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Your goal is simple: a customer who experiences a pleasant Experience that sets you apart from your competitors is likely to become a loyal customer, or even an ambassador for your brand. Customer Journey, as the path taken by all players, Customer Experience, your brand's distinctive travel experience.

How do you achieve this goal? To answer this question, let's compare the different types of Experience you can define and deliver to your customers, and their impact on the way your customers feel.

The Ultimate Customer Experience

To begin with, let's take a look at a simplified model (inspired by the one we propose as part of our exclusive CX Dynamics© method) of an a priori "ideal" customer journey.

Your entire customer journey is located in the enchantment zone. You really take care of them, and never cease to surprise them at every point of interaction.

Ah! the sweet dream of every Customer Experience manager...!

Unfortunately, this Experience is very difficult to maintain over the long term: on your company's side,the efforts deployed to achieve this level of service are likely to generate costs that will potentially erode your margin. On the customer's side, this could have a perverse effect: they will quickly become convinced that they are paying for this level of service, and that the Experience offered is not exceptional, but normal from this point of view! As a result, his perception will gradually fall into the "neutral" zone as your interactions progress.

So, if this sales strategy isn't the Holy Grail, what Customer Experience should we aim for?

Before going any further, it is necessary to make an aside on the difference between Lived Experience and Memorized Experience. To illustrate this point, it's worth taking a look at a 1996 psychological study which examined the perception of pain (rated from 0 to 10) by different patients.

Here is an extract from the study:

Pain levels as described by 2 patients during surgery.

Any normally constituted being would prefer to experience what Patient A went through rather than what Patient B went through: a procedure that generates the same pain (peak to 8), but lasts much less time...

Except that when patients were asked to say after the procedure what their average pain level was, it had nothing to do with an average of the various peaks.

Instead, the average described by each patient was that of the highest peak and the last moment of the operation.

So, even though Patient B's operation was longer, and therefore certainly less pleasant, than Patient A's, Patient B has less "violent" memories of the procedure (although we wouldn't go so far as to say more pleasant...).

This phenomenon, highlighted by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, is known as the "pic-end rule": the memorization of an experience by individuals is linked to the strongest moment of that experience and the end of it. This aside sheds new light on what the Customer Experience must be to make it the best remembered (and therefore the one that will lead the customer to be loyal to you and become your ambassador).

Discover the KESTIO webinars, where we discuss

all topics related to sales performance with our experts:

Fabien Comtet, CEO

Dominique Seguin, General Manager

Nicolas Boissard, Marketing Director

The dangers of Neutral Experience

In the light of this study, one might think that a "neutral" experience would suffice to ensure a good level of customer loyalty. However, as we shall see, this is not the case, for a number of reasons.

The neutral Customer Experience is often what most customers experience. It doesn't build loyalty, and at the first opportunity presented by the competition, they'll gladly take their business elsewhere.

What's more, if there's an obstacle along the way, they'll retain a vivid image of it, and you're likely to have lost them for good.

Target important moments to delight the customer

As you can see, it's particularly important to ensure 1 (or even 2 or 3) key moments along the way when you're going to enchant your customers.

On the one hand, to differentiate you from your competitors, and on the other, to prevent the slightest problem from causing you to lose your customers for good.

In this example, the customer is likely to overlook a fairly disastrous purchasing experience and congratulate himself on having bought this product, which brings him satisfaction every day.

The importance of after-sales service

The "peak-end rule" theory also explains why it's so important to have a high-performance after-sales service. It's potentially the last step in their customer journey, and will have a major impact on their perception of the overall quality of the Customer Experience you've provided.

In fact, when we run workshops on this topic and ask people in the room to give us real-life examples of positive Customer Experience, 80% of customers tell an anecdote about a problem that was brilliantly (or even surprisingly) solved by after-sales service.

And do you know why?
Because it always makes a good story to tell.

Customer Experience Storytelling

All the stories we've been used to seeing and hearing since we were little include a hero who starts from a rather flat initial situation (neutral), goes through a moment of great difficulty (disenchantment) but ends with a happy ending (a moment of enchantment).

The story is often even more successful if a mini moment of enchantment precedes the great disenchantment.

To ensure that your customers remember the Experience you've given them, and that they tell their friends and family about it, it's a good idea to design your journey according to this scenario.

Of course, we're not talking about creating moments of disenchantment along the way, but about identifying the main stages at which a disappointing Experience can occur, so as to counter it as quickly and effectively as possible, so that your customers have a nice story to tell. : )

Did you know that 95% of your success is linked to your state of mind? To learn how to manage your emotional charge more effectively, discover the Triad method in this webinar:

This article uses (in a simplified version) the model derived from KESTIO's exclusive CX Dynamics© methodology to measure the quality of the Customer Experience throughout the customer journey.

It was inspired by an Smashing Magazine article.

Thedigital customer experience has become a key conversion factor. Today, over 80% of consumers seek information online before making a purchase. To capture their attention and accompany them through to the act of purchase, your digital device (website, social networks, mobile app) must meet their expectations at every stage of the journey.

At the risk of missing out on a major tool for improving the customer experience, and therefore transforming leads into customers! Are you one of these brands? To help you find out quickly, we've put together a checklist of customer expectations that your digital device must absolutely meet.

Here are the 5 fundamentals not to be overlooked.

1. Clear product information

Your digital device must above all respond to the searches of web users preparing a purchase.

This is of course if they're searching for your brand or products, but also if they're doing a more generic search on the types of products you sell.

80% of Internet users say they use the internet to get information before buying a product or service... a score that reaches 87% in the Paris region and 92% among professionals and senior executives, according to a study carried out by Ifop in December 2014, entitled "The impact of e-reputation on the purchasing process"^.1

Consumers need to be able to find rich, relevant information about the products or services they're interested in on your website and through your social networking pages. Information that will help them make the right choice, whether online or in-store.

Most websites fulfill this "duty to inform" and present their products and services, but is this presentation really useful and does it contribute to conversion? Is the product sheet sufficiently complete, with a structured argument and concrete elements? Is the price clearly displayed? And if not, is there a redirection to a quote request? Can visitors easily access informative content to help them make their decision (customer reviews, product tests, use cases, etc.)? For an e-commerce site, are delivery and return conditions visible and easy to understand, including from a mobile browser?

Enhance product data sheets to improve the digital customer experience

A simple description accompanied by a standard photo is no longer enough. Today, the key tooptimizing the user experience lies in the ability to accompany the customer in his or her projection: to make him or her understand the concrete benefits of using the product, to create an emotional bond, and to guide him or her through a fluid and engaging digital customer journey.

With this in mind, the product sheet shouldn't be a point of arrival, but a lever within a more global digital strategy. It can be enriched by complementary formats such as video tutorials on YouTube, themed blog posts shared on social networks, or inspiration galleries on Pinterest. All of this content supports a structured conversion tunnel, fed by an effectiveCRM and a logic of continuous personalization.

Finally, by combining these elements with a customer satisfaction-oriented approach and omnichannel customer service, you multiply the chances of accompanying the user at every stage of his or her reflection, and thus transforming him or her into a loyal customer.

Discover our white paper CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE :

Why should your company get involved?

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2. Contact customer service quickly

Having a contact to easily reach customer service in the event of a question or problem seems obvious... and yet, on some websites, it can be a real obstacle course! So much so, in fact, that we sometimes wonder whether this is deliberate! It's not enough to "hide" the telephone number or e-mail address of the after-sales service to avoid questions and complaints. On the contrary, there's nothing like it to fuel customer impatience and irritation!

Particularly today, when the multiplicity of possible contact channels has made it essential for users and customers to have an easy and immediate way to reach a brand.

"While online shoppers are attached to traditional means of contact, they nonetheless want to have a choice when it comes to customer service," explains a CCM Benchmark / iAdvize study dated April 2015^.2

E-shoppers are particularly aware of the usefulness of real-time assistance methods to help them during critical phases of the purchasing process: problems at the payment stage, stumbling blocks when identifying themselves or filling in the order form.

Facilitate online customer assistance to smooth the purchasing process

Let's not forget: more often than not, when a customer visits a brand site, it's not just because they want to buy or find out more about a product, it's because they're looking for help. The first step in helping them is the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section, which, if done properly, will prevent a number of calls to your customer service department.

In the same way, being able to download documentation on your products or access tutorials (video or not) will avoid a certain number of direct calls or solicitations on social networks.

Set up an omnichannel, visible and responsive customer service

Ideally, you should give customers a choice about how to contact you, and specify this clearly, as IKEA or Michel et Augustin, for example, do on their contact pages.

Once these basics are in place, you can offer a means of reaching your customer service department directly: e-mail, telephone, chat or social networks. Make the available channels immediately visible and easilyaccessible. Explain clearly who will receive the e-mail or who will pick up the phone. Confirm that a request has been received, and say how long it will take to process. In most cases, this "pedagogical" discourse is enough, or goes a long way towards lowering the tension level ofan unhappy customer!

Finally, don't neglect social networks. If you have a presence on Facebook or Twitter, make sure that the person in charge of these accounts (ideally your Community Manager), can quickly forward requests internally, according to an efficient and formalized process to enable a rapid and relevant response, and a shared and "historicized" follow-up. You can also create a Facebook page or Twitter account dedicated to after-sales service, so as not to mixengagement conversationswith customer service conversations.

3. Benefit from all services from a cell phone

In 2016, offering a "mobile-friendly" version of your website has become an indispensable prerequisite. Why is this? Because 1 in 3 of the world's population is now equipped with a smartphone.

More importantly:

"Traffic from mobile terminals has recently overtaken that from computers : today, more than 50% of Internet searches are carried out from a mobile terminal (smartphone or tablet)^.3

Half the time, your customers are looking for your products, consulting your site or your online content from their personal phone!

And there's nothing more frustrating on a mobile device than a site that's heavy and long to display, with tiny buttons that are impossible to click... So it's become difficult to do without a site adapted for consultation from a mobile device, all the more so for e-tailers.

Optimizing mobile navigation for a smooth customer experience

Meeting this customer expectation means paying particular attention to the hierarchy of information, the image formats used, page loading times and the ability to carry out key operations (such as online payment or downloading high value-added content) from a cell phone.

Search engines (such as Google or Bing, for example) now offer specific tools that enable you to quickly and easily test your website's compatibility with mobile devices.

Responsive design or mobile application: which is better?

Not everyone has the opportunity or the means to create a second version of their website, specially adapted for consultation from a mobile device. The simplest, most effective and least expensive solution is to design your main site in "responsive design": its content and presentation will automatically adapt to the device used.

You can also offer your customers a mobile application. This must offer real added value in relation to your website, and in particular provide solutions to customer needs in a mobile context. In order for it to be downloaded and used, your customer must also find an interest in using it on a regular basis. If the service offered by your application is a "one shot" service, then it's best to set it up on your site in responsive design, optimizing the SEO of the page linked to this service.

4. Find your nearest sales outlet

Your website, whether an e-commerce site or a showcase site, must act as a bridge between your online presence and your physical presence.

Before making a purchase on the Internet, over 77% of 18-24 year-olds say they will evaluate or try the product directly in a store. This figure rises to 79% among 25-34 year-olds^.1

Conversely, before making an in-store purchase, 73% of French people surveyed consult online consumer reviews on blogs, forums or consumer websites.

In short, physical sales outlets and websites are more closely linked than ever, and do not cannibalize each other.

Connecting website and point of sale for a consistent customer experience

It is therefore important to provide a list of your points of sale, or if you don't distribute your products yourself, a list of your distributors. Ideally, and in keeping with the logic of presence and use in a mobile context, helping your customers to quickly locate the point of sale closest to their current location represents a real value-added service.

Geolocation and mobile services: helping customers find your store

You've probably already geolocated your stores on Google Maps. But today, in addition to giving you access to a complete, interactive map of your stores, it's also useful to be referenced by the many mobile applications that allow you toautomatically receive a store's current promotions on your mobile when you're in the vicinity (Groupon City Deal), or to collect points/bonuses when you enter a store (Shopkick). Or compare prices for the same product in all the stores selling it near your current location (Géocompare)!

5. Benefit from a personalized and, if possible, "enhanced" experience

When customer information is clear and structured, contact is simple, mobile navigation is optimized, and store location is made easy, a major differentiator for your site will be theintegration of "personalized" functionalities.

Personalization: a powerful lever for enriching the digital customer experience

Acknowledging your customers as they enter the site by greeting them by their first name, or prioritizing product offers in which they have already shown an interest, are all ways of re-creating"proximity" online.

My FeelBack, for example, thanks a person by their first name and mentions the name of their company in the message it displays after downloading one of its white papers.

Create a unique customer relationship with customized features

You can also offer content that adapts to the customer's profile and browsing history, send a personalized message with a specific promotion following a "cart abandonment", or create areas reserved for "premium" customers, giving them access to value-added content... or create areas reserved for "premium" customers, giving them access to value-added content...

Or offer a "different experience" through original design and original messages, as Michel et Augustin's site does so well.

Or simply offer them the chance to subscribe to a themed mailing list, enabling them to receive key information in advance (launch of season ticket sales for a soccer team, for example).

Features like these enhance the user experience, enable you to fine-tune your performance even further and, above all, have a strong emotional impact on your customers .

But before you consider deploying this latest stage of the digital rocket, don't forget the fundamentals detailed in this article: to generate the "wow" effect by anticipating your customers' conscious expectations, you first have to meet their first expectations on the must-have points!

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The impact of e-reputation on the purchasing process, IFOP, December 2014
Online shopping behaviors and customer engagement, CCM Benchmark - IAdvize, April 2015
Uses and expectations of hyper-connected French people, Google - IPSOS, 2015

You have certainly implemented good practices, you have surely been inspired by certain great models to always satisfy your customers. And so, perhaps like 80% of companies, you consider that you offer a “superior or excellent” quality of service to your customers…

The problem is that only 8% of your customers agree! (Lee Resources study). That says it all!

There is a real gap between your vision of satisfaction and the concrete perception of your customers.

How can you be sure that you really satisfy them? Kestio offers you a list of four key fundamentals to master for an efficient customer experience.

1 – Get to know your customers

What is customer satisfaction? The customer's assessment of the service provided by the company . When the customer feels that the quality of the service offered meets or exceeds his expectations, everything is fine. Customer satisfaction is therefore determined by his own expectations, and his assessment of the commercial performance that he perceives from the service. Not all of your customers have the same expectations of you, nor do they have the same vision of the efforts you make for them. Thus, a relationship that is identical in all respects will not be judged in the same way by two customers.

Having made this preamble, we perceive how essential it is to know your customers well. Not in a global way, but on the contrary in a more detailed, individualized way . Depending on what he is, what he experiences, what he expects from the brand, a customer will not have the same judgment on your service. Having a "customer-centric" approach, placing customer knowledge at the heart of your efforts, is therefore essential to improve your satisfaction score.

Studies such as focus groups, customer surveys, and also feedback from employees in direct contact with your customers, provide an initial overview of these elements. Tools such as personae, studying expectations, or defining customer journeys are all useful approaches for sharing and maintaining customer focus. Better still, having framework documents and compiling information from the field is essential for… structuring your listening approach !

2 – Listen to your customers!

Evaluating the quality of service (both real and perceived) inevitably involves... listening! Are you making efforts to structure your sales pitch? Do you have internal procedures for your customer relations and your points of exchange? That's good. But also think about listening to your customers . Why is this listening effort so essential? Because nearly 98% of negative experiences do not result in any complaints. Customer "complaints" are therefore far from representing the level of satisfaction of all your customers. A low volume of complaints is not a sufficient indicator to prove that your customers are satisfied with your services. A restaurant that has no (or few) comments on a customer review platform does not necessarily inspire confidence. The same goes for your business.

It is therefore important to set up a complete listening system that corresponds to your business. You need to find the right moments, the right themes for questioning, the right media and associated channels. What matters above all is that the elements captured are recorded effectively to be used. Listening alone is not useful. The feedback must then be used to change your habits, to develop behaviors, or even your products and services! These developments or considerations must also be visible to the customer to enhance their intervention.

3 – Place satisfaction at the heart of your efficiency

Placing customer satisfaction at the heart of your organization and making it a factor of efficiency and motivation for teams is an innovative challenge for your business strategy. It is not recommended to isolate the measurement of customer satisfaction and make it an indicator "like any other", monitored too occasionally. On the contrary, making the information collected from customers usable and concrete is essential. This openness effort allows you to:

- Lead teams and raise awareness of customer culture throughout the company . Sharing indicators, which results in an adaptation of the remuneration system, allows, for example, to involve everyone in the required efforts;
- Manage and improve a consistent quality approach and processes throughout your sales management . With open data, the effort is collective, and the solutions proposed are adapted and corrected thanks to customer feedback. We do not play alone, but within a real "team" at the service of the customer.
- Optimize marketing campaigns through more precise targeting (specific emails to dissatisfied customers in order to win them back, promotion of satisfied customers who know your quality, etc.);
- Develop an offer that is truly and constantly adapted to the target via increased knowledge of customers . Knowing your customers better means better understanding their needs, and therefore optimizing all key indicators (conversion rate, order rate, recommendation rate, average basket).

4 – Use suitable tools

Good customer satisfaction monitoring also involves choosing the right tools. Tools for measuring, collecting and processing information, but also for sharing data . Good dashboards, easily readable and available, will help you streamline exchanges and make customer satisfaction this famous shared indicator, seen by all.

The choice and implementation of tools is a subject in its own right that we will develop in a future dedicated article... To be continued!

To learn more about this topic, we invite you to discover and download our White Paper:

A long 2-day meeting? Between these two somewhat caricatural extremes, you probably want your company seminars to be a productive moment that makes a positive contribution to the life of the team, and helps create bonds between its members. This event always represents a major investment for your company, so it's important to use it wisely!

To help you achieve this goal, here are a few easy-to-apply tips to get you off to a good start in maintaining your sales performance (An infographic to summarize, followed by an article to go a little further).

Nous reprendrons, au long de cet article, les différents points résumés dans cette infographie réalisée par Kestio

1. Define a clear and unique objective for your corporate seminar

Before jumping headlong into the logistical organization of your corporate seminar and the production of presentation materials, take the time to think things through and to clearly define the objective Is it to communicate new strategic directions? To enable team members to get to know each other and work better together? Undertake an ambitious shift in the definition of your service offering? Update your staff's skills to establish commercial excellence?

Take the time to ask yourself these few key questions before designing the seminar content: who do you want to address? What main message do you want to get across (in one sentence)? What is the ideal outcome of the seminar?

2. Encourage active team participation

The annual company seminar is a symbolically powerful moment in the life of a team, and a unique opportunity to bring together all its members and collectively discuss key issues for the company. Nothing is more damaging to the group's dynamic than to run it like a lecture, with managers taking the floor and employees taking notes without participating, expressing their opinions or communicating their ideas. More than ever, you need to take care of your communication, and your sales management needs to think "collaboratively"!

Provide clear, visually appealing presentation materials and concise texts. Prepare your speech if necessary to ensure that it is dynamic and appeals to the audience. Last but not least, encourage participative formats (workshops, quizzes ....).

3. Give meaning to the proposed activities and setting

Seminars are usually an opportunity to offer team members a moment out of the ordinary, to get to know each other, to relax and create shared "good memories". You can also approach these more informal moments of relaxation as an additional opportunity to convey a strong message in line with the main objective of your seminar : as Victor Hugo said, "form is substance that rises to the surface"! Be aware of the subconscious impact of the chosen venue and the activities on offer.

Choose a venue that reflects the spirit you wish to convey (friendly, intimate, studious, original...). Opt for an activity in line with the objective of the seminar (improv theater for the ability to bounce back, escape game for collective intelligence...).

4. Put into practice the ideas generated during your corporate seminar

The company seminar is often a fairly intense time for exchanging ideas and generating ideas and actions to redefine your sales strategy. It would be a real shame if the energy and proposals born of this moment shared as a team were to be forgotten when you return to everyday life, and remain dead letters! Formalize the fruit of these exchanges, preferably in collaborative mode and on shared media... And above all, translate the proposals validated with the team into concrete actions. If the ideas discussed have no concrete impact on the reality back at the office, teams will not maintain their commitment.

Keep a record of the ideas and proposals generated during discussions, roundtables and workshops. Make sure they are accessible and known to everyone afterwards. Make sure that decisions taken are translated into tangible action as quickly as possible.

5. Propose a shared vision and new perspectives

For teams to be truly committed, during the seminar and in the months that follow, it is essential that the content is based on a solid "foundation" and a shared vision: the company's value proposition, strategic vision, customer commitment, corporate culture and identity.... These elements must be familiar to the team, and make sense to everyone in order to generate collective momentum. You can also take advantage of the seminar to call on outside speakers (lecturers, trainers, etc.) offering an original approach to developing new skills internally.

Work on the founding elements of your corporate identity and the discourse that accompanies them, in "storytelling" mode, to give them depth and encourage their appropriation. Involve external speakers to create new perspectives!

To find out more, download the white paper SALES SEMINAR :

KESTIO is a company specializing in services and solutions to improve Customer Performance. For over 10 years, we have been helping companies to secure and sustainably increase their revenues, by acting on all the levers that enable them to acquire and retain customers.

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Andrei Vestemeanu - partner and co-founder of his start-up Wisembly - called on the services of KESTIO to train his team of 10 salespeople and optimize his sales organization with a view to improving his conversion rates.

A look back at the results of this approach.

1- The initial objective: from sales training to sales organization optimization

A. Vestemeanu: Wisembly is a start-up that publishes a collaborative solution for meeting preparation and facilitation, enabling the companies that use it to gain in productivity by making their meetings more effective and more engaging thanks to digital technology. Founded 6 years ago, the company now has over 600 customers on 5 continents, and works with 80% of CAC 40 listed companies. It already has around forty employees and 2 offices in Paris and London.

"Initially, I contacted KESTIO to train our sales people in complex sales methods, with the idea of giving them a common background and a homogeneous way of working for the team."

In the course of our discussions, we quickly realized that beyond this question, it would also be interesting to work on the " sales organization " aspect upstream of this training action to have an optimal impact on our results.

On the subject of opportunity conversion, for example, a diagnosis carried out by the consultant enabled us to observe a 20% transformation rate (between the number of discoveries and the number of signatures). This means that 80% of sales time had previously been wasted!

2- Main stages of support: diagnosis, sales organization optimization, sales training and coaching

The KESTIO consultant(Dominique SEGUIN, editor's note) first carried out our " Sales Diag©": he conducted interviews or administered questionnaires to all the team members concerned (Associate Directors, sales, marketing and HR managers), to learn about our organization and analyze it in the light of a pre-established grid of criteria.

"The aim was to assess the efficiency of our current sales organization and identify priority areas for improvement."

This enabled him to formulate a number of concrete recommendations, which were presented to us at a feedback meeting. The areas for improvement identified concerned, for example, the segmentation of our customer portfolio into "gold, silver and bronze" customers according to their potential.

On this basis in particular, we were then able to define the right "sales intensity" (in terms of frequency, time and resources) to allocate to our customers, the right "mix" between physical, telephone and video appointments (to reduce travel time) based on a better analysis of the stakes of each sales appointment.

On the basis of this initial analysis, we then organized 2 workshop meetings between the 3 Associate Directors and the Sales Director, to precisely define the outlines of the target organization towards which we are moving in our sales management.

About a month after this work, we set up the sales training courses:

- 2 days' training in the Chessboard Method© for the 10 sales representatives, in the presence of the 3 associates
- Then individual coaching sessions(remotely, for sales reps based in London, editor's note), at the rate of one 1-hour session per month for each sales rep.

These sessions enable everyone to call on the consultant according to their needs: they can focus on a particular deal to be accompanied in the investigation of the account or review the basics of the method.

The Sales Manager is present during the coaching sessions. At the end of the sessions, the Sales Manager, the consultant and I systematically conduct a global debriefing.

In particular, this enables us to share information about the managerial handover and the areas of work adopted following the coaching session, so that we can continue tosupport the sales person between sessions andanchor their skills.

3- Results: better allocation of sales resources, increased sales productivity and optimized conversion rates.

During Sales Diag©, we observed that contact strategy was essentially based on physical appointments. However, in the multi-channel era, it is possible to develop more efficient and less costly strategies. We therefore began to carry out the discovery phase by telephone.

"By transferring this activity to a telephone channel, we doubled the number of weekly contacts at iso perimeter of resources, which is the productivity equivalent of 6 more salespeople at no extra cost!"

In addition, to meet the objective of improving conversion rates, we have developed a GO/NO GO grid with the help of KESTIO . Combined with the implementation of a complex sales training program (Méthode de l'Echiquier©), this now enables us to identify more quickly those opportunities that will not succeed because they do not meet the necessary conditions.

"This time previously lost on low-qualified opportunities has been transferred to prospecting and more in-depth work dedicated to opportunities with a higher probability of winning to further optimize our chances of winning his business."

On a more general level, we have clarified the segmentation of our customer portfolio, and we now have a common nomenclature for discussing deals: this facilitates exchanges, encourages dialogue and mutual understanding. We work better as a team.

The initial level of appropriation varies from person to person, which is whyindividual coaching is essential. We regularly need to go back to the basics of the method.

As far as sales organization is concerned, we are now able to allocate available resources in line with our defined priorities. This will be particularly useful in winning new customers and pursuing our international expansion!

To find out more about sales performance :

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If you follow this blog regularly, you'll know that our managers and consultants publish business-oriented advice and best practice articles for young start-up managers, on the excellent online medium Les Echos START (re)discover our 2 previous articles "Start-ups: 5 sales-inspired tips to sell your project"and "4 key steps for selling yourself on social networks". Here is the third article in our series, by Fabien COMTET - founder and CEO of KESTIOto support start-ups in the - sometimes critical - phase of commercial expansion.

Is your startup's sales activity starting to reach a significant volume and is your sales performance growing rapidly? That's great news, and it's the moment when your greatest dreams finally come true! Paradoxically, it's also a critical moment, which in some cases can be fatal: when the sales stakes become higher, the internal organization through its sales management is directly impacted, and the need to structure your sales development is quickly felt. Where, until now, a fairly "instinctive" sales approach and the opportunistic activation of the founding members' individual networks may have sufficed, you now need to think up a more sustainable model that can be "duplicated" for the new arrivals the team is sure to welcome...

Don't panic, a takeoff is always good news, and this phase can be managed very well with a little anticipation and by following these few tips:

1 - Identify your sales success stories

Using the success stories that have helped your startup grow is a good starting point for structuring your sales action.

2 - Involve all employees in drawing up a profile of the perfect customer

In the transition from a human-scale start-up to alarger, more structured company, the first employees may no longer fully identify with the new way of working. Involving them actively is a must, if you don't want certain key members to leave.

3 - Define the right sales "method" and identify what's missing

The right sales method needs to emerge from in-house experience, and can then be compared with external best practices. In that order. Not the other way around.

4 - Equip yourself with the right tools for each stage

When a start-up becomes a large-scale enterprise, the reflex is often to turn to dedicated (and expensive) customer relationship management software. Wrong! There are plenty of free or nearly free tools available today, and there's no need to start immediately with highly complex solutions.

Discover the article " Help, my start-up is taking off! Les clés pour réussir son essor commercial" in its entirety on the Les ECHOS Start website.

You can find out how dynamic your sales are with our SCORE 7 tool. Take the free test by clicking on the link below:

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1-Could you tell us a little about your business and your customers?

We help brands to grow by activating their consumers, turning them into true "brand ambassadors", so that they can benefit from this incredible prescription force and ultimately generate more deals.

The community we lead helps to promote these products in a variety of ways: for example, by making suggestions for improvement to the brand, by posting customer reviews on the Internet, or by spreading the word about these products simply by word-of-mouth.

Our motto: "Who better to talk about a product than a convinced consumer?

We advocate "real-life" marketing (as opposed to mass advertising messages), whose success is based on the quality of products and their relevance to customer expectations.

Our customers include major consumer goods brands (Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, Unilever, Nivea, Coca Cola...), high tech (Samsung, HTC, Sony...) and small household appliances (Braun, Bosch, Philips, IRobot...).

I'm in charge of defining and implementing the sales strategy for the French market with our customers, partners and specifiers.

2- Why did you call on KESTIO, and what were your objectives in terms of lead conversion?

It was theanalysis of our sales cycle that led to the training and coaching project with KESTIO Like any sales manager, I first asked myself "how can we increase our sales team's conversion rate " to win more deals?

I then looked at the different stages of our sales cycle and conversion funnel (targeting, prospecting, conversion...) to identify areas for improvement at each stage and positively impact our sales performance.

Based on this analysis, I initially contacted KESTIO to set up a training program focused on the closing stage. But in the course of our discussions with Dominique SEGUIN, which took place in the context of a global coaching approach, our thinking broadened and took on a different direction.

I had expressed a goal like: "go from 10 conversions per 100 leads to 20 conversions per 100 leads". You led me to look at things from a new angle by expressing this objective differently: "go from 10 conversions per 100 leads to 20 deals won by working on only 60 leads".

This is the strength of your approach and of the Méthode de l'Echiquier©, which is based on both better targeting and a new approach to prospecting, leaving nothing to chance and optimizing the conversion rate.

3- What measures have you implemented with KESTIO to improve lead processing and win more deals?

Together with the KESTIO consultant, we designed the training and support system, and defined the pace of the training sessions and the coaching follow-up.

In practice, we initially set up 3 fairly intensive training days. We scheduled them over a month and a half, so as to leave a little time between sessions to allow for the initial application of the principles covered.

This time proved useful in integrating the concepts transmitted, as some of them are quite disruptive and really require you to modify your approach, to change your posture quite radically, particularly in your relationship with customers, and therefore to question your "acquired knowledge" or habits.

I had warned my sales staff of the rather "rupturist" aspect of the Method, to prepare them to welcome this change. This point really contributed to the success of the training, I think : the sales staff were immediately involved in the approach in a very voluntary way, and really changed their practices and applied the method, immediately after the training.

Secondly, the introduction of coaching and follow-up sessions - at the rate of 1h30 per month for each sales rep for 3 months - enabledthese new practices to take root.

This individualized, long-term support also seems to me to be one of the keys to the success of this approach. I even think it would have been useful to extend this coaching stage, which is so beneficial to our sales people.

4- What results did this training produce? Did it help you achieve your lead conversion objectives?

The training is recent, so I don't yet have enough hindsight on the commercial results in terms of conversion rates.

Already, our sales staff's posture and the way they support our customers have evolved considerably, which is very promising.

The new concepts discovered in training have become so obvious that we sometimes even wonder how we could have done things differently before!

Today, for example, all our sales staff use verbatim note-taking during sales meetings, and our discussions are based on richer, more objective information.

Salespeople's vocabulary has changed: the use of common concepts helps them not only individually in the way they handle deals, but also in their exchanges, which are more fluid.

Their relationship with customers has evolved: there has been a very strong awareness of the idea that this relationship must be balanced, that the effort made must be proportional.

Just as in seduction, you also need to know how to "make yourself wanted"! It's not enough to systematically trigger a meeting or the sending of a proposal: the desire must be real and shared.

Sales people manage their diaries in a different way, they're no longer in a "meeting marathon", and above all, they approach these meetings with a different frame of mind.

As a result, we've optimized the sales cycle and are now able to focus on the customers who really need us, to support them in their decision-making cycle.

In terms of management, the method also has an impact on the way we monitor and steer our sales staff: during my monthly business reviews with each sales rep, I use new monitoring points, shared with all the sales staff and comparable from one deal to the next.

The scoring sheet provides an objective, structured way of gauging an opportunity's level of qualification, but it also requires you to pay close attention to the vigilance points inherent in the method: have all the decision-makers, the budget, the decision timetable, etc. been identified?

In the past, we sometimes tended to rely on the salesperson's "feeling" about a deal. Now we have a completely different way of analyzing deals!

This new sales approach is perfectly in line with our strategic objectives for the months ahead: to stand out in an increasingly competitive market, to increase the value of our support to customers and prospects, and to continue optimizing our sales cycle.

Find out more about your company's sales and marketing performance score:

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Discover the KESTIO webinars, where we discuss

all topics related to sales performance with our experts:

Fabien Comtet, CEO

Dominique Seguin, General Manager

Nicolas Boissard, Marketing Director

Voici donc le second article à destination des startupers né de cette jeune collaboration, proposé cette fois-ci par Fabien COMTET – fondateur et dirigeant de KESTIO – sur le thème “5 conseils de commerciaux pour vendre votre projet”.

Les commerciaux chevronnés le savent mieux que quiconque : pour vendre votre projet (ou vos produits et services) et vous différencier face à vos concurrents, vous devez activer le “cerveau droit” de vos interlocuteurs (siège des émotions) plutôt que le gauche (le cerveau dit “rationnel”). Le corollaire, c’est que vous devez être à l’écoute de leurs attentes et de leur ressenti, comprendre ce qui fait écho chez vos prospects, clients ou partenaires potentiels… et établir rapidement une relation de collaboration avec eux.

Exit l’argumentaire produit, donc, et place à l’écoute active et à la co-construction !

Voici les 5 astuces à retenir pour mieux vendre vos projets de l’article ” 5 astuces inspirées des (bons) commerciaux pour vendre son projet “ publié sur Les Echos Start :

1.   Dépassez la conviction, et suscitez l’émotion
2.   Arrêtez de parler : questionnez et écoutez
3.   Adaptez le ton à votre interlocuteur
4.   Démarquez-vous pour retenir l’attention
5.   Misez sur la co-construction

Read other related articles published on our blog:

Enfin, pour aller plus loin sur le sujet de la performance commerciale, téléchargez notre livre blanc “Homos Sapiens Commercialis” dédié aux méthodes commerciales et aux opportunités à l’ère du Digital :

So how do you go about it?

Why not simply take a step back and take a fresh look at your sales activity? In the current context, with the social tools available, do all sales reps have to be out in the field? Aren't the costs of visits prohibitive? Can't we make the strategic choice of a sedentary sales force? To ask the question is to answer it. A choice already made by many sales managers. But the real question is "how?

In this orientation, we're not talking about an off-shore call center or an unskilled hotline. We're talking about real, experienced salespeople, trained in distance selling techniquesWe're not talking about an off-shore call center or an unskilled hotline.

We're talking about men and women with solid experience in the field, bringing real added value, understanding customer needs, providing answers and making a difference.

There are, of course, many questions to be answered upstream, as it involves not only creating a new team, with different methods, but also redefining the division of roles between mobile and sedentary salespeople, and even with the marketing team:

- Do sedentary sales representatives work in support of field sales representatives or independently?
- Are they focused on the prospect base or the customer base?
- Do they only do account follow-up or also sales?
- Are current tools up to the task?
- How to size the team?
- How to position it?
- The manager?...

To prepare the ground and provide pragmatic answers to all these questions, we support sales managers in this upstream definition and construction phase. Firstly, to estimate the ROI of such a project, then to define its operational dimensions and, in some cases, to ensure its implementation.

So, if the equation seems complex to you, don't hesitate to reconsider your certainties about salespeople: when they're in the office, they can be extremely profitable!

To find out more about the use of specialized tools, discover this webinar on optimizing the return on your commercial assets:

Are you fed up with your salespeople ignoring the relational techniques essential to their success?

To help you raise your teams' awareness of good interpersonal practices, the importance of active listening and effective questioning techniques, we've created this infographic for you, which presents "The 6 deadly sins of listening in a sales meeting", and provides tips on how to remedy them!

Distribute it to your sales teams, display it by the coffee machine and apply it without moderation!

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Is optimization your watchword? Then find out in this webinar how to maximize your sales force's performance by saving them 50% of their time:

KESTIO is a consulting and training company specializing in Sales Performance and Customer Experience.

For over 10 years, we have been helping companies and their managers - from SMEs to major corporations - to improve their profitability by activating all the levers of customer acquisition and loyalty.

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