At Procurementexpress.com we don’t have a traditional sales funnel. Traditionally the sales funnel works by collecting potential customers, or leads, in large numbers at the top and then progressively filtering them into opportunities until they come out at the bottom as a customer.
However, at Procurementexpress.com, we don’t think of it as a funnel at all but more of an hour-glass.
Let me explain.
The funnel implies that once the lead becomes a customer, they no longer need our help or guidance. This could be true and perfectly acceptable for a number of products.
Shoes, for instance, are one product that generally don’t need any customer support unless they are faulty. If you are a manufacturer of quality shoes then once you have sold those shoes, you might never see the customer again, until those shoes reach the end of their natural life and the customer returns to buy more. A customer of shoes knows exactly what to do with them once they have been bought and therefore doesn’t need to return for any help afterwards.
At Procurementexpress.com the success of our customers is very important to our success. In the past, many of us have seen, or been involved with, software implementations or products that are sold and never used by the purchaser because they are too complicated or because the support is not there. It is important to us that customers not only buy our products but also use them. We want our products to become an integral part of our customers’ businesses. Consequently, the more knowledge that we gain from our customers use of our products, the better those products become.
Procurementexpress.com is simple to use and requires very little training to use effectively.
Why?
Because we designed it that way.
We’ve learnt from our wealth of experience (a nice way of saying “our past mistakes”) to create a software product that is extremely effective, but incredibly simple to use.
So we don’t need a support team? Right?
Wrong!
As I suggested above, our sales funnel is more like an hour-glass than a funnel. Once a potential lead becomes a customer, they then must be supported as effectively as possible so that they continue to use and gain value from the product.
At Procurementexpress.com, we provide as much support as our customers need to get up and running as quickly as possible.
- Do you need someone to set up all of your users for you?
Yes! We can help you with that. - Do you want help and advice on how to create budgets?
Yes! We can help you with that. - Do you need advice on how to implement Purchase Orders?
Yes! We can help you with that.
Once a customer is running their Purchase Order system effectively we continue to be there for them to help with their yearly budgets and other maintenance tasks.
So why put the time and effort in? Why not just try to bolster the sales effort to make more money?
It all comes down to two things:
Well we just love happy customers! There is no doubt that talking to a happy customer is so much better than talking to an unhappy one. So it’s important to us to keep them all happy.
Winning a new customer is tough. Keeping one is easy, once they are looked after.
Mike Johnston from The Chartered Institute of Marketing suggests that:
“Research shows that it can cost up to 30 times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. It pays to stay very close to your customers, so you know their exact needs, today and tomorrow.”
Other authors suggest that the figure is a little less:
“Conventional business wisdom contends that it costs 10 times as much to obtain a new customer as it does to retain an existing customer.”
“Pricing for profitability: Activity-Based Pricing for Competitive Advantage.” By John L. Daly (2002)
So you see that it also makes financial sense for us to look after our customers.
Our support staff are super heroes! Why not set up a trial and see for yourself?
