For businesses (big or small) it is important that they gauge what their customers really want. You cannot sell on guesswork and intuition. To be successful, you need to develop in-depth knowledge about customers and tailor efforts to address their needs and goals.
Remember when customers buy, they buy on the basis of expectations – what they believe your product or service offer them. Empower the customer through knowledge. By involving yourself more deeply in your customer’s business, you may become indispensable!!!
What are some tips to figure out what your customers really want?
• Understand their needs: It is critical to understand and discover what they want. According to a study, it was noted that when the sales activity is focused on buyer’s needs and wants, the sales teams are three times more likely to close the sale. Do not keep guessing. The best way to take the guesswork out of selling is to remember this – ask customers the right questions and listen carefully to their answers. It is the role of a good sales person to give customers clearly-articulated information in a language they understand clearly – when and where they need the product/service.
• Offer solutions: what are customer needs – product-related or service-related? Proper examination must be done on the nature of customers. Are their needs product-related? What is the functionality – customers need your product or service to function the way they need in order to solve their problem or desire. Or is it the price (customers have budgets with which they can purchase a product or service) or convenience (your product or service needs to be a convenient solution to the function your customers are trying to meet). Or is it that the experience of using your product or service needs to be easy? Plus it must be remembered that along the lines of experience, the product or service needs a slick design – to make it easy and intuitive to use. The product or service needs to reliably function (as advertised) every time the customer wants to use it. Performance is also vital as the product or service needs to perform correctly, so customers can achieve their goals. Is efficiency or compatibility most important? The product or service needs to be compatible with other products your customer is already using.
Are the needs service-related? Like empathy, fairness – which customers look for; or is it transparency (as customers expect transparency) or they need to feel like they’re in control of the business interaction from start to finish and beyond; and it must be easy for them to return products, change subscriptions etc. Customers need options when they are ready to make a purchase – they need information, from the moment they start interacting with your brand. And they need to be able to access your customer service and support teams. This means providing multiple channels for customer service.
• Listen carefully: It’s critical to communicate and listen to your customers. Make it easy for them to engage with your business. Communication with your customers must be a priority. It takes a lot of work to communicate well, but the benefits are huge. If customers are more invested in your brand, it will be easy to develop an effective marketing message that can lead to better customer service. Investing in ways to remove friction from customer interactions and create more responsive communications can only improve customer satisfaction and can help you make your product or service better.
• Conduct Surveys: Make sure that you balance the data you are collecting with information from a wider sample of customers. Surveys are an incredibly effective way of gathering data on a bigger scale, and businesses (large or small), can run surveys and analyze results. When it comes to surveys, it’s important to be focused on a particular objective so that you get answers to figure out what customers are actually looking for or what insights surface that can help in creating an improved customer relationship.
• Define and map your customer journey: Your business may have problems with invisible touchpoints: places where you don’t realize your brand is coming into contact with the customer. These points could be as simple as the moment when a buyer first hears about you, or when they try to reach you and fail. Trying to uncover these critical moments is key to getting control over your customer’s journey. So, ideally it is advisable to define and map the journey.
• Keep an eye on the competition: Keep an eye open and watch what your competitors are doing. You can adopt what’s working, and perhaps turn competitors’ negative experiences into positive experiences with your brand.
Differentiating yourself in a crowded market is hard, but you can try. If you ignore your competitors, it won’t work. Instead, look objectively at their strengths and weaknesses. Identify the pain points they aren’t addressing and you may find a great opportunity to differentiate yourself and boost your value proposition!
Avtar Madan
Himanshu
Shree Lahiri
Poonam Sinha
