Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: Care for the Customer

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...Walk with the customer. Care about him. Make sure that you know what she needs and give it to her. Make sure that he knows that you care about what will make his life easier and provide it.

Look, the hard sell is dead--if it was ever alive in the first place. Now we have to work to gain the customer’s trust. We have to work at making the customer comfortable with us personally; not just our products, but the way we deliver our products, the way we conform our products to the customer’s specific needs.

You have to give the customer what he wants--not what you want to give him. Does it make sense to sell pork chops in a synagogue? Does it make sense to sell guns in a mental institution? Does it make sense to sell airplane tickets to an agoraphobic? No, of course it doesn't. So why would you want to sell high-technology HDI microvia boards to a garage door opener manufacturer? Or sell single-sided boards to a super computer company? It makes no sense, but we still do it. Why is that?

I think it’s because we are sometimes so desperate for business that we’ll try anything. We just want to do something so we substitute activity for accomplishment. We feel mistakenly that if we do something, anything, something will happen. But it won’t. We know in our hearts that it won’t, that we are really just wasting time--time that could have been spent more productively selling something that will work, something that we can sell and that the right customers will want.

Ah, that’s the big secret isn’t it? Yes, let’s figure out what we do best, what we can do better than anyone else, and then find the right customers. It is far better to do your homework and target the right companies than just go out there and with your head down and fire in any direction hoping to hit a target.

The first thing to do is figure out what the target is and then, and only then, can you hit it. If you are not having any luck selling to the market you’re selling to, change markets. Find the right market for you and sell to it.

If your ads, letters, and solicitations are not getting you anywhere, change them. Don’t blame the customers. Change your message so that it will appeal to the right group. In many cases customers are not logical and do not care that you have the best product, delivery, quality, or value. Often, what they really care about is what people around them are thinking. In many cases they are surrounded by pressures that have nothing to do with your product and how you present it.

He could be absorbed with office politics. His boss could like one of your competitors and your guy is not willing to go up against him. There could be some internal issues that have nothing to do with you. It could be as simple as location--they simply don't want to buy anything from the East Coast. It could be a hundred little things and your job as a salesperson is to identify these obstacles and overcome them. And, you know, sometimes you can’t overcome these obstacles and that’s all there is to it.

It always bothers me that we try so hard to complicate this process. It should not be difficult to figure out. The customer knows what he needs and knows what he wants from you. If you cannot provide that, then no sales pitch will work.

One of the things I recommend to my clients is that they train their salespeople to listen. The old cliché that you learn more by listening than by talking is solidly true. No matter how great a product you think you have, it is worthless to the customer if it doesn't solve his problem, meet his challenges, or make him better for buying it.

Once again, this all boils down to just one thing: Caring about your customer. Caring so much that you put her needs ahead of your need to sell your product. When you walk into your customer’s office, be prepared, ask the right questions and offer a suitable solution. If you do that, you'll make the sale and you will be successful in the long run.

The better you listen, the more you will understand what your customer needs and the better your chances are of giving it to him. It’s only common sense.