Value proposition
“Get closer than ever to your customer, so close that you tell them what they need, long before they realise it” Steve Jobs
It’s amazing how many sales people talk for about 80% of the conversation with clients. The more we listen, the more knowledge we will have and the more the client will be open to using your service. Along with this, you will get vital feedback about your product that could be the difference between being a success and failure. Let us show you how to ask, listen,
Below I have done my best to give you as much value as possible even before choosing Mark Sclaire as the trainer who WILL help your business
Questions below will help answer any doubts you may have
Why is listening to your customer so important
The role of customers in any business is crucial. They are the reason companies exist, and without them, no business can survive. Paying close attention to your clients’ needs and listening to their concerns can rapidly grow your business and set you far ahead of your competition.
Some people see customer complaints as a threat to their business, while others take them as golden opportunities to improve their product or service and maximize customer satisfaction.
Let’s find out why it’s essential to listen to your customers and how it can significantly impact your business.
1. Your customers know what their needs are
Your guesses about your customers' needs may be right or wrong. But your customer can't be mistaken about their needs. If you want your product or service to remain relevant to them, listen to them and center your product or service on their needs. Sometimes the needs of your customers may change while you are unaware. Listening to them will make you become aware of their current needs and immediately adjust your business to address them.
2. Sales become easier
Customers will readily hand out their cash in exchange for the value you are offering if it meets their needs. No one likes to spend on things without benefit. When your product or service keys into the solutions your customers are looking for, it becomes easier and faster to hand out their cash. But how else can you know if your product or service fills the gap in them? By listening to their feedback and understanding how they feel after using your product or service
3. It Increases Customer loyalty
Who doesn't like to feel valued? Every relationship that's void of value to either of the parties will, in no time, only head towards unfavorable ends. The interaction between a customer and a seller is also a kind of relationship. The only way it can be preserved for a long time is by valuing one another. If your customers don't see any value in the product you're offering, they most likely won't spend their money on it. If you don't value your customers as well, they most likely will go to others. Listening to your customers is one of the most prominent ways to show you care about them and that your business will provide maximum satisfaction. Since the purpose of any business is to provide a solution to its customers' needs, it only makes sense that the voices of the customers are heard, and their concerns are treated with high priority. Once your customers are satisfied that your business has their interest at heart and values their opinions, they become more loyal to you than ever and keep returning to your product or service for solutions.
4. Customers are the best marketers
Even if you hire the best marketers out there, some prospects will still think you're only exaggerating your product or service value. Sometimes, a delighted customer is all it takes for potential customers to decide to buy your product finally. This is because people have only minimal time and resources. They wouldn't want to spend them on things they aren't very sure about their effectiveness. When you listen to your customers and always position your business towards satisfying their needs, they will easily recommend your product or service to others who have similar needs.
What happens when you listen to your customers?
Building a successful business isn’t by luck. You have to put in the effort to make it happen. A significant aspect of business development is customer satisfaction. When customers are satisfied, they find it easy to come back for more and recommend your product or service to others.
Your customers are the ones using your product. They know the challenges they face before, during, and after using your product. They desire to reduce those challenges as much as possible to derive maximum satisfaction from your product or service. To achieve that, they may forward some of their concerns to you and expect you to genuinely listen to them and provide befitting solutions to the problems.
Listening to your customers creates a long-lasting relationship that translates to massive business success and optimum customer satisfaction. By listening to your customers, you make your business “customer-oriented,” and your customers see that you are committed to satisfying their needs and giving them the best.
How listening to your client can increase your sales?
Without customers, sales become impossible. A business without customers has absolutely nothing to offer.
Keeping your customers loyal to you and always coming back for your product or service is your recipe for massive sales. One of the most effective ways to keep your customers is listening to their concerns and always willing to welcome criticism.
You quickly learn what to do and where to improve to serve them better. Listening to your customers saves you the stress of thinking about where you’re going wrong and gives you a clear insight into your business’s weak areas. Addressing these vulnerable areas and improving them will lead to a better customer experience, which translates to more sales.
Why client’s feedback can make or break your business
Have you tried to buy a product or service in the past and got influenced by previous customers’ reviews about it? That’s how serious customer feedback can be. Especially with the advent of technology, potential customers can easily see what past customers are saying about your product and make decisions on whether to buy or not. Some people avoid taking feedbacks because of the potential damage it can cause to their business. In contrast, others see feedbacks as opportunities to discover what their customers are really looking for and continuously fine-tune their business to meet those needs.
Without customer feedback, you may never know which aspect of your business needs urgent attention or what your competitors are doing better than you, which costs you, valuable customers.
Businesses that respond to customer feedbacks properly experience rapid growth in their customer base and a more profound sense of satisfaction felt by their customers. On the other hand, businesses that don’t handle customers’ feedback properly experience loss in customers and eventually get kicked out of the market.
Why is empathy so important when it comes to selling?
Different elements are integrated to move a prospect from being a potential customer to finally becoming a current customer in sales. One of the most critical yet unrecognized items on the list is empathy. The ability to feel what others feel and understand things from their perspective are what understanding is all about.
They put themselves in their shoes and understand their thoughts, feelings, and judgments from their point of view. Interestingly, empathy allows you to connect with customers in ways that make you know what to do to solve their problems. The difference between a kind salesperson and sales professional is how they use empathy to achieve their sales goals.
Here are some reasons why empathy is essential when it comes to selling:
- Identity hidden needs
Some needs are inexpressible. It takes a skilled salesperson to figure them out. The feelings and thoughts of customers can be painful to express for them. It happens a lot in other areas of life. You know what and how you feel but can’t get the right words to show it. Empathy helps sales professionals identify those hidden needs and understand what customers are expecting. It enables you to avoid guessing what your customers want and gives you a piece of clear information about their problems and challenges. It makes customers keep running to your business for solutions because they believe you truly understand the kind of solution they need.
- It makes your business appear more customer-oriented
A lot of businesses only focus on the benefits they want to get from their customers. They can even reduce the quality of their product or service just to earn more profit. They take customers’ reviews and feedbacks about their services lightly and end up losing their customers along the line. People buy because they want to solve a problem. If they didn’t have any issues, there wouldn’t be any need for buying. Empathizing with them and making them feel understood is the first step in winning their hearts. They see your interest in helping them out of their problems and develop a “customer-oriented” mindset for your business. This enables you to stand out among your competitors and makes you acquire quality customers.
- It makes you know the right response to customers’ needs
When the problem isn’t apparent, the solution can’t be clear as well. The only way to provide the right solution to a problem is first to identify the problem. Empathy helps businesses identify the real problem and develop actionable strategies to solve it. This will, in turn, increase sales significantly as your product becomes most suitable to the needs of your prospects.
What happens when you listen to your customers over the phone?
Business activities today are becoming more comfortable, all thanks to technology. We shop at our comfort, sell with ease, make payments at jet speed, and receive payments even while asleep.
Similarly, customers can now reach out to businesses for support, complaints, and recommendations via mobile phones. Having conversations with customers over the phone can help them find solutions to the challenges they might have with your product or service. It increases customer satisfaction, and they become loyal to your brand. More and more businesses are beginning to allow their customers to reach them over the phone after seeing the impact of that in sales and business growth
How to ask the right questions to gather intelligence?
Today, data has become an essential part of business strategy. Companies depend on data to understand the past, see the present, and predict the future. The kind of questions business owners ask forms a relevant part of the data they acquire. The more the issues, and the more accurate they are, the better the decision information derived from it. But
- how can they know what questions to ask to gather intelligence?
- What areas of their business do they channel their problems to get the best results from the data?
Below are tips on how companies can ask the right questions to gather intelligence :
- Ask a lot of questions
In picking relevant and intelligent information from queries, you need to ask as many questions as possible. The more questions you ask, the higher your chances of asking the right questions. Some items may not seem relevant at the time you are requesting. But they can come in convenient during the analysis stages.
- Focus on questions that are relevant to your business model
Indeed, asking more questions will eventually lead you to the right one. But that’s only possible if your questions are within your business model. Every business has its model and strategy on which its steps are built. You need to know your business model and only ask questions around it. If you’re trying to compare models to see which one works best for you, you can extend your questions to capture both models.
- Ask questions that lead to actionable results
When asking questions, it is vital to make them specific to a time frame or a location that makes the results useful.
For example, let’s say you deployed a new marketing strategy and decided to check how well it has done so far? instead of asking, “how is it the strategy going?” you can ask, “how is the new strategy going in the last quarter compared to our previous strategy for the last quarter?” This question allows you to compare the two strategies concerning a time frame and decide which one is most appropriate at any point in time. Asking specific questions will lead to more data, which in turn provides more information.