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Customers Needs-The One and Only Way to Know For Sure What To Sell

Written by: Steve Little

Article Overview: If it were up to me there would only be two or three flavors of ice cream ever created. If you don't love chocolate chip and strawberry ice cream it is a good thing for you my tastes and desires aren't the holy grail of what sells! Don't let your preferences and desires determine what you sell. And for your businesses sake, don't assume that your preferences are shared by your customer. Desire and motivation is unique to each of us. Even if we ultimately purchase the same product we often do so for very different reasons and therefore need to be marketed to differently.

Customers Needs-The One and Only Way to Know For Sure What To Sell

Don’t assume because you are a consumer of the product or service you offer that you know your customers needs or wants. And don’t assume because you have been in your present business for years that you understand the customer need.

The only way for you to know for sure what customers want is to ask.

Every customer has different reasons for seeking out your service.

Imagine you own an Automobile Dealership. Three different customers who have previously purchased from you are shopping for a new luxury vehicle. Say, they are all looking at a Cadillac Escalade. Once they have reached the buying decision they still need to decide where to make their purchase.

If you don’t know why customers want what customers want you very well could loose the sale to a competitor. There is no guarantee that because a customer bought from you before they will do so again in the future. You must continue to treat them as if they were the most important part of your business. Even if your sales cycle and return purchase takes years.

My realtor, who won’t get another home commission from me for many years, still stops by every Holiday season with her Christmas Tea. It is awful and I never drink it-but I’ve come to anticipate the tradition.

There is nothing more frustrating to me as a business coach as to watch my clients’ loose customers who are ready, willing and able to buy the service or product they provide.

It is critical you perform constant validation and verification not only on what to sell a prospect or customer, but why. Customer’s research done right will tell you exactly what to sell and how to sell.

Let’s go back to our prospective Escalade customer.

Customer #1 wants the vehicle for prestige-to show off her success and affluence; customer #2 doesn’t care about impressing the neighbors, she is more interested in the luxury it provides along with the quality workmanship; customer #3 can buy anything she wants and chose the Escalade Hybrid because of the safety and environmental considerations.

You can’t sell these three customers the same way. Start talking to customer #2 about impressing her neighbors and she might just walk out the door and drive to the next Cadillac dealership.

You have to ask your customer questions to find out what they want and expect from your service. This may sound basic and you may be way above this coaching but it happens to even the most seasoned professional; you begin selling before you hear the customers’ wants and needs.

Begin very easily by asking them if they have ever used a product or service like yours before. Who did they use? What did they like? Why did they stop using it? What made them choose that company, brand, product, service in the first place?

Not only will they tell you what is important to them, they will tell you exactly how to sell them.

It is not manipulative – it is customer oriented, consultative selling. It doesn’t matter if you think the new Hybrid Escalade is the coolest luxury vehicle on the planet; what you think doesn’t matter.

Your great product is irrelevant until you know if and how you can fulfill your prospect or client’s wants and needs. Once you understand the customers need let your passion for your product show. Explain how your product or service fulfills the customer need and repeat the benefit the customer has already given you.

If you ever get complacent and stop asking your customers you may find your business growth slowing down.

If you do notice a slow down in revenue from existing clients–you better start looking at your marketing efforts again and asking yourself when the last time was you asked your customers about their needs.

This isn’t a job to be left until the client walks in the door.

A clients needs can change any time there is a change in their life: a new job, a promotion that requires longer hours or more travel, a new addition to the family, even something that seems unrelated to the needs your service or product provides–like their gardener just quit.

In the case of our automobile dealership example, maybe your customer is now in need of a pickup truck.

Anything that adds extra workload or stress to your client’s life is a potential opportunity for you to serve your client.

And maybe even more important, because it is often ignored by business owners, getting regular feedback from your customers is an invaluable way to perform competitive intelligence. If you are not performing regular customer research it is likely you don’t even know when you loose business to a competitor. If you are like many small business owners you not only don’t realize you have lost the customer, you have no idea why and are at risk of loosing significant market share.

A lot of business owners are so negligent when it comes to keeping track of their customer data they only realize they have lost a client when something triggers their recollection of the now former customer.

If you aren’t constantly in front of your customers asking them about their wants and needs how will you know when a competitor has just walked in their door?

Maybe during your customer research you find out a competitor just offered free oil changes and car washes for a year with the purchase of an Escalade.

Maybe you think you have a handle on the local competition so you don’t have to worry about it. I hear that all the time.

Well, guess what, no matter what you think you know- you don’t know all the influences in your customers or prospects life. Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Best Customer Ever just visited Maui and had the best experience of their life riding around the island in an Infiniti QX56. And the friends they traveled with just happened to have a direct mail postcard from their Infiniti dealer offering no payments for a year for all Escalade owners!

The point is you can not assume you know what your customer wants. And you can’t assume that you know the competitive influences in your market.

If you want to stay on top of your game and be the one who is innovative and creative and grabbing all the market share–you need to implement a customer retention strategy that revolves around understanding your customer’s ever changing wants and needs.

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Article Tags: affluence, automobile dealership, business coach, cadillac, cadillac escalade, christmas, christmas tea, competitor, customers needs, different reasons, holiday season, hybrid, loose customers, luxury vehicle, neighbors, prestige, quality workmanship, realtor, tradition, validation
Referred by: http://dogbusinessdaily.com/blog



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