Doug DavidoffAnyone who’s ever heard me speak or been exposed to our training programs knows just how much importance I put on knowing your customer – better than they know themselves!
So I ask you – Do you know your customers?
Now before you answer, I’m not asking if you know what they like in their coffee, who their favorite team is, or what part their daughter is playing in the school play. I’m not even talking about knowing what their preferences are when buying your products.
I’m talking about knowing what drives the results your customers are seeking. I’m asking do you know:
- What drives their value proposition?
- What their competitive advantage is (and not just what they say on their website)?
- What the company is doing to exploit that advantage and what barriers are preventing them from exploiting it even further?
- What their profit formula is and what drives the formula?
- What initiatives their company is engaged in to support their value proposition and profit formula.
I constantly hear salespeople claim, “We want to show them some value;” only to learn that the salesperson doesn’t really know what’s going on in their customer’s business.
Let me be clear – the only way you are going to “show value” is by demonstrating how you impact
- your customer’s value proposition,
- their competitive advantage or
- their profit formula.
If you’re not impacting one of those, then there is no value to show.
And you certainly can demonstrate that if you don’t understand their business model to know, as well or better than they do, what’s working, what’s not working, and what you can do to drive results.
By all means, build that personal relationship – people do buy from people they like; but don’t forget to dig deeper for the real knowledge.