company so we are not talking drugs here. I was new to the company and I did not know if such complaints were the norm. My manager asked the district trainer to go into the hospital to talk with the nurse since I was new to this.
The nurse made her claims and the district trainer lost his temper and basically called the nurse, our customer crazy because our products would pass any fitness test anyone could come up with. It did make going into the hospital the next time to see the nurse a little challenging. I was glad that within a week she took a job at another hospital outside my territory.
We later found out that she was good friends with the rep who had been fired. He had called on her for many years and had developed a good relationship with her. Her customer loyalty went so far as agreeing to the boycott of our company he had instigated.
The boycott did not last long. Customer loyalty can last only so long once you are no longer with the company. But if you can build up customer loyalty as a sales rep you will go a long way, all the way to many sales awards. Years after I took over the territory with a lot customer loyalty I was still winning sales awards. And all I had to do was keep the customer loyalty that was already there when I took over the territory.
Author Resource:
Specializing in building customer loyalty, we design, deliver, and manage a suite of loyalty services such as loyalty cards and reward programs for retail marketing. http://www.loyaltyone.com
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