If you have never systematically surveyed your customers’ views, you probably don’t really know what they are. All of us need customer feedback to assess the performance of our salespeople, the quality of our products and the value of our services. They help us improve the success of our sales calls, blunt the competition, reinforce our strengths and compensate for our weaknesses. A well-designed customer survey can help you:

• Assess the company’s position with its very best customers,
• Determine whether you are missing sales opportunities with existing customers,
• Evaluate the ability of your sales force to recognize and capitalize on sales opportunities from new prospects,
• Empower your sales managers with customer perceptions of service quality during the selling process,
• Determine what training aids and performance systems you may need to improve sales effectiveness.

In developing your survey, choose from your best customers, those with the greatest buying potential, and new prospects. You will gain the most value from knowing how these groups feel. Finally, consider phone surveys if you want a high response rate quickly; use the US mail for efficient processing, low cost and when anonymity is important.

At age 52, all-purpose salesman Ray Kroc was selling the Prince Castle Multi-Mixer, a device for making six milk shakes simultaneously. On a sales call he met Maurice and Richard McDonald who ran a hamburger stand in San Bernardino, CA. The brothers McDonald ordered eight Multi-Mixers and Kroc, who must have been amazed at the milk shake math behind such a sale, determined to have a closer look at an operation that required 48 milk shakes at one time. He soon calculated that the hamburger stand under a pair of garish golden arches must be doing $250,000 in business a year. Kroc ultimately convinced the brothers to franchise the operation, and an empire was born.