A young man approached me in Starbucks not long ago and gave me his best generic sales pitch. He was a mortgage broker and, having seen me looking at a real estate magazine, he assumed I might be looking to buy a home. Though I commend his powers of observation and his assertiveness, his impersonal sales speech was both boring and a turnoff. Not once did he consider my unique situation or preferences. He didn’t even ask about them; he simply assumed he knew what they were.
Determining what a client needs entails thinking of each customer as unique. While many may share common needs related to your product or service, nearly all will have different values and preferences. Each will have had different experiences in life and will be in different circumstances. Unless you take the time to better understand your clients as individuals, you’ll probably fail to assess their needs effectively.
Knowledge of any kind helps in your efforts to be continuously learning. Everything you learn about a client’s needs can help you grow your own knowledge base and improve your overall ability as a sales professional.
Here are some key strategies for learning about your customers:
Define your customers’ values and motivations
Determining what a customer values can be crucial to your sales efforts. Values aren’t the same as needs. A customer who purchases a car needs a mode of transportation. If they have a large family, they may need an SUV or a van. But what the customer values will determine what type of car they buy. Do they value horsepower? Fuel efficiency? Eco-friendliness? Style? Luxury? Utility? As a sales professional looking to understand customer needs, identifying what each customer values is important.
Customer values fuel the motivations behind their purchases. For individuals who value saving money, price will be a primary motivation when making a purchase. Other customers may focus on convenience or reliability or quality to a greater extent. For example, the airports who purchased the water bottle fountains probably appreciated the efficiency of use that cut down on congestion. The end users certainly appreciate the convenience, the ability to use their own water bottles and not have to purchase bottled water.
Build a connection with the customer
In order to define customer values, you need to get to know your clients and customers and build connections. Are they single, married, divorced? Do they rent or own a home? What is their occupation, income level and favorite hobbies and interests?
I remember a sales meeting with the CEO of a publicly traded company in Hong Kong in which the prospect stated that the need that drove him to seek financing was existing company debt. The client was paying high interest on a large amount of debt. As we continued our conversation, I asked questions about what this debt meant to his company. His answers to those questions led to me asking about his individual goals, which led, in turn, to him speaking of his family. That inspired me to ask questions about that aspect of his life and to listen carefully to the answers.
By listening and asking the right questions, I was able to uncover his ultimate objective: He wanted to leave a debt-free company for his children. That changed my sales pitch and steered the conversation toward his family’s needs and how refinancing through my company could help meet those needs.
Knowing who your customers are in terms of their values, motivations, and ultimate objectives, you’ll be better able to identify what’s important to them. When you build a connection, it becomes easier to know how to meet their needs. Otherwise, you’ll end up like the young mortgage broker who keeps making the same generic sales pitch over and over to inattentive ears.
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