Investigating Customer Needs and Wants

Its a rainy Saturday morning here in my home town and you can really tell fall is coming soon. But on to the topic of the day, Investigating the Customer Needs and Wants. Every customer you deal with in sales has different needs and wants. Some customers will want a leather coach that is brown, others will want the latest coach that reclines, has built in massagers, and everything in between. Everyone is different so that is why the investigation stage is so important, in order to help customers find the right product and make the sale.

When investigating you need to focus these 3 things:

• Find out facts
• Find out information
• Find out needs

If you follow these three things, it will help you find the customers hot buttons. Customers only care about 20% of the features of a product, but everyone's 20% is different so that is why investigation is so important. Here are some examples of investigation questions if you are selling carpet or flooring.

• What kind of project do you have going on remodel, new construction, or just new flooring?
• Are you looking for something with lighter or darker color tones?
• What color are your walls, cabinets, etc?
• Is it a high traffic area?

By asking questions like this no matter the product it will help you as a salesperson know what to show the customer and what will be best for their needs, but it will make life a lot easier for yourself because you won't have to try and guess what they want. Open you mouth and ask questions is the best and easiest thing you can do to lead a customer through the sales cycle and to the closing of the sale.

Thank you for reading another post from SalesFinch

Customer Service is a key to success

Customer service is one of those things that is talked about daily in any business whether you are selling ice cream cones or multimillion dollar products, customer service is key. The customer Hires you, they can fire you, and they pay you. So it is important that we handle our customers with care.

If we handle our customers with care we stand a better chance of growing the business than if we handled our customers with terrible care. People like to buy things from people and places that give them the best service. One great example of great customer service would be Chick-fil-a they have their whole company built around customers, and the customers needs and wants. They are all so nice and willing to serve you, and if you say "Thank You" they will always reply with "My Pleasure." Its a southern based company out of Georgia so I guess they have just brought the southern hospitality into the franchise model and executed it amazingly across the country. I am a Chick-fil-a customer because of their great food and their great service and clean facilities.

On the other hand if you handle customers poorly you are likely to never see them again, and probably never see their friends or family ever again as well. One unhappy customer can take a lot of your current customers away because of word of mouth and online reviews in todays world. I had a bad experience with customer service at a restaurant once in Heber, Utah. It was so bad I was blown away that they were still in business (It went out of business a couple months after we ate there). But if it was still in business I would never go back there ever again even if I was starving, the service was that bad.

Now if you are reading this blog I would like to extend an invitation to everyone. Take a moment to type in the comments companies you've had good customer service experiences with and also your experiences of bad customer service.

Thank you

NEVER QUIT, NEVER GIVE UP!

As I was scrolling through LinkedIn this morning, which I do everyday. I came across this great quote by Michael Jordan "If you quit once it becomes a habit, NEVER QUIT", and it just got me thinking about quitting and how we should always push on and never quit.

Life is hard whether it is work circumstances, family issues, world issues, you name it and you will find hardships and the many challenges in life. But the real challenge to the trials and hardships of life are that we have to push on never giving up to win the fight. Since this quote is by Michael Jordan lets talk about him for a moment. Michael Jordan is one the best basketball players of all time, he was absolutely amazing whether you like the Bulls or not you have to give respect to Michael Jordan. You probably know that Michael was cut from his high school basketball team. Yet he never quit and he pushed on and became one of the best basketball players ever. Once he had decided not to quit it was all upwards for him because it became a habit not to quit and to push himself even harder. His trials and hardships made him stronger and one of the best.

We can learn a lot from Michael for never quitting, we will be challenged in life, if you are starting a business for example and it fails, do you quit trying to fulfill your dream. NO! You get right back up and try again and learn from your mistakes. We need to take our short falls as learning experiences to push us to be better and help us, so we  don't make the same mistake twice. NEVER GIVE UP, is something my father always told me growing up so when I am faced with something hard and I want to quit I always remember those words NEVER GIVE UP!

Life is full of surprises, but just remember to NEVER QUIT, and NEVER GIVE UP, there is to many great things that come after the hard times or trials. Let us all push onwards and upwards.

 

Features Advantage Benefit Selling

Feature Advantage Benefit selling or better know as FAB presentations are a key in selling a product but a lot of sales professionals even ones that have been doing it a really long time make the common mistake of only Feature selling which is like you taking all the facts you know about the product and dumping it on their head without really knowing what they are interested in most.

When you do a good FAB presentation you will have already investigated and know the customers hot buttons, so you take the features that are most important to them and you give the advantage of the feature and how it will benefit the customer.

Lets say you are selling a car and it has All Wheel Drive which is really important to the customer because they live in the mountains where it snows a lot in the winter. You would explain to the AWD feature, and why it is better or the latest and greatest and then you tie it into the customer by giving them the benefit that they won't have to worry about getting stuck or something. A FAB on AWD could go something like this.

Salesperson: This has the latest smart AWD which allows the car to understand which wheels are slipping and how best to apply power to each wheel. The advantage to that is when you are going up those slick icy hills in the winter you won't have to worry about sliding back or getting stuck, that sure will be nice in the winter, won't it?

Customer: It sure will that is really cool.

You took the customers hot button explained it to them, gave them the advantages of that feature and then tied it into how it would benefit them when they own the product. As salespeople we get ahead of ourselves if we can just slow down and remember the simple steps we will be able to improve our sales. Share this and comment we would love to hear your feed back.

Thank you

Sincerely,

SalesFinch

Building Rapport and Trust

Whether you are at work or in the community there are always times to build rapport with people and also when building rapport you build trust. Building rapport is the glue of the relationship world and it is what helps us do business with others. You are more likely to do business with someone who you like, believe, and trust; and you gain those through building rapport.

The goal of rapport building is to make others feel comfortable. In business and sales you hear about building rapport almost daily. As a business person you have to be able to build rapport quickly so the person will trust you. Because when a person trusts you they are more likely to listen to what you have to say. I'm not saying rapport building is easy but there are a couple of simple steps you can follow to help you build rapport and gain trust faster.

1. Watch gestures and postures of the other person
2. Match gestures and posture (mirroring)
3. Listen for key words the other person is using
4. Match key words when speaking to person
5. Track key needs and concerns of the other person
6. Match key needs and concerns
7. Mostly find common ground and build on it

These are some simple steps you can follow to help you build relationships in business, sales, and just in life. The biggest things are to remember it is about the other person not yourself so you have to observe and listen. Listening is another topic we will touch on some other time, but just listening and responding appropriately will greatly improve any relationship. Take a moment to click on the link below and watch this brief video clip on how to build rapport more effectively.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU8VH6vurXg

Hard work often outperforms talent

We all have different talents in our lives. Some of us are awesome at sports and even go on to the big leagues, others of us are good at business, investing, sewing, cooking, you name it and there are tons of talents that we have been given. But that doesn't mean we cannot acquire new talents all the time, and we get those new talents from hard work and determination.

Hard work will often outperform talent, if you have a super talented basketball player and he is so good that they know he will go to the NBA but all the attention and people telling him he is so good keeps him from practicing as hard or as much. Then on the same team you have a player who is good but nothing special like the super talented player but he on the other hand practices super hard and practices when ever he can. Most times that mediocre player will develop to the level of the other player and become better or just as good. You hear of players all them time that are going to be so good but then they just don't keep up the hard work and before you know it they are playing in some D league overseas. Then you have those hidden stars that work their but off and become the best. Take Micheal Jordan for example he got cut from his high school basketball team but that didn't stop him he worked extra hard and became one of the best basketball players of all time. "Hard work will always beat talent when talent doesn't work hard" -Tim Notke.

But hard work and talent do not only refer to sports it is with anything you do in life. With your career even if you are not the most talented person at the job, with hard work you can beat the talented people and earn those promotions or bonuses. There is not substitute for hard work!