Teaming Up With Your Customers

How well do you understand your customers? How well do you know their business and how you can help them be more successful? The fact that you’ve developed a software solution to their problem means that you probably understand their business extremely well. Are you sharing that knowledge with your customers? Rather than just selling software, approach your customers as a problem solver.

This is the final posting in a series of articles by Brian Tracy talking about the importance of teaming with your customers. This segment covers the last key to keep customers for life, consultative selling.

Teaming up with Your Customers, Part 4
By: Brian Tracy
The third part of keeping customers for life is the consulting approach to your customer, or what is called consultative selling. When you position yourself as a consultant, you are really positioning yourself to serve your customer as a problem solver. Instead of trying to sell something to your customer, you concentrate all of your efforts and attention on helping your customer solve his problems, achieve his goals, or satisfy his needs. You ask excellent questions that help your customer think through his situation in greater depth. And you listen carefully to the answers, knowing that listening builds trust.

When customers are asked why they decided to buy from a particular salesperson or company, they invariably give these reasons: the reputation of the company, the level of service and support that the company offers, the reliability of the company and the salesperson, the responsiveness of the organization to complaints and requests, and the quality of the individual salesperson with whom they have been dealing. Price ranks at number seven or eight, if it comes up at all in the surveys. This is important for you to know because it is amazing how many salespeople get sidetracked into negotiating on the basis of price and then they can’t understand why they failed to get the sale.

84 percent of all sales in America originate from the recommendations of satisfied customers. A referral to a new customer is worth ten times more than a cold call. And it is 16 times easier to sell a satisfied customer something new than it is to sell something to a brand new prospect. In the final analysis, dedicating yourself to serving your customers in such a way that you keep them for life is one of the smartest and most profitable things that you can ever do.

About The Author
Brian Tracy is legendary in sales, addressing more than 250,000 men and women each year on the subjects of management, leadership, and sales effectiveness. He has produced more than 300 audio/video programs and has written 36 books, including his just-released books “TurboStrategy” and “Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life.” He can be reached at (858) 481-2977 or www.briantracy.com.