Your Guess Is as Good as Mine!
What do your customers really think of your shop and the services you have to offer? What do they really want from you? What will make them want to come see you again and how often? What incentives, if any, are important to them? What will turn a prospect who doesn’t seem to want to buy into a customer? What will it take to keep that customer for life? Do you know, or are you just guessing on the basis of your own feelings or a few comments that a handful of customers have made to you over the years.
They Don’t Listen
What do lots of owners whose small businesses get into trouble have in common? They don’t listen. Maybe they don’t even ask, but the fact remains that they have major difficulties because they assume they know what their customers want and need. Finding out could save the lives of their businesses and allow them to prosper. Their lack of listening skills also gets them into trouble when they’re trying to handle customer-relations issues. We’ll look at both problems.
Being Nice Pays Off like a Slot Machine
Some of the most-successful business people in the world are also some of the most gracious. When you talk with them they make you feel important, that what you have to say matters, that you are their only concern at that moment. Just think how successful you might be if every one of your customers felt that way about you and your company. The key is to have people say, “Wow, what a great experience I had with the person I dealt with at ….”
Fight or Flight?
One of the most basic of all human instincts, it dates back to when man faced his first predator – be it an animal or another man – and had to make the decision: Do I stand my ground and fight, or do I run away so that, I hope, I live to gain strength and fight again on another day?
The Psychological Advantage
In any sales situation either the customer or the salesperson takes the psychological advantage, meaning that one is better able to read and control the other. We should be able to read our customers far better than they read us, because we practice these techniques every day but the customer uses them only occasionally.
Dealing With Angry People
Angry with you? Not necessarily. When people are angry these days, many times it’s because they have higher expectations than ever before and those expectations somehow are not being met. It is funny, though, that not so many years ago people didn’t expect very much from anything – not from the products they bought nor from the customer service they received. But owing to such vast improvements in both areas, people now have grown to expect much-better and more-durable products. At the same time they also believe that good customer relations is nothing special anymore. It has become a given. They expect to get value for their money, and if for some reason that doesn’t happen they expect someone to rectify the problem with the utmost speed and the least amount of fuss.
