Learning the Skill of Listening to your Customer will Benefit Your Business
Listening
Building the Habit to regularly listen to your Client
It sounds obvious and self-evident that it is necessary to know who our customer is in order to sell them our products and services. However, not all entrepreneurs clearly understand what it truly means and entails to deeply listen to and know your customer.
Yes, many can answer the question, "Who is your customer?" in a generic way, defining them in terms of demographic groups. They might say: "Mothers with children under 5 years old" or "Companies with more than 20 employees," or "Teenagers and young adults," to cite some examples of very diverse target audiences. However, even if you can define your customer in those terms, that doesn't guarantee that you truly know them.
You might be surprised to learn how many businesses cannot confidently and specifically answer some fundamental questions, such as the following:
Why does your customer buy your product or service?
What are their needs when they decide to purchase your product or service?
What is your customer's opinion of your product or service compared to the competition?
How does your customer feel when using your product or service?
Being able to answer these questions and others like them requires that you know your customer on a deeper level
Let's bring this topic to a personal, non-business-related example from daily life to make it easier to understand. For instance, almost every morning when I take my dogs for a walk, I pass by a couple who are riding bicycles. The first two or three times we crossed paths, we only exchanged a quick glance of recognition, then we began to greet each other with a nod, and eventually, we started saying, "Good morning, how are you?"
Now, what do I know about them? They are neighbors on the street, they exercise, they enjoy cycling, they are disciplined in going out early every day, they are probably a couple (though they could just as well be siblings, friends, or neighbors), but I can’t really say that I know them.
The skill of listening to get to know someone
To truly know them, I would need the opportunity to CONVERSE with them, ask lots of questions, and LISTEN to them. Only then could I understand, for example, why they prefer cycling over running or walking, why they do it early in the morning instead of at another time, whether they have a routine I haven’t observed that might explain why I don’t always see them, but almost always, why sometimes only one of them passes by. I could also learn other information about them that doesn’t directly relate to cycling but would lead me to know them better: What do they do? Why have they decided to live in this city? How long have they been living in the area? Do they like it? Do they have children? Where are they and/or their families originally from? And the list of things to learn would be endless.
This is what makes the difference between a casual acquaintance in the neighborhood whom you greet cordially and a friend you can count on.
This is exactly the same as the difference between knowing, in a generic way, who buys your products or services and deeply understanding their motivations, interests, needs, preferences, and ways of thinking and acting.
That’s why it is necessary to develop habits that allow us to get to know our customers more deeply. The more we know them as we know a good friend, the better opportunities we have to offer a product or service that is useful to them, which will guarantee a long-term relationship that is satisfying for both parties and a continuous and growing business for our enterprise.
What does it mean to converse with your customer?
Have you ever had to interact socially with people who only talk and talk, usually about themselves or their areas of expertise, leaving little room for you to participate, ask questions, or share about yourself?
It’s exhausting, isn’t it?
This is how we appear to our customers when we only talk about ourselves, our business, and our product or service, without showing interest in getting to know them and conversing with them.
There are many ways to get to know our customers more deeply, some more formal and others less so. Among the more formal are Market Research Studies, which are a rich source of information, as well as our Customer Databases, which are invaluable sources of knowledge. However, there are simpler and more informal ways that bring you closer to your customers every day. Today, I want to talk to you about these more everyday and less costly resources.
Make it a habit to converse with at least X number of current and potential customers each week
I’m not setting a specific number here because, of course, it will depend on your type of business. If you have a business that appeals to a mass audience, you might aim to converse with 10 customers per week, for example, but if you have a very specific and limited audience, contacting just one per week might be enough.
In any case, the important thing is that, even if it’s an apparently informal contact, you handle it as a regular habit and formally schedule it in your agenda.
No excuses, no delays. If you committed to conversing with 3 customers per week, set the day and time for that effort in your agenda and do it.
The opportunity to contact is NOT for offering products or services. It is not a sales contact. It is a contact for gaining knowledge.
How and where to plan the contact with your customer?
The contact can be via the method that best suits your business. You can call them on the phone, visit them, exchange messages via WhatsApp or texts—whatever works best and is most convenient for your customer. Remember, the focus of this contact is your customer, not you or your business, so don’t plan it around your own convenience; instead, adapt to the convenience of your customers. You can even think outside the box and plan activities like a “weekly breakfast with a group of customers” or any other activity that allows you time with your customer.
What do you want to know during that contact with your customer?
Remember, the fundamental goal is to get to know your customer. So you should have prepared questions you want to ask your customer. Here are some that might inspire you, but they are not meant to be the only ones or the most important, as they will depend on your type of customer and your business sector:
How did they find out about you?
What competitive products or services do they use, have used, or plan to use?
How could you better meet their needs?
What do they like about your product or service?
What would they improve in your product or service?
Do they follow you on social media? What do they think about it?
What are their general concerns?
What is key to the success of these meetings?
The fundamental success factor for this exercise and for making this habit truly useful for your business is to LISTEN ATTENTIVELY.
Listen, listen, and listen. If necessary, bite your tongue, but don’t judge, don’t offer opinions, don’t sell.
The fundamental goal is to KNOW. For that, what you need to do is guide the conversation toward the points that interest you and then LISTEN. The only thing you need is to develop the ability to listen to get to know your customer.
Of course, you must have control over the topics you want to discuss and the ability to guide the interaction toward those points. For this, you should have a pre-established guide of questions. But remember, it’s a “conversation,” not an interrogation, so if additional topics arise or your customer mentions things of interest that you hadn’t considered, don’t miss the opportunity to include them and delve into them.
What is your goal with these customer meetings?
Your fundamental goal is to understand their needs, perceptions, habits, and preferences. In some way, you should try to get inside their head and know what they need and what they think about issues that affect your business area.
Think of these meetings as an opportunity to get to know your customer as if you were getting to know a friend.
Some rules for these customer meetings:
Listen attentively
Use professional language
Respect the customer’s time
Ask for ideas and opinions
Spend more time listening than talking
You can always close these meetings by reaffirming your commitment to them and your interest in keeping them at the center of your business.
Segment your customers
You will notice that not all customers are the same.
You likely have segments or groups of customers with different needs or behaviors.
As you get to know them and understand that some are motivated by certain factors while others by different ones, you will have the opportunity to develop more focused and differentiated strategies for product and service development, marketing, sales, and communication. The same argument doesn’t always work for everyone. Knowing your customers in-depth opens the possibility to identify different groups with different needs and motivations and develop a much more personalized message.
Keep a record of your customer meetings
Finally, since we don’t want to rely solely on memory, at the end, you should formally record the results of these meetings. You can have a spreadsheet, a Word document, or a database where you record the date, the customer’s name, the location of the meeting, and a summary of the main things you learned from that customer. You can regularly review, reread, and unify the results to build a solid database of customer knowledge.
I remind you that to establish a habit, you should try to maintain it for a while consecutively until it becomes something you do naturally.
How about setting yourself the challenge of implementing these close customer meetings for at least 8 consecutive weeks after finishing this reading? I assure you that you will see the benefits very soon.