8 Proven Best Practices For An Effective Customer Visit

Customer visits are an excellent means of handling disputes, improving sales opportunities, and building customer relationships. Here are 8 tips to prepare for a customer visit:

1. Set the date and time for the visit strategically: Nothing's worse than going at their busiest time. Maybe they have a seasonality, or it's a quarter-end. You don't want them to be distracted. When you're on the visit, you want to spend time with them. So, plan it strategically.
2. Set an agenda in advance: Determine the approximate time it will take to cover all the essential points. If you are staying for more than a day, plan your itinerary for each day and communicate the same to the customer.

   Take time to understand the customer's business before the meeting.

3. Send discussion documents or work papers in advance: It could be that you're reconciling a high volume of invoices that they are refusing to pay. Or there are deductions that you just can't unravel. Always send all the documents in advance so that the customer has sufficient time to prepare as well.
4. Determine who from your company should attend to address any concerns: It could be your sales rep or someone from your staff who's been working on a particular issue and meeting with the customer to resolve it. Anticipate what issues or concerns the customer could have. Plan ahead and include the people who can address their issues.
5. Inform the customer well in advance who you want to meet: Get a nod on your customer's availability and whether they are prepared for the time you want to spend with them.
6. Take time to understand the customer's business before the meeting: You can ask probing questions that will help you understand the real challenge. When you're on-site, assess their business needs, understand their customer base, competitors, and industry trends. This way you can anticipate if there's going to be higher demand requiring a review of their credit line.
7. Communicate the purpose of the visit to key stakeholders: It could be your senior management or owner. It could be a sales or a product manager. It could be somebody in customer service or operations. If there are some logistics issues or any other kind of problem that they can help you with, they should be aware that you're going to this meeting and who you're going to meet with.
8. What if it's a negotiation: If so, define the roles and the talking points in advance. Sometimes it's a better strategy just to walk away than to make too much of a compromise. Always try to leave the opportunity for further discussion.