Leave No Sale Behind: Supercharge Growth By Integrating Sales With Service

Leave No Sale Behind: Supercharge Growth By Integrating Sales With Service

Hacksaw Ridge tells the true story of Desmond Doss who served as a combat medic in World War II at the Battle of Okinawa. He was the first and only conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor for actions above and beyond the call of duty during World War II. He brought belief, integrity, courage, and heroism together to deliver amazing results in saving lives as he charged into the hell of battle without a weapon.
 
Consistent with the US military code, he didn't want to leave anyone behind.

In business, customers seek one primary thing from salespeople: a solution to a problem or a challenge from someone who truly understands them. Every business should commit to not leaving any customer behind and therefore to empowering everyone in their team, from every facet of the business, to heroically deliver what customers expect and need... exceptional personal service.

The age of the empowered customer has kicked down those old cubicle walls that previously separated sales and service teams. Customers now expect personalized and unified information from the first person who answers their call, opens their email or reads their social message and it doesn’t matter to them which department they sit in. 

If a business can’t provide this experience, all it takes is a quick browse online for an eager competitor to pounce. It’s not only tech-savvy millennials who are voting with their feet -70% of consumers and 82% of business buyers surveyed in the recent State of Sales Report from Salesforce agreed that technology has made it easier than ever to switch suppliers or service providers.

So, is it as simple as rounding up your sales and service teams and throwing them in a room together? 

If only it were that easy.

Map the customer journey 

You would be surprised at the number of businesses, large and small, that have no idea what their individual customer’s journey looks like in real life. This is a critical first step in aligning your teams. 

Firstly, challenge each team member to play the role of a customer in your business. They need to see through the customer's eyes and walk in their shoes. During this exercise, they must process and predict every touch point, decision, barrier, question and pain point. Chances are, the sales and service employees will identify things they could do differently or how they could improve the way they work together to ensure that the customer can seamlessly purchase your product or service and become an advocate in the market.

"Place an empty chair in every meeting to represent the customer. They are the most important person there so consider them as you discuss strategy, manage issues and make decisions." [paraphrase] Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder and CEO


Break down barriers

As I said earlier, if you have partitions in your office, pull them down. Collaboration and communication between sales and service people are paramount to providing the ultimate customer experience (CX). Recent Accenture research revealed that legacy business structures and siloed management practices are putting constraints on employees. In fact, 73% of executives surveyed in the Technology Vision 2017 report said that corporate bureaucracies are stifling innovation and productivity.

The only difference between sales and service roles in my view is when they’re in front of the customer: sales do the deal and set expectations, and service seeks to meet or exceed those expectations after they’ve signed the dotted line. 

It’s important to realize that one couldn't survive without the other, so it's up to business leaders to encourage a culture of sharing data, collaborating, integrating and talking to each other. The result: you have fewer silos, more internal touch points, better lines of communication, and better processes, which all lead to better customer experiences. 

Customers want a personal consultant, not a sales or service rep

Customers today expect a highly personalized online shopping experience, so why wouldn't they expect the same in a store, office or showroom? 

By connecting the two customer-facing departments and empowering them with a complete 360-degree view of the customer, they can enhance the customer experience, drive growth, loyalty, and advocacy. We all know what it’s like to be greeted by name at your local restaurant, this should be the case in any business regardless of who they speak to or how they engage at any given moment.

For instance, real estate website, Domain, integrated their Homepass app with their CRM to replace the old pen and paper open home check-in process with a seamless mobile experience. Each customer’s buying journey was recorded, analyzed and integrated to the agent’s CRM. The technology ensured real estate salespeople and the service call centers had the right data and information to have personalized conversations with the right customer at the right time. 


Sell smarter, not harder

I hate to hark on about the end of the old sales or service model, but change is happening right now. By 2020, 51% of consumers and 75% of business buyers expect companies to anticipate their needs and make relevant suggestions before customer contact. 


This can only be achieved if:
  • Your business and employees know their customer journeys like clockwork.
  • Leaders encourage and set an example for a culture of collaboration and data sharing. Leadership is behavior, not posters or slogans.
  • Barriers between customer facing roles are abolished
  • Salespeople sell smarter, not harder. This means leveraging the power of technology to make sense of masses of disparate sales and service data we have at our fingertips to provide meaningful insights, predictions, and actions.
     
     
Author Bio: Tony Hughes is a bestselling author, award-winning blogger and the most read LinkedIn Author globally on the topic of B2B sales leadership. Tony’s first book is a business bestseller with his second book, COMBO Prospecting, is available on Amazon here. He can be found on LinkedIn and at TonyHughes.com.au and RSVPselling.com



      Zoho Campaigns Resources


        • Desk Community Learning Series


        • Digest


        • Functions


        • Meetups


        • Kbase


        • Resources


        • Glossary


        • Desk Marketplace


        • MVP Corner


        • Word of the Day


        • Ask the Experts


          • Sticky Posts

          • As Sales Person, Here are my New Year Resolutions. What are Yours?

            Being a salesperson, I keep learning from my mistakes and have noted a few changes that I need to make in my approach. I take these resolutions going into 2021, hoping to keep it going for as long as possible :) 1. I will not say "Yes, our product has
          • Once Upon a Sales Meeting!

            It was an awkward silence in the meeting room "Uproar." John Kowalski, the new sales manager, was not happy with the team's performance. After scribbling something in the notepad, he decided to break the silence, John: I cannot believe you guys have been working like this. No reports, delusional forecasting, random targets, and no eye on the ball. Kevin: We followed Richard's orders. John: Well, Richard is not here anymore, is he? John walked up to the whiteboard, and wrote in big bold letters: "TARGET

          Zoho CRM Plus Resources

            Zoho Books Resources


              Zoho Subscriptions Resources

                Zoho Projects Resources


                  Zoho Sprints Resources


                    Zoho Orchestly Resources


                      Zoho Creator Resources


                        Zoho WorkDrive Resources



                          Zoho CRM Resources

                          • CRM Community Learning Series

                            CRM Community Learning Series


                          • Tips

                            Tips

                          • Functions

                            Functions

                          • Meetups

                            Meetups

                          • Kbase

                            Kbase

                          • Resources

                            Resources

                          • Digest

                            Digest

                          • CRM Marketplace

                            CRM Marketplace

                          • MVP Corner

                            MVP Corner




                            Zoho Writer Writer

                            Get Started. Write Away!

                            Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.

                              Zoho CRM コンテンツ






                                ご検討中の方

                                  • Recent Topics

                                  • Tables from ZohoSheets remove images when updated from source

                                    I have a few tables from a ZohoSheet in a ZohoWriter document that will remove the images in the cells when I refresh from the source. The source still has the images in the table when I go to refresh. After updating from the source, as you can see the
                                  • Unable to Receive Emails on Zoho Mail After Office 365 Coexistence Setup – Error: 553 Relaying Disallowed

                                    Hello, My domain name is bigniter.com, and I’ve been using Zoho Mail as my email service provider without any issues. Recently, I followed the steps outlined in the Zoho documentation to enable Coexistence with Office 365: 🔗 https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/adminconsole/coexistence-with-office365.html#multi-server
                                  • API Pagination Error: 'from' Parameter Limit

                                    Hello, I am encountering an error while paging through the Zoho Desk API results: Status code: 422 - {"errorCode":"UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY","message":"The value passed for field 'from' exceeds the range of '0-4999'."} Is 5000 the maximum number of records
                                  • How to go to the next open ticket in the queue when agents closes ticket

                                    Zoho Desk When agent closes a ticket - eg when they choose 'Send and Close" - where is the setting that automatically redirects them to the next open ticket in the queue?
                                  • External download link limit

                                    Can You please help us to understand this For Zoho WorkDrive external users, the download limit is a maximum of 5 GB total download size and a maximum of 50 first-level files and folders What is the meaning of first level? We are using these files in
                                  • CRM verify details pop-up

                                    Was there a UI change recently that involves the Verify Details pop-up when changing the Stage of a Deal to certain things? I can't for the life of me find a workflow or function, blueprint, validation rule, layout rule ect that would randomly make it
                                  • Automatically Add Recurring Zoho Meeting Events to Zoho Calendar / Zoho Meeting Calendar

                                    Hello Zoho Meeting Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to request an enhancement regarding recurring meetings created inside Zoho Meeting. At the moment, when we schedule a recurring meeting in Zoho Meeting, it does not appear in Zoho Calendar
                                  • The difference between Zoho Marketing Automation and Zoho Campaigns

                                    Greetings Marketers! This post aims to differentiate between Zoho Marketing Automation and Zoho Campaigns. By the time you get to the end of the post, you will be able to choose a product that objectively suits you. What is Zoho Marketing Automation?
                                  • Custom templates for calendar report

                                    What about being able to design custom templates for the calendar report, as well as for other types of reports? I think more users are waiting for this.
                                  • Print a price list or price book

                                    Hi Community. Am I right in concluding that Zoho has no functionality to print a price list from either Zoho CRM, Zoho Inventory or Zoho Books? I won't get stuck on the fact that Zoho doesn't sync price books between Zoho CRM and Books/Inventory (more
                                  • Disable payment thank-you emails

                                    Hello, can someone please tell me how to disable sending of the "Payment Thank-You" emails? 
                                  • Maximum tags possible in Contacts Records

                                    I read in some documentation that Zoho allows a total of 200 tags across all records. Is this correct? So is it not possible to have one tag per record for 500 records?
                                  • Integrate your Outlook/ Office 365 inbox with Zoho CRM via Graph API

                                    Hello folks, In addition to the existing IMAP and POP options, you can now integrate your Outlook/Office 365 inbox with Zoho CRM via Graph API. Why did we add this option? Microsoft Graph API offers a single endpoint to access data from across Microsoft’s
                                  • Any way to "Pay with Check" or "Refund with Check" for Credit Notes?

                                    When we have a Bill in Zoho Books, we can select the "Pay with Check" option which then allows us to print/cut the check directly out of Zoho Books. When we created a Credit Note and want to refund the customer, is there any way to Refund with Check,
                                  • CRM Mobile reports

                                    When our engineers finish a job they like to email the customer a job report. This is best done todate as an email template but we can find no way to include an image field from that module. Is there any other options?
                                  • Unify All Zoho Video Meeting Experiences into One Standardized Platform

                                    Hi Zoho Team, We would like to share an important user experience concern regarding the current state of video meeting functionality across the Zoho ecosystem. The Problem Within Zoho, there are multiple ways to initiate or schedule a video meeting: Zoho
                                  • When Zoho Tables Beta will be open to EU data center

                                    Hello all, We in EU are looking at you all using and testing and are getting jealous :) When we will be able to get into the beta also? We don't mind testing and playing with beta software. Thank you!
                                  • Start Form on a different page (i.e., hide form pages)?

                                    I have a Zoho form that uses the `Field Alias - Prefill URL` feature. My goal is to have a pre-filled field that directs the user to a specific starting page in the form. For example: The URL will have a field alias that will auto-populate a field with
                                  • Microsoft Teams now available as an online meeting provider

                                    Hello everyone, We're pleased to announce that Zoho CRM now supports Microsoft Teams as an online meeting provider—alongside the other providers already available. Admins can enable Microsoft Teams directly from the Preferences tab under the Meetings
                                  • Standard Payment Term is not pulled from account to quotation

                                    Hey Team There seems to be something off. I do have "Net 30" as my default payment term in Zoho Books for my customers. If, from the customer overview or quote section, I create a new Quotation, the payment terms field stays blank and doesn't get the
                                  • Passing the CRM

                                    Hi, I am hoping someone can help. I have a zoho form that has a CRM lookup field. I was hoping to send this to my publicly to clients via a text message and the form then attaches the signed form back to the custom module. This work absolutely fine when
                                  • How can we disable "My Requests"?

                                    We are not using this functionality in our system at all and our users get confused.
                                  • PayPal payment received recording problem

                                    Hi, A little while back one of our customers used the PayPal payment option to pay an invoice For some reason though the payment is showing up twice within the Payments section of the invoice! Instead of setting the invoice value to ZERO, it now shows a negative value Anyone else face this problem? I've checked PayPal and there is only 1 payment in reality... A bug? Actonia ps: for anyone from Zoho Customer Service or tech team,  its Invoice 785 in our account
                                  • string(87) "{"code":"INVALID_TOKEN","details":{},"message":"invalid oauth token","status":"error"} " grtting this error

                                    Using access token i am trying to add sales orders through api but it is throwing errors like the above i have mentioned. Please help me for that
                                  • How to mute chat notification sound by default in Zoho SalesIQ?

                                    We’ve recently embedded the Zoho SalesIQ chatbot on our website, and we’ve noticed that notification sounds sometimes play even when the visitor hasn’t interacted with the chat widget yet. We’re trying to understand two things: Why do these sounds occur
                                  • Kanban View for Projects.

                                    At our organization, we describe active projects with various statuses like "In Proofing" or "Printing" or "Mailing". In the Projects view, one can set these project statuses by selecting from the appropriate drop-down. While this works, it's difficult to view and comprehend the progress of all of your projects relative to each other in a table. Creating a Kanban view for projects where I can move them from one status to another allows me to see where each project is in the order of our workflow.
                                  • How to Hide Article Links in SalesIQ Answer Bot Responses

                                    I have published an article in SalesIQ, and the Answer Bot is fetching the data and responding correctly. However, it is also displaying the article link, which I don’t want. How can I remove the link so that only the message is shown?
                                  • Currency limitation when integrating Zoho CRM & Zoho Books

                                    Brief Video of Problem: https://www.loom.com/share/d61d1d07d0904e149d80c1901a22418e. Background ·       Our business is based in Australia and we have to have Zoho Books in AUD to comply with tax and reporting regulations in Australia. ·       We sell
                                  • Add RECURRING option when adding email to calendar events

                                    When you add an email to a calendar event, there is no option to make that new calendar event into a recurring event.  It is counterproductive to make an event from your email to then have to go to your calendar, find the event, and make it recurring. 
                                  • Using Contains as a filter

                                    We are using Zoho Reports, ServiceDesk Plus analytics. I do not see how to create a report filter using Contains comparison of a string values, is one string contained in another. For example, Task Title contains the word Monitor. Is this possible in Zoho Reports?  This reporting feature is available in SDP reporting. Thanks in advance, Craig Rice
                                  • LINE Auto Message Connect to Zoho

                                    When I integrated LINE into the CRM, I was prompted to disable “Chat,” “Auto Response,” and “Greeting Messages,” and to enable the webhook. However, since I have already set up some auto-reply features in LINE, including Rich Messages and greeting automation,
                                  • Option to block bookings from specific email address or ip adresss in zoho booking

                                    Sometime few of our client keep booking irrelevant booking service just to resolve their queries and they keep booking it again and again whenever they have queries. Currently its disturbing our current communication process and hierarchy which we have
                                  • Threaded conversations for emails sent via automation

                                    Hi Guys, I hope you are doing well. Don't you guys think we should have an option in a workflow to notify users either as a new email or the previous email thread. For example, if you have one deal in the process and there are 10 different stages during
                                  • All new Address Field in Zoho CRM: maintain structured and accurate address inputs

                                    The address field will be available exclusively for IN DC users. We'll keep you updated on the DC-specific rollout soon. It's currently available for all new sign-ups and for existing Zoho CRM orgs which are in the Professional edition. Managing addresses
                                  • Create folder is fetch fails

                                    coming from zapier... zapier has a google drive task that searches for a specific folder in google drive, and if it fails to find the folder it will create a folder based on the search criteria, and contine along the singluar path of the flow. Trying
                                  • Meetups de Usuarios de Zoho - Noviembre 2025

                                    ¡Hola, Comunidad! Durante el mes de noviembre celebraremos los Meetups de usuarios de Zoho, encuentros presenciales pensados para quienes queráis mejorar vuestras estrategias de lead nurturing y aprender a sacar el máximo partido a herramientas como Zoho
                                  • Introducing 7 New Connectors in Zoho DataPrep!

                                    We’ve just made data management even easier - Zoho DataPrep now supports 7 new external connectors to help you build more robust, scalable ETL pipelines. Why it matters: ✅ Broader data access ✅ More automation, less manual work ✅ Smarter pipelines, better
                                  • System flaws and lack of response from Zoho

                                    I have had to go on here as no-one is replying to my emails regarding my problem (been 10 days and no email reply) and your chat facility online through your Zoho Books software opens and closes immediately, so not functioning properly. I actually called
                                  • Sales Order, Invoice and Payment numbers

                                    Hi zoho friends, it is me again, the slow learner. I'm wondering if there is a way to have it so the Sales order, invoice and payment numbers are all the same? It would be easier for me if they were the same number so there is not so many reference numbers
                                  • Missing information data Zoho inventory

                                    there some missing data in Zoho inventory connection. pick list stock counts bin location we have requested it via mail and the support team doesn’t gove feedback. has anyone achieve to get these info or to ask other ya les
                                  • Next Page