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Chapter 14 - Building Long-Term Partnerships
CHAPTER 14
BUILDING LONG-TERM PARTNERSHIPS
Outline of Chapter
I. Exploration
A. Set the Right Expectations
E. Handle Customer Complaints
1. Encourage Buyers to Tell Their Story
2. Determine the Facts
II. Expansion
A. Generating Repeat Orders
1. Be Present at Buying Time
B. Upgrading
C. Full-Line Selling
D. Cross-Selling
III. Commitment
A. Securing Commitment to a Partnership
1. Commitment Must Be Complete
2. Communication
3. Corporate Culture
B. Salesperson as Change Agent
4. Developing a Time-Based Strategy
IV. Dissolution
A. Limited Personal Relationships
B. Failing to Monitor Competitive Actions
Chapter 14 - Building Long-Term Partnerships
Teaching Suggestions
1. There are at least two ways to teach this chapter. One way is to focus on customer satisfaction
and customer retention, a strategy that emphasizes such aspects as handling complaints and
ensuring initial proper use. Look at suggestion number 6 if you plan to use this strategy.
The other way is to focus on how to build strategic partnerships and focus on account
management strategies. If you plan to follow this path, start the class by asking students the
following questions:
“Assume for a moment that you are going to enter into a business partnership with the person
sitting on your right. Describe what that means? Why would you become a partner with someone
else in business? What are the benefits of entering into a partnership? What would be your
attitude toward your partner?”
2. Overview the various ways to build partnerships and goodwill. Note that in all activities the
customer's interest should guide decisions. A good class discussion is to focus on value. Here you
can integrate many of the skills already taught. For example, ask what part of SPIN deals the
most with value? Implication questions build value by helping the buyer see the total cost of
owning a problem. Then you can talk about how value contributes to the relationship.
3. Discuss the critical importance of building perceptions of trust with the buyer team. An
interesting discussion can start around the topic of trust by asking, “How do you know when you
can trust a girlfriend/boyfriend?” or “What does a trustworthy person look like – do – act?”
Again, you could use personal relationships to kick-start the conversation. Then ask students to
Chapter 14 - Building Long-Term Partnerships
4. Briefly describe the importance of the salesperson monitoring the relationship and the delivery of
the good or service. Highlight the Opening Profile about John Tanner’s strategy in turning his
5. Discuss the "Thinking It Through" that appears in the chapter:
"Some customers take advantage of salespeople by trying to have them perform almost all of the
routine maintenance on a product for free. What can you as a salesperson do to curb such a
request? How do you know where to draw the line?"
6. Review From the Buyer’s Seat, “Benchmarking.” Steve Hinsch may seem like a good ole boy but
in reality, he is deadly serious about doing a good job. He relies on his vendors to help him do
7. Then segue into the importance of the salesperson following through on any and everything that
he or she promised to do. This cannot be stressed enough. Too often, salespeople make promises,
8. Until this chapter, the students' focus may be on customer acquisition, rather than retention. Some
facts are very important to recognize:
• Retaining 2 to 5% more customers has the same effect on profits as does cutting costs 10%.
Chapter 14 - Building Long-Term Partnerships
Review strategies such as cross-selling, full-line selling, and upgrading. You may find this
example helpful. One office equipment rep (now vice-president, Richard Langlotz, Konica-
9. Use Exhibit 14-7 to discuss the following: What is the role of the salesperson when you have
achieved a partnership and you have direct communication? The salesperson is the strategist, the
10. Summarize the points discussed:
• Developing partnerships and strong relationships are extremely important in today's
economy.
Chapter 14 - Building Long-Term Partnerships
Suggested Answers to Ethics Problems
1. A customer is claiming you misrepresented the product in order to get the sale so the contract
should be voided. You know from other sources that the customer is in dire financial straits. You
did not, at least in your mind, misrepresent the product. If your company agrees to cancel the
contract, it is the same as saying you did misrepresent the product and you could face termination
or lesser negative consequences. What should be done? Based on an actual event.
This question is based on a real situation involving one of the authors. The company’s policy did
2. The fairest solution to customer’s complaint is one that turns out to be against company policy,
though certainly not against the law or unethical in any way. If you tried to do it, the chances are
you could get away with it. What would you do?
Suggested Answers to Questions and Problems
1. Your company sells manufacturing equipment and a new machine had a control problem that
affected about 20 percent of customers. The problem was written about in several magazines
before your company fixed it. The problem turned out be a software glitch and could be fixed by
downloading a patch from your company Web site, and could be done by the customer. How
would you deal with this problem if a customer brought it up? How would you respond if a
prospect brought it up? Once the patch was written, what would you do?
If it was a prospect who brought it up, remind them that even Microsoft has had bugs in new
2. Explain how active listening can be applied to a situation in which a customer makes a
complaint. What can applying this art accomplish? What forms of active listening might actually
cause more problems?
Chapter 14 - Building Long-Term Partnerships
When a salesperson listens to the prospect, pays attention to moods, tunes in on the customer's
wavelength, and calculates the next move by listening and taking the customer's emotional pulse,
the chances of maintaining a good relationship are materially increased. Listening salespeople
3. Read through the From the Buyer's Seat and Building Partnerships. These seem to be advocating
opposite perspectives. How do you reconcile these two seemingly opposite positions?
4. The Miami Heat, like lots of sports teams, has a sales force that sells season tickets. Once
someone is sold a season ticket package, the customer becomes someone else’s responsibility.
Every person in the office, no matter his or her regular job, has responsibility for a group of
current customers; management believes this makes everyone more responsive to customer needs.
But some customers complain; they would rather have the same salesperson who sold the tickets
fix any problems. When should salespeople handle all complaints? When is it better to have
everyone in the company take on some customer responsibility? When is it best to have one
customer service department? Justify each response.
In general, yes, the salesperson should handle all complaints so that the customers are completely
5. Some research suggests that how salespeople handle complaints is more important than whether
there are problems. In fact, handling complaints well is one way to win loyalty. So should a
company not fix a problem that it knows will lead to some complaints, thus giving its reps a
chance to satisfy those complaints?
Chapter 14 - Building Long-Term Partnerships
6. What is your reaction to the statement "The customer is always right"? Is it a sound basis for
making adjustments and satisfying complaints? Can it be followed literally? Why or why not?
It is an excellent basis for making adjustments. It is an excellent philosophy to follow, but like
any policy it must be interpreted in light of individual circumstances. Pleasing the customer
7. In the Opening Profile, John Tanner says service was essential to his strategy. Is that just
because he's in a service business? In what types of situations involving products would service
after the sale be a strategic sales factor?
.
8. How do you know when full-line selling, upgrading, or cross-selling strategies are appropriate?
One way to answer this is to consider the stage of the relationship. How well has the seller
proved the company's reliability to the buyer? Is the buyer satisfied and ready to move to the
next stage, from exploration to expansion? But remind students that these strategies also occur in
the commitment stage.
Another way to answer this is to consider the buying center. Is there overlap with the buying
9. What are the various ways that a salesperson can provide a potential champion with knowledge
in order to build confidence? What types of knowledge will the champion need?
The champion may need technical knowledge (how the product or service works), performance
knowledge (how well it will work for the company), and experiential knowledge (experience).
These types of knowledge can be provided through the use of demonstrations, trials and samples,
Chapter 14 - Building Long-Term Partnerships
Suggested Answers to Case Problems
Case 14-1: Digital Test & Equipment
Questions:
1. Assume you are Mark. What should you do?
The first thing to do is to find out why these are breaking down so rapidly and frequently. He’s
2. Does the stage of the relationship matter?
Not in this instance. This is a situation where the customer has a right to expect better, not
Which buyer is most important, BP or DTE?
It’s tempting, based on the Gulf Oil spill, to say DTE, but really both are important. DTE, though,
3. Your first call after hanging up with Allison is with the senior engineer who gave you the wrong
information. He claims that there is a simple fix, but a DTE engineer will have to make the trip
there to do it and it is about $5000 trip. First, what would you say to your manager who has to
sign off on that expense? Second, how do you handle Allison?
Case 13-2: CSP Services
Questions:
1. What could she do to identify issues that crop up quickly like the Quantum feeder and how could
she help others in the company craft a better customer experience to avoid problems in the first
place?
This case is designed to give students an idea of customer service management processes. If the
CEO is getting calls, one has to wonder why the customer service reps are not – or did they, and
Chapter 14 - Building Long-Term Partnerships
End of Chapter Role Play Case
In each situation, the buyer is the vice-president of sales, and bought NetSuite for the 28
salespeople, him or herself, and the European sales manager. The US salespeople report directly
to the VP. This is a new scenario and does not rely on BancVue, GelTech, or High Point from
the earlier chapters.
The second situation involves a technical problem and a legitimate concern; the reps are having
trouble transferring existing data from Outlook to NetSuite The problem is that the seller is
probably unable to resolve the problem. The buyer wants to return the software, or have the rep
make the transfer for everyone. That probably isn’t the best solution. At the minimum, the rep
should arrange a conference call to walk all of the salespeople through the transfer process. Or,
since they should have been trained by the trainer to do it, the rep could have the trainer do it, but
that isn’t the best way to handle it because the customer is likely to get caught between NetSuite
and the trainers.
Buyer Version A:
You are the vice-president of sales, and you bought NetSuite for your 28 salespeople, yourself,
and your sales managers. The US salespeople report directly to you. You are very disappointed
with how little the reps are using it. You thought you would get a lot of customer information
Chapter 14 - Building Long-Term Partnerships
Buyer Version B:
You are the vice-president of sales, and you bought NetSuite for your salespeople, yourself, and
your sales managers. The US salespeople report directly to you. The salespeople are very
Buyer Version C:
You are the vice-president of sales, and you bought NetSuite for your salespeople, yourself, and
your sales managers. The US salespeople report directly to you. You got an invoice from
NetSuite that is twice what you expected. You’re very angry about it because you’ve called and
ADDITIONAL EXERCISES AND ANSWERS
EXERCISE 14-1:
A good basis for any business that wishes to build a partnership and goodwill is to do more than is
expected. How can this be done under the following situations?
a. You are a pharmaceutical salesperson calling on doctors.
b. You are a consumer products salesperson calling on grocery store managers.
c. You are telecommunications (internet, etc.) services to large industrial firms.
Answers:
a. You are a pharmaceutical salesperson calling on doctors.
• You could arrange a training session with the nursing staff to instruct them about how your
drug works so that if anyone calls in with questions they may be able to offer some assistance
if the doctor is busy.
Chapter 14 - Building Long-Term Partnerships
b. You are a consumer products salesperson calling on grocery store managers.
• You could bring more boxes of your products from the stockroom and stock the shelves with
them.
• You can volunteer to serve as a bag boy during grand openings or special events. You can
agree to remove the current competitive products or other product classes off the end-of-aisle
display to the stockroom before erecting your own display.
