I’m fairly sure that just about every Sales Director I have ever met would say an immediate “yes” if you asked them: would you like to have more passionate and highly motivated sales people?

But I doubt that any of them would expect their Customer Experience team to help find them. They are far more likely to reach for their favourite recruitment agency, order up a few more sales CVs and start interviewing.

Two items that jumped up at me today suggest that actually the Customer Experience Manager should be the Sales Director’s best friend, and a route for higher sales revenues – without any of the tedious recruitment and training that new sales people normally need.

Firstly, Bain & Company’s research that:

“Companies with engaged staff have 38% higher customer satisfaction, 22% higher productivity and up to 27% higher profits”

Higher productivity and higher profits sound good, but that doesn’t link Voice of Customer to our Sales Director yet.

Not until Rob Markey popped up in my email inbox today, courtesy of the Harvard Business Review.

(If you are not already subscribed, then stop reading and sign up straight away – it is an excellent, daily source of business and personal development, and it is free!)

Rob’s “Transform Your Employees into Passionate Advocates” is about highly engaged and effective employees becoming Advocates who will deliver better service, solve problems proactively and tell just about everyone they connect with (professionally and personally) how great the organisation is.

That sort of service improvement and word of mouth message is going to have an impact on the sales line – which is exactly what Bain & Co found.

The fun bit is Rob’s recommendation for using the Voice of Customer to help achieve these passionate advocates:

“Give employees unfiltered customer feedback. When frontline employees hear directly from customers they respond. Positive feedback inspires them to keep up the good work. Criticism often motivates them to improve their performance.”

Unfiltered customer feedback.

Straight through to employees at the front line of your business—so that they are inspired, motivated, and know exactly what customers like and dislike.

Employee Engagement meets Voice of Customer. Leaving the Sales Director to watch on and rub his hands at the power to grow the business.

Rapide’s Rant and Rave technology enables brands to use real-time feedback as a tool to engage employees. You can watch a video of their newly released dashboard here.

I’d love to hear from companies who are doing this – leave a comment and tell me how you are sharing Voice of Customer with your colleagues. Getting motivating and inspiring feedback to where it matters – the front line of your business, measured on the bottom line of the Profit and Loss sheet.