by Katie Mead
(This article was originally published in the wwWebevents.com newsletter.)
Regardless of your industry and whether or not you consider yourself to be a ‘salesperson’, chances are you’ve heard of ‘customer-centric selling’. It’s guaranteed that your sales and marketing efforts will be more successful if you take a customer-centric selling approach, but what, in a nutshell, does this mean?
The easy answer: customer-centric selling is selling with the customer in mind – i.e. every decision you make focuses on the customers’ needs, not on a pre-conceived agenda. Here are five tips to help you do this effectively:
What do your customers want?
The honest truth is that your customers don’t care about what you want. They really don’t care about your revenue goals, profit margins, or inventory problems. Customers are self-focused: they care about their problems and goals.
Don’t fall into the trap of telling your customers what you think they want: always position your product or offering in terms of what the customer wants. Then go further and illustrate how your product solves their problem.
Remember that the devil’s in the details: the more you can use “you” and “your” instead of “our” and “we”, the more you will connect and the better off you’ll be in your communications with customers.
What do your customer’s need?
Your customers might not know what they need: it’s your job to help them uncover this. Use probing questions to get to the bottom of your customers’ pain points. When you can draw out what the customer actually needs instead of what they state they might want, you can better serve them and tailor your selling and offering accordingly.
Use your customer’s language
To uncover what your customers really need or want, you must first make sure you’re all speaking the same language. Great customer-centric selling is reliant on excellent communication skills. It’s essential to remember that customers don’t necessarily speak your language. It’s pretty much guaranteed that your company-centric jargon and industry-speak is confusing to them – put aside the acronyms and industry jargon you use every day.
Discuss your selling in terms of the problems you are solving for the customer. Customer-centric selling avoids generic language like “easy to use,” “simple,” “fast,” etc. These phrases tell customers nothing and will negatively impact your credibility. Take the time to learn about your customers and make your discussions ‘all about them’. One of the best ways to do this is to speak to them in their language.
Address your customer’s fears
You’ve gotten in the door with your customer because of the fears that they believe you and/or your product might be able to alleviate. Instead of trying to pinpoint what YOU think these fears might be, customer-centric selling addresses customers’ fears from their perspective. By speaking to those underlining concerns and fears you will effectively uncover the ways your product makes those fears disappear.
Practice active listening
Chances are when it comes to meetings with your customers you’ve got something to say. Instead of adhering to an agenda that may be more or less relevant to your customers’ true needs, have the courage to shut up and really listen to what they say. Don’t spend time preparing what you’re going to say next; instead, really hear what they’re saying and adjust to the topics they want to cover. Give up the need to control the conversation – instead guide it based on what your customers truly want to discuss. In this way you’ll not only uncover their true pain points, but show your customers that you respect their needs and are listening instead of focused on ‘selling them’.
These tips seem pretty straightforward, and indeed, customer-centric selling is very commonsensical: keep your customers’ needs in mind, put your own agenda away and listen, listen, listen. Practice customer-centric selling and through your success you’ll notice the difference.
Katie Mead – Director, Business Development, Travelport
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