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Tune Into Your Clients' Needs
Every time you communicate with your clients or prospects, they are sizing you up. They are scrutinizing what you say and how you say it.
To avoid a blank look of disengagement in buyers' eyes, you must think about your communication style. Yesterday and today Promotional Consultant Today will look at a few tips to help you tune in and click with your customers.
Ask What Your Buyer Knows Rather Than Tell What You Know
Asking, "What do you know about my organization?" gives customers a chance to offer their perceptions. And, then, you can fill in the gaps, clarifying and correcting, if necessary.
When you lead with, "Let me tell you a little about our organization," you're at a distinct disadvantage for several reasons:
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TOP SHELF TIP NO. 22
"My philosophy of life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard toward that goal, we never lose-somehow we win out."
Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States, 1911-2004 | |
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* You're doing all the talking and setting yourself up in lecture mode as the person with all the answers.
* You may be providing information already known, or you may be elaborating on what the buyer doesn't care about knowing.
* You have no way of knowing if the customer really understands what you've said -- and most important -- what your organization offers.
Tell Failure Stories
There is power in telling case histories about clients who didn't have stellar success with your product or service-if the reason for their lack of success was due to their own decision making, not your product or service. It underscores what other customers did wrong (for example, waiting too long to buy, not using your design team to install and customize its product, not buying a warranty) and helps the current prospect not repeat the mistake.
Telling about failures of other product users adds credibility to your success stories. One caution: Don't use names with failure stories. Prospects may fear you'll tell others of their mistakes later if they buy.
Make Statistics And Facts Experiential
People digest numbers with great difficulty. Pie charts and bar graphs help but if you can go beyond that, do so.
For example, randomly survey your committee of buyers by asking them to raise their hands in response to a few questions, then equate those findings to their entire organization. Are they typical of the rest of the employee population? How so?
Supporting statistics lends credibility to what you say. Be sure, however, to do all you can to help your customers digest the statistics.
Prefer Understatement To Overstatement
After a teenager came home from his first summer job interview as a grocery stocker, his mom asked how it went. "I don't know," he said. "They gave me one of those honesty tests, where they asked if I'd ever cheated on an exam, if I'd ever stolen money from my parents, if I'd ever shoplifted -- things like that." He paused, looked a little concerned, then added, "I was answering no to all those things and then I got a little worried that maybe I wouldn't get the job -- that I sounded too good to be true."
He got the job, but it was an astute observation about human nature.
It's always more effective to let your prospects add to what you've promised rather than discount it, because it seems too good to be believable.
Present the range of results you have achieved and can document. Generally, it is better to promise only minimum gains, otherwise, you set up your clients to be disappointed. If the minimum gains are worthwhile to them, maximum gains will be the extra that makes your customers long-term fans.
Source: Author of more than 40 books, Dianna Booher is CEO of Booher Consultants, a communications training firm, offering programs in sales presentations, sales proposals, strategic writing, and executive presence. Her latest book is The Voice of Authority: 10 Communication Strategies Every Leader Needs to Know. | |
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Copyright 2005-2007 Promotional Consultant Today. All Rights Reserved. |
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