Your customers become more and more powerful for you and your small business. It seems that power will continue to increase in the future.
It would be best to prepare your small business for the future where customers will manage companies.
Can you handle most efficiently the power of your customers?
Yes, you can, but only if you change how you practice your business today. Here, I want to share 12 tactics that you can start implementing today, making your company more customer-oriented.
1. Customers will survive without you, it’s a fact, but you can’t survive without them.
You need to be aware that your customers will always survive without you, your small business, or your products and services. Every business can be subject to a replacement from the customers. I have seen many small business owners who had this wrong thinking about their uniqueness and their solution for their customers. But, you know what, more than 90% of them today aren’t entrepreneurs. And what is more interested, all their customers are still live and find ways to handle the problems they solved earlier with these businesses.
2. You need to know what are the biggest interests or the motivational factors for your customers.
The next important thing is to know your customers. This means you will need to know what they want, the primary interest of their wants or needs, or the most important motivational factors that drive them to want something they want.
3. Every customer and yours love themselves more than you, your business or your employees.
We can’t lie that we will buy somewhere just because we know or respect those entrepreneurs, employees, or companies. We will buy because we have an interest, and that interest starts from ourselves, not from any other person on the planet. Your customers feel pain, and they are not interested in your pain or your problems. So, put your whole focus on his pains and his problems, not yours.
4. Responsibilities about managing relationships with your customers are equal on all levels of your company.
In this subject, you can’t allow any compromise. Anyone can be involved in direct or indirect contact with a potential or current customer, and everyone must be responsible when he finds himself in such a situation. Building a strong relationship with your customers is important for your small business.
5. Show respect to their main interests, even if they are not in relation to yours.
Respecting the customer’s interest is one of the main factors that separate the successful from unsuccessful small business. If a salesperson is not interested when my baby cries, then I do not care what he does, what he sells, what type of products he sells, and therefore I am not interested in buying something from him.
The customer’s brain very quickly processes when it comes to their interests, their problems, their purposes, etc. Maybe the salesperson will not notice that, or a customer will not express his dissatisfaction, which to me is much worse than if he simply poured over a seller who might learn that he needs to change something in his behavior. However, although customers didn’t tell something about their dissatisfaction, they will correct their future actions according to their experience and opinion.
6. You have to make sure that every member of your small business team listens to your customers when they find themselves in direct or indirect contact with them.
Listening will provide you with knowledge. Knowledge will tell you what next steps you will need to take. Also, it will ensure that all business members will act according to the actual customer’s needs.
7. Strictly forbidden lies when somebody of your small business team is talking to customers.
Today, your business can’t succeed but can’t survive without complete honesty. The lie can pass once, but indeed not the second time. There is one saying as “lies have short legs.” So, no matter what you or your team wants to achieve when you are in direct contact with the potential or current customer, don’t use lies to achieve the goal.
If you want to achieve your goals, you can use many other tactics. In the short term, they will not bring you significant results. But, in the long term, you will feel great benefits from your customers rewarding your honesty.
8. Sincere smile and compassion instead of a fake smile, cynicism, and contempt.
When do you feel more comfortable? When you see a sincere smile or when you see a fake smile? I will again mention that your customers are interested only in themselves. They are not interested in what you have to offer or your internal problems. Your customers are not obliged to laugh, show respect for you, or have compassion because you have a problem? They already have enough problems of their own, and because of that, they simply try to make their days much better.
9. Be on the same or even a lower level no matter what you think about yourself or regardless if you are smarter and more worthwhile from your customers.
Maybe you have more knowledge, and you should have more knowledge; otherwise, how would you solve the problems of your customers. Maybe you are smarter, but it doesn’t mean that your customers don’t think with their own heads. Maybe you are a more valuable person, but your customer has a basic interest. Those different interests are the first thing they want to satisfy. Clothes that your potential customers have dressed may not seem expensive, beautiful, or something that you are expecting. But you need to know that in the same cloth there are pockets. In those same pockets, they can have money to pay for the product or service from your company.
10. Traditional ways of selling are totally changed.
Everything you know is a part of the traditional way of doing things you need to forget. Innovate new and unique ways for you and your business when it comes to selling. Make changes in your different contacts with your customers and possible ways for satisfying their needs.
11. Always confess your mistakes, because who confesses the half of the mistake will be forgiven.
All we make mistakes, and as I wrote many times, they are allowed, as long as we learn from them. Also, we need to correct our behavior in the future. How can you expect to fix them? How can you expect the customers to know that you will fix your mistakes? It is not possible if you don’t admit that you have made a mistake.
The confession means that you know that you have made a mistake, and because of that, you regret it. What is more important is a solid signal in the eyes of your customers that you will correct the mistake. In such a way, they can expect a better product or service from your side and better business with you in the future.
12. Train your employees about managing relationships with your customers.
You can use everything that I talk about in this post to prepare employee training. You can additionally organize monthly meetings where all salespersons will share different experiences. They will share different ways of a successful sale, various achievements, various mistakes, etc. It’s the only way to ensure reliable self-improvement of your business.
Question: How do you handle the direct relationship with your customers? Can you share with us your experience?
