Understanding the voice of your customer is critical to achieving your sales and profit objectives today. Taking the time to clearly understand your buyers, how they buy, what they need to buy and why they don’t buy today is critical in developing a strategic business development growth process.
Why do your customers buy from you?
Why don’t customers buy from you?
How do your customers rank your customer experience?
What role did a salesperson play in the buying process?
Where do your buyers turn when they have an unresolved problem?
What does your brand mean to your customers?
Do your customers see your salespeople as trusted advisors?
What is your net promoter score?
What percentage of your customers are promoters?
Why did some accounts experience a significant drop in sales and profits over the last 5 years?
What percentage of your customers are detractors about to defect?
What do your customers value most?
Is there anything you are doing that is adding to the cost of sale but buyers don’t value it?
Have you made any changes that are negatively impacting your sales results?
Why don’t you have a greater share of wallet?
When we answer the above questions and more we have the insights to develop and deliver a buyer centric sales plan.
Years ago I did this process meeting face to face with my clients’ top 50 -100 customers and it took months. Today we have a team that schedules conversations with your clients and we typically provide the executive brief of finds and suggestions in 3-4 weeks.
Shouldn’t our salespeople do this research?
The quick answer is no for three reasons:
First accounts are not as open with the salesperson as they are with a 3rd party.
Second is bias, will your salespeople share issues buyers share if it was the result of the salesperson’s service?
Last we have trained your salespeople to handle objections when selling. However if they hear buyer concerns when doing research they immediately move into sales mode and try to handle the objection and not listen to learn. When this occurs the interview is pretty much over.
