Earlier this year, Gerry McGovern and Kristin Zhivago, published a white paper called “Using your customers’ desired actions to increase your sales”. The paper looks at the shift from “seller-centered to buyer-centric”, a topic that’s more important than ever in this digital and social media day and age.
Today, businesses are forced to focus more on the facilitation of the buying process. As the paper says: “make it easy for them to buy”.
Still, many companies do not grasp the fact that customers, people, decide how and where they buy and connect with their business. Which might sound strange since it’s a proven fact that most customers find the companies they buy from, and not the other way around.
So why does that mentality shift doesn’t happen? A quote from the paper: “Because the minute you start selling, you start thinking like a seller. You stop thinking like a buyer. Your perspective and your customer’s perspective are on the opposite ends of the Buyer/Seller Spectrum”.
Let’s take a look at some key differences between buyers and sellers in that spectrum. Why? Because understanding things, is the first step to changing them…
The first and the most obvious difference in the table is that sellers have an “I want them to buy from me” attitude, whereas buyers frankly don’t care. Well, that’s not entirely true. They do care. And one of the considerations they take into account is…how easy is it to buy.
Today’s customer is increasingly online in all phases of the buying cycle. This is probably most true in the information gathering process, prior to actually purchasing a product.
The end of the sales pitch and the importance of listening
Reading specifications online, going to peer-to-peer recommendation sites, reading the opinions of others on blogs and in comments, word-of-mouth, checking what ‘influencers’ think, you name it. In fact, chances are that the customer knows more about your product or service (and that of the competition) than your own sales people do.
So when they are ready to have that sales talk with you, the paper says, they have “gotten 80% of their questions answered”.
What does this mean, in reality? That, if your salesperson, whatever channels he uses, interrupts the customer and starts pitching before he listens to the customer, the customer will probably go somewhere else.
This, in my mind is one of the most essential changes that we, as businesses, have to keep in mind: listening to our customers. Sure, it was always like that but listening is not an option anymore. The companies that listen best, will have the best business. The same goes for customer service and so on.
The companies that don’t listen and still have that seller mentality, will lose business and customers.
Listening is the very essence of sales because if you don’t listen, you don’t know the needs of your customers. That’s not new, right? However, listening has become even more important because customers are more informed than ever, and they have more channels to communicate with you and their peers. Chances are that they will not come to find a ‘solution for their needs’ but that they very well know what they need and don’t need your advice anymore.
So, give them an opportunity to talk and listen. The same goes for marketing in social media times: listening has become key there too and that’s a culture shock for many.
It shows the changing role of marketing and the need to break down those eternal walls between sales and marketing departments.
Listen as a business, across all divisions! You have no choice.