Do You Really Know What Your Customer Wants?

Identifying the Wants of the Market-Place

The recipe for preparing a delicious Rabbit Stew starts with, “First, catch your rabbit”.

Similarly, in preparing for excellent selling results you might start with, “First, catch a want”, for selling is little more than finding a want, and filling it!

For the purpose of this newsletter we will assume that you have already identified one or more wants in the marketplace of your choice, and have built your present business around satisfying these in a profitable manner.

However, nothing is forever and an important part of your research for each and every routine selling situation will be a constant check to ensure that the original want is still there in your prospective or existing Customers, and that your traditional means of satisfying those are still the best available.

At the same time, you must ensure that you systematically research new selling opportunities – either new unmet wants in existing or prospective Customers or new, unexplored means by which those new (and even old) wants may be satisfied.

Ask yourself;

Do I know exactly what it is that my Customers and Prospects want – in terms of their desired end result?

A Questioning Approach

Whenever you approach your marketplace, do it with questions!

Questions about:

What people want
How they might like those wants satisfied
Their thoughts on what you – and others – have to offer them.

Case Study

A software company doubled its sales overnight after introducing a Customer Survey form as its primary sales tool, and requiring all salespeople to use the form to initiate contact with any new prospect.

The survey was constructed to determine their prospect’s wants, the order of importance of those wants to their prospect, and the means by which their prospect expected to see those wants being satisfied.

Each time a Customer Survey was completed, the salesperson already had everything they needed to match their product against their prospect’s wants and in their prospect’s order of priority. Often, there is little more to a good sale than this!

Later feedback from customers indicated that the company’s approach was unique: They were the only ones in their marketplace who started by asking what their prospect’s needed, before making any recommendation!

Questions That Gather Information

You need a stock of standard information-gathering questions in your selling toolkit. These should be drilled to the point of being second nature to you, and should be introduced in a gentle, non-threatening and almost casual manner.

Examples;

What prompted you to look into this?
What are your expectations of this type of product?
What are your requirements of this type of product?
What process did you go through to determine your needs?
How do you see this happening?
What is it that you’d like to see accomplished?
With whom have you had success in the past?
With whom have you had difficulties in the past?
Can you help me understand that a little better?
What does that mean?
How does that process work now?
What challenges does that process create?
What challenges has that created in the past?
What are the best things about that process?
What other items should we discuss?

Where Do You Fit?

Of all sales people:

60% never ask for the Order
20% ask for the Order once
10% ask for the Order twice
6% will ask for the Order between 3 and 5 times
4% of sales people will ask 6 or more times, meeting each rejection/objection with further information.

This last group accounts for 60% of all sales!

Peter Rowe