Five Ways to Align Customer Care with Sales to Close More Deals

Customer care and sales are often considered distinct departments that deal with different aspects of the customer journey. Sales will say they are focused on closing deals while customer care will say they are focused on keeping existing customers happy. What is interesting, however, is that bringing these two competencies together can create startling synergies that can help boost the business. In this post, we look at five ways you can pair the two to derive greater value for your business.

1. Customer care ensures commissions are secured

Selling a home often takes months. While sales may have brought in the listing, customer care must ensure the customer is kept happy during the entire process of finding a buyer and selling the home. Without customer care, it would be hard for sales to keep track of current customers while going after new ones. By streamlining these competencies, it is possible to create greater cross-departmental collaboration as it becomes apparent that the efforts of each party are what ensure everyone gets paid.

2. Sales focus on bringing in business, customer care on maximizing it

For most real estate agents, getting leads in the door is the most important activity of the day. This means most of their efforts are spent seeking out new business. Customer care can support these efforts by ensuring leads brought in and closed are happy throughout the transaction process. The benefit of aligning these two purposes is it ensures sales have the space to continue pursuing new business, something that is vital to the success of the business.

3. Customer care can help differentiate potential leads

It may sound counterintuitive, but it is possible that customer care has a better understanding of what the ideal customer looks like. While sales spend a lot of time profiling potential customers, customer care deals with existing customers daily, giving them unique insights into what makes an ideal customer. By passing this know-how to sales, it can provide the crucial differentiating factor that helps sales focus on better leads, saving resources and boosting sales.

4. Customer care understands customer use cases better

Let’s say a salesperson is meeting with a potential customer and the customer asks a series of questions that have nothing to do with sales. While the salesperson may struggle to answer the questions, it is possible that a customer care rep has heard the same questions a thousand times. By sharing these insights with sales, it becomes easier for sales to answer non-sales-related questions because they understand customer use cases better.

5. Sales understand inventory while customer care understands customers

This disparity can be a source of greater synergy or a point of frustration. Consider a situation where a salesperson knows inventory but lacks knowledge of how customers react in different scenarios. Because customer care is used to dealing with customers across a diverse set of scenarios, they are better equipped to deal with such a scenario. By allowing the flow of information across both departments, a greater understanding of the customer and inventory can be achieved across departments.

Where to start?

Bridging the gap between sales and customer care can be challenging. With each having separate mandates, it will take time to create cohesiveness between the two. A good place to start is by providing tools to share information across departments. This can help encourage the departments to share information. Also ensure they have a shared knowledge base, something that can help provide context for information gathered.

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