For the past couple of weeks, I have been hoping that you have been able to understand how to generate more sales and influence with your customers.
Today, let’s talk about what customers actually crave from us as we sell to them. What is the customer really asking us each time they interact with us whether face to face meetings, calling customer service, on social media, etc. What is it that the customer is trying to communicate to us?
Customers want to be known and heard. That is right, our customers want to be known by us, called by name, and to know that without a shadow of a doubt that our teams will support their needs! They also want us to know what they mean when they can’t articulate into words. So how do we do this for them?
We need to be intentional to reach out to them to figure out what they need. It’s that simple. Get out of our comfort zones, stop trying to guess, and actually ask the customers what are their struggles. What issues do they currently have so we can go to work to resolve those issues. All of the great customer focused organizations like Amazon, Apple, Google, Zappos, etc are customer focused organizations.
In the book Invent and Wander, all of the Amazon shareholder letters are shared from inception up to now as to what Amazon is focused on. The root of all decisions is how can me make doing business with Amazon better for the customer. Decisions revolve around that one main core value.
Customers were even asked what other products / services they would buy besides books when Amazon started in 1997. That question led to expanding offerings from books to windshield wipers, to today where you literally are now able to purchase groceries in certain areas. Asking the customers for their input is powerful and a large task at the same time.
I would also ask customers that we are currently doing business with to understand what issues they have with dealing with us. When we see common themes we can know where to spend our time to focus on improvements that will actually move the needle. When customers notice improvements, their confidence does increase.
We also need to make sure that when the customer is buying from us that we make it as easy as possible to deal with us. That is key because they are already having resistance to parting from their hard-earned money. They are investing in making their lives better. We need to help them with that decision and make sure when the customer invests with us customers are taken care of.
Not do we need to make sure our products / services meets the customer’s needs, we also need to make sure the customer experience is exceptional. Too many organizations make it so hard to do business with in an effort to make sure the organization is showing profits to its shareholders. Now I’m not saying we need to make sure we are giving everything away. What I am in fact saying is that we need to make sure our focus is on how to enrich our customer’s transactions, experience, and life with our product / service so that they don’t hesitate to purchase from us again.
Only then will we be able to look back with exceptional growth in our markets.
Check out my online training The Sales Process Uncovered for help with growing your sales.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”