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Best practices: Promoting leads programs

Great Lakes Area Small-Business Development and Mail Acceptance Manager Linda Bergeland
Great Lakes Area Small-Business Development and Mail Acceptance Manager Linda Bergeland helps USPS grow revenue.

Linda Bergeland knows how to get employees excited about growing Postal Service revenue.

Bergeland, a small-business development and mail acceptance manager, is helping to spread the word about the importance of lead generation programs throughout Great Lakes Area.

The programs — which include Customer Connect, Rural Reach, Clerks Care, Mail Handlers and Submit a Lead — encourage employees to submit potential sales leads.

“The first thing employees have to understand is, yes, leads are about revenue for the Postal Service, but just as importantly, it’s about helping the customer,” Bergeland says.

To help promote the programs, she offers three tips:

• Look for undiscovered opportunities. If an employee notices a customer sends or receives lots of packages, the customer could be operating a business from his or her home — making the customer a potential lead. Local political candidates, new businesses and seasonal businesses are also potential leads.

• Focus on benefits. Think about what the Postal Service can do to help your customers save time and money or grow their businesses.

• Remember: Small leads are big. USPS has approximately 600,000 employees. If each one submitted a lead worth $100, it would add up to $60 million in potential revenue.

Bergeland says discussing postal products and services with customers can be intimidating because some employees are afraid they’ll be asked questions they can’t answer.

“That’s OK. Tell the customer we have a small-business development team whose sole purpose is to help you save time, save money or help you grow your business by finding solutions that best suit your needs,” she says.

“The key is providing great customer service. If our primary focus is helping our customers, the revenue will follow.”

“Best practices,” a series on employees who demonstrate on-the-job excellence, appears regularly in Link.

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