The sales support person is an advocate for the customer and the sales team.
The support person seeks to resolve issues by engaging with the relevant department. It may be a delivery issue, a credit issue, a product issue.
The support person works with the transport department, the credit department or the merchandise department to seek a resolution. They represent the customer’s interests to each of these departments.
The team member’s influencing skills need to be finely tuned. While there are rules, guidelines, processes, and protocols in any business, it is not unusual to overlook or work around these at times. Just to get stuff done.
A team member’s ability to seek a resolution with their colleagues that suits the customer often depends on their influencing skills.
Characteristics of a person with strong influencing skills are:
- Built a working relationship with a wide range of internal team members
- Displays skills in persistency (not insistency)
The team member with strong influencing skills rarely uses the following:
- Defers to a higher authority in the first instance
- Refers to the business rules in the first instance
These characteristics are examples of being insistent.