The Real Connection with Prospects – Part 2

The more you can get potential customers to “see” themselves owning the product, the more likely they are to buy.

Pleasure sells. If you don’t believe me, just look at any television commercial or magazine, newspaper or Internet ad. I don’t care if you’re selling Viagra, clothes, food or beer. The advertisers understand the emotionalogic principle very well. You’ve got to create a burning desire within the potential customers by showing them all the pleasure of buying and all the pain of not buying.

To be effective at influencing people, you sell them on the feeling they will experience by owning your product. You create an image in their mind of how the product will “make them feel” when they buy it. They must see how it can make them safer and how it can give them more joy and more time with their family or more money, more safety, etc. These things are motivating factors that will help the customers buy.

Your job is to change the customer’s emotions about your product by giving them compelling, positive reasons to buy and by showing them some of the negative things that could result if they don’t buy your product.

Once people are given enough emotional reasons to change (positive and negative), then you must help them justify (back up) with logic. To be logical, it must make sense.

 
Customer care has become one of the most important issues facing businesses in every market – there are less customers, spending less and making fewer purchases.

There has never been a more appropriate time for every organisation to examine it’s approach to customer retention. 

Customer care programs come under a number of titles – customer services, customer satisfaction, customer focus, customer orientated etc.

Their common theme is meeting the customer’s requirements and ensuring that all aspects of the business contribute to customer satisfaction. The intention is to build repeat business if customers are satisfied with the product and the standards of service they receive, they will return again and again.

Inconsistent Customer Care
 
Inconsistent customer care performance can have a negative effect on customer perceptions. Petrol companies for example, know that every time a customer walks into one of their outlets, wherever they are in the country, they should expect to receive the same standards of service. Nation-wide consistency is essential when customers are likely to visit multiple outlets – one poor performance can threaten the customer’s perception of the entire operation.

What Is Customer Care?
 
 Customer care is about addressing three sets of requirements:
 
• Customer
 
• Staff
 
• Organization
 
These requirements are interrelated, i.e. it is more difficult to deliver consistently high standards in customer care if the needs of both the organization and the staff are not taken into account

Customer Requirements
 
• Excellent personal service – feels valued, listened to, treated as an individual

• Products that meet expectations

• Encouragement to express views and give feedback

• Effective relationship with the organization

• Problems and complaints are handled effectively

Staff Requirements
 
• Effective management style

• Suitable working environment – pay and conditions / tools for the job

• Relevant training to develop skills

• Career potential

• Clarity of role / job description

• Performance standards and appraisal systems

• Sense of involvement / value

• Open communication

• Teamwork

• Rewards / Recognition

Organisational Requirements
 
• Mission statement
 
• Corporate structure
 
• Feedback and communication systems
 
• Profit
 
• Human and technical resources
 
• Demonstrated commitment

Who Are Your Customers? 
 
If you are not serving the customer, you should be serving someone who is. Harmonious relationships with customers and colleagues are essential to service success, because providing outstanding customer service is primarily a team effort. For excellent customer service to exist it has to be practised on an internal basis

The What And The How
 
 The “What” is the material and the “How” is the personal element. To be outstanding, organizations must deliver excellence in both material and personal service.

Customer service is no longer just a question of interpersonal skills

The difference between you and your competitors is achieved when expectations are exceeded. Doing the unexpected, going the extra mile, moves us from meeting expectations to exceeding expectations

How To Delight Customers:
 
• Be enthusiastic. Enthusiasm is the driving force of quality service.Customers do not just want products they want products plus enthusiasm
 
• Be professional. The word professional does not go with the job, it goes with the person
 
Be The Best
 
• Someone, somewhere has to be the best at this job – why not me?

• Decide to be outstanding
 
How To Be The Best
 
• Use positive self talk – e.g. tell yourself ‘Everyday in every way, I get better and better’

• Don’t be ordinary

• Develop a ‘How can I do it better?’ mind set

Today Everyone Sells
 
 In a successful company the number of sales people equals the number of employees

• Everyone sells something  – either products, services or the image of the company
 
And Finally: How To Help Yourself Sell
 
• Pay attention  – give people the benefit of your attention

• Customers like to give their business to those who show they want it

Ready to overhaul your customer service approach? You’ll find a lot of helpful advice here

Tomorrow: It’s the w/e, and that means it is the JF Guest Author Spot – do try and join me?

Source: http://www.thejfblogit.co.uk/2010/04/30/recognizing-the-key-to-good-customer-care/

“If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him you are his sincere friend.” Abraham Lincoln

A well known so called “sales guru”  recently used this quote, and suggested that nowhere is this truer than in selling, where you are trying to persuade another, often a stranger, to make a decision they may not even have considered prior to your meeting.

My view? Total and utter rubbish! Potential clients are not interested in making friends with you – but they do want to trust you. Don’t concern yourself with being liked, but concentrate on earning respect – you may think they like you, but will they respect you in the morning?

The reality is that the buyer-seller situation – like any human contact – is an exercise in human relations: the interplay, cause and effect of behavior by two or more people on each other. In the buyer-seller situation, the seller must be responsible for shaping mutual behaviour.

What’s the difference between human nature and human relations?

• Human nature is the instinctive behavior that governs action concerned with the self and with self-interest.

• Human relations are concerned with how we think and act in terms of other’s interests.

Successful selling demands that human relations be dominant over human nature.

Selling is not something a salesperson does to a prospect. Selling is something you do with the prospect in a process of discovery and interaction – human relations at work.

The greatest barrier to success in this process is the “Egocentric Predicament.” This consists of being overly and unnecessarily concerned with self. Our ability to be perceptive and concerned about others is inversely proportionate to our self-concern.

When self gets unnecessarily in the way, the fruitful cycle of good human relations stops producing.

The key to understanding and accepting others, is to first understand and accept oneself – starting with the realization that, rather than strive for an unattainable “I should be” image, we should settle for our real self as “I am” – accepting shortcomings along with strengths.

The following points provide a practical answer to the “I am” versus “I should be” conflict.

Recognize it – and recognize that its source is rooted in the views of others.

Either (a) accept your “I am” image or (b) decide on attainable, constructive steps to achieve “I should be” in the future.

Our behavior is a reflection of our attitudes; and our attitudes grow out of our values. Each is an integral part of the other. Do your life values make it easy for you to put the other person’s interests first?

Sincerity is a much-used word in relation to selling.

Integrity is a kindred word. Integrity implies a consistent kind of honesty: acting outwardly the way you truly feel inwardly. That’s why sound values are so important to your success with others. Remember: “People buy our product not so much because they understand the product… but because they feel that we understand them.”

There are many effective ways of doing this: The best way to create this kind of buying climate is to “transmit on their frequency.” This opens their mind to you…makes them willing – and eager – to listen.

A sincere, specific compliment on a point of real meaning to them gets the other person talking about things of interest to them. It opens doors.

“Before I sell my prospect what my prospect buys, I must first see my prospect as they see themselves.”

In Summary:

Empathy is the magical word in the lexicon of human relations. It means feeling as the other person feels, not just with them. It means putting yourself in their shoes and shaping your attitudes accordingly.

Beyond getting the order, the plus factor in selling is to make people look good in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. Rather than sell to them, we help them buy.

We do this best by building their self-image. This helps them grow. And as we help others grow, we grow. To do this, we must be open and honest – this is the essence of good human relations.

These concepts are applicable to every facet of our lives and in selling, they pave the way to the truest and most fruitful success.

Today’s News: We have finally finished messing around with the new design here and I am very happy – now we can finalize the new JF Consultancy site in the next 48 hours.

Over at AllBusiness, on my “Ask The Expert” weekly podcast, I am discussing the massive benefits of publishing articles, and I reveal my experiences – HERE

Source: http://www.thejfblogit.co.uk/2010/04/29/if-you-don%E2%80%99t-understand-the-importance-of-empathy-%E2%80%93-you-are-probably-on-the-wrong-length-of-waves/