Four key questions that you need to ask yourself and your customers to maximise sales and the customer experience
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There are four key questions that you need to ask yourself and your customers to maximise sales and the customer experience, and they may seem obvious, by the way, but stay with me.
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Transcript
Hey there! I'm Stuart Webb—an entrepreneur, CEO, podcaster, and your dedicated host—returning with another insightful episode tailored specifically for your business.
There are four key questions that you need to ask yourself and your customers to maximise sales and the customer experience, and they may seem obvious, by the way, but stay with me.
The first is, when does your customer buy from you? What is it about what you're offering that makes them buy? Why do they choose you out of you against your competitors? And last of all, why do they come back? If they've left you, why would they come back?
The first is, when does your customer buy from you? So, understanding what the compelling event is, what motivates them to buy? So what is it about what you're offering that makes them buy? Why do they choose you out of you against your competitors? And last of all, why do they come back? If they've left you, why would they come back?
If you can really understand your client's industry or their niche, most businesses have a season.
So on the surface, one is really obvious: seasons. I worked for some time with a supplier to schools. They had periods when they were busy—the school holidays. When they close for a significant holiday, that’s when they are most likely to buy. So if you can understand the seasons, you'll know exactly when to show up. You'll know when your time to shine is and when you're going to be most relevant.
Otherwise, you probably just go on the pile of things that are pushed to the side while they focus on doing what they're doing. So a service provider might have something that requires an onboarding phase. So just say, as an IT service provider, they often say, if the pain of change is greater than the pain of staying the same, that's the only time people will consider ‘the do nothing option’. So if you can make the pain of change lower than the pain of staying the same, then people are more likely to do something.
And trying to sell something to a potential customer when they are really busy, you'll probably do more damage to your reputation if you are in there pestering them to buy your service when they're at their peak of their season, such as an accountant in the middle of tax season, the cut and thrust of their business.
Second, what motivates them to buy your product or service? There are lots of books written by people far smarter than I am about the buyer's journey. But I can give you some insights into many years in business and some of the key elements of that. There's price, convenience, and value. So if you know that the only motivator is price, it's really. It's quite simple.
That's probably my least exciting exchange if it's just about price. But if it's about convenience, how accessible is the service? If that kind of pain of change reduces the pain of change scenario again, then you can play for convenience and ease of use. Then, if it's valuable, that's probably the most fun. You get to demonstrate why you represent the most value. But if you can really zero in on which one of these is most important to your customer, then you can go there and focus on that.
Let’s expand on the value, as that is one I don’t see enough businesses working on, and not just the value you bring to the client but also the risks of doing nothing or going with a competitor. How does a business explain what its value is? If you know that your customer is looking for a high value return on whatever your service is, and they're in that mindset of value, then you're able to play to that and show that you can enable efficiencies in their business. You can demonstrate an understanding of what is going to make them a better business as a result of doing business with you. And that's a lot of fun because that's where you get to actually demonstrate intimacy and understanding of their business. As opposed to buying this because it's cheap, buy it because of what it can do for your business, and it's far more rewarding as well.
Why did they choose you over one of your competitors? And that's not something I've seen done frequently. I wish I had done it more often. But if you can unlock why someone has chosen you ahead of a competition or another offer or something—another way of solving a problem—perhaps then you're now inside the mind of your customer, and when you're going to market, you're able to play directly to that. It might be a small sample size, for instance, but people are generally motivated by similar things. So if you can be bold enough to say, Hey, why did you choose me? Then suddenly, that conversation could be a game changer. Some people might find that difficult. Asking the question or responding to it. But if you really value that customer that's in front of you and you're looking forward to working with them, the prize is finding more people like that.
This is something I explored with a client on my Soar to Scale programme. All they learned from that exercise has now helped to build new marketing material, which is driving about 30% more lead generation!
Now, if you know why they chose you and you can get uncomfortable for a moment, be comfortable with being uncomfortable; perhaps the prize on the other side of that is doing business with more people like that. And the question is, why do my customers return? What can this reveal? So this is something that is probably asked even less than why you chose me! Often, when a customer returns, we're just rejoicing that they've come back where we're happy. Once again, this is something we work with clients to explore on the Soar to Scale Programme. You can ask them why they left and why they returned, and then you start to unlock a different element, which is potentially a competitive advantage.
If they've gone to another service provider and they've come back, then you'll know what the market is doing, what your competitors are doing, and why that client or customer thought it was a better option to come back to you. It won't always be insightful. Sometimes we've asked that question, in fact, and the response has been, "You know, they were too expensive, or the deal that they offered didn't turn out to be what it was." Or "We liked them, but you were cheaper," and that's not a great response. But if you keep asking the question, you'll get more and more insights. I remember someone saying to a client on the Soar to Scale Programme that they liked the fact that they could contact the business owner. They didn't expect to call every day, and I'm glad they didn't.
But if things really went badly, they said, "I had your number, and I could call you. And where I went, they offered a very similar service, but I was just a number, and I couldn't access them." And so, lo and behold, that was really important to lots of other people as well. That became a huge new marketing campaign.
So knowing your customer, knowing why they chose you, knowing what motivates them when they want to buy, knowing what might motivate them to return to you—you can show up. And the digital age has meant that we have a lot more control—sometimes a scary amount of control as sellers—but we're able to really position ourselves and use digital as a platform to make sure that we show up first and that our value proposition is clear. Otherwise, we sort of fade into nothingness in the background with everyone else on those oodles of screens of Google search responses.
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