LEVITT T., After the Sale Is Over…, Harvard Business Review, September 1983

Abstract

As our economy becomes more service and technology oriented, the dynamics of the sales process will change. The ongoing nature of services and the growing complexity of technology will increasingly necessitate lengthy and involved relationships between buyers and sellers. Thus, the seller’s focus will need to shift from simply landing sales to ensuring buyer satisfaction after the purchase. To keep buyers happy, vendors must maintain constructive interaction with purchasers—which includes keeping up on their complaints and future needs. Repeat orders will go to those sellers who have done the best job of nurturing these relationships, the author argues.

Of course, not all products and services require the same degree of relationship cultivating; the longer the period of time over which the service will be extended or the more complex the product being sold, the more attention the seller must give the relationship. Whatever effort is appropriate, though, must be made in a systematic and regular way, which means that sellers must be alert and sensitive. The author offers suggestions for incorportating these qualities into companies’ business practices.

The relationship between a seller and a buyer seldom ends when a sale is made. Increasingly, the relationship intensifies after the sale and helps determine the buyer’s choice the next time around. Such dynamics are found particularly with services and products dealt in a stream of transactions between seller and buyer—financial services, consulting, general contracting, military and space equipment, and capital goods.

The sale, then, merely consummates the courtship, at which point the marriage begins. How good the marriage is depends on how well the seller manages the relationship. The quality of the marriage determines whether there will be continued or expanded business, or troubles and divorce. In some cases divorce is impossible, as when a major construction or installation project is under way. If the marriage that remains is burdened, it tarnishes the seller’s reputation.

Companies can avoid such troubles by recognizing at the outset the necessity of managing their relationships with customers. This takes special attention to an often ignored aspect of relationships: time.

The theory of supply and demand presumes that the work of the economic system is time-discrete and bare of human interaction—that an instantaneous, disembodied sales transaction clears the market at the intersection of supply and demand. This was never completely accurate and has become less so as product complexity and interdependencies have intensified. Buyers of automated machinery, unlike buyers at a flea market, do not walk home with their purchases and take their chances. They expect installation services, application aids, parts, postpurchase repair and maintenance, retrofitted enhancements, and vendor R&D to keep the products effective and up to date for as long as possible and to help the company stay competitive.

The buyer of a continuous stream of transactions, like a frozen-food manufacturer that buys its cartons from a packaging company and its cash-management services from a bank, is concerned not only with completing transactions but also with maintaining the process. Due to the growing complexity of military equipment, even the Department of Defense makes most of its purchases in units of less than a hundred and therefore has to repeat transactions often. Leggi l’articolo completo