Case Illustration on Fulfilling Customers Needs

Selling is the very act of seeking commitment from a customer. It involves convincing the customer of the benefits or advantages gained if an effort or action is taken. For example, in the case of industrial selling, a sales person attempts to sell his raw material used for production of an end product to his potential customer. In this case, the sales person is required to understand what benefits or advantages the potential buyer is looking for (e.g. favorable price, high product quality, timely delivery, acceptable payment term, after-sales service and technical support etc.), then he needs to convince the customer with his recommendation, proposal or solution so that the customer could make an effort to move on with the next stage of purchasing process (e.g. agree with a production trial run or a factory visit to the vendors plant, or to bring the proposed solution to the board for final approval etc) before eventually placing an order. The success of a sale depends on how much the sales person understands the needs of the customer. A need is defined as the desired to act based on the perceived gap between what a person does not have and what he should have; or what the person has and what he desires to have. In other words, the gap indicates the difference between current state and the desired state. Lets elaborate further.
Current Status Do not have Already have Desired Status Should have Desire to have a better one

GAP

Illustration on analyzing what a customer does not have and what he should have David Lu sells CRM solution to his customers. The whole solution package could mean a hefty investment for the potential customer. However, according to David, more and more of his potential customers see the benefits of installing such a CRM package. Most of my potential customers do not have a way to manage their customers; they plan their visits based on hunches, feelings and the time available for disposal. They do not have a structured way to assess the business potential from their prospects; neither do they have a way to measure the relationship with their key customers for remedial actions. Customers are lost without prior warning signals. Sales people are busy and work 12 hours per day. The increase in sales volume has been undermined by lower profit margin. Sometimes the sales persons spend 80% of their time solving internal problems instead of customers problems. There is no focus in selling and all customers are treated as equally important or unimportant!! David observed, a lack of CRM is the bottleneck to success for most of the companies in
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China. David has been successful in his sales approach because he enables his potential customers to assess their current situation of NO CRM versus a desired situation with CRM in place so that a need can be established prior to selling his solution. Before I can convince my customers of my solution, I first need to understanding their business goals; such as to improve profitability; increase sales turnover, achieve market growth etc. Based on the needs understood, we can look into how to improve customer management through better classification of customers, in terms of buying potential and growth potential so that specific customer solution can be developed. In other instances, I help my customers to visualize the effect of departmental goals not aligned with corporate goals, where different chaotic situations surface, and how a CRM system can drive all departments to working collectively and serve key accounts better where team productivity can be improved by a considerable amount, David elaborated. Illustration on analyzing what a customer has and what he desires to have Jane Chao is the sales person for a capital equipment company. She has been following up with a potential customer who is currently buying from her competitor. The competitor offers good production equipment quality, timely maintenance & repair as well as technical support services, reasonably priced spare parts and payment terms. Upon a few initial visits Jane could not establish any gap with her contact person - the purchasing manager of the buying organization. I decided that I need to look at the situation from a different perspective; that is when I met with their production manager who subsequently expressed his concern on production efficiency, Jane said, The potential customer is an OEM plant manufacturing equipments and equipment parts. Not only do they want low production downtime, they also want to achieve continual production efficiency on annual basis. Above all, the new management of the company has now demanded stringent production performance and with that, a change in the expectation of the vendors. What the current vendor fails to do is to re-assess the customers business priority and match a higher level of needs from the production manager. Jane seized the opportunity by getting the help of her technical colleague to work with the production manager. Six months later, she secured her first order with this potential customer by working out a solution that eliminated production downtime through an automatic back-up production process. She has also looked into improving the efficiency of the production lines through automation of specific production procedures. Jane concluded that I learnt that, in a competitive situation, we should probe deeply into higher level of needs and come out with creative solutions. Building network within the buying organization in order to explore different expectations from the customers is important in todays business.

Understanding facts and feelings By maneuvering the different contacts within the buying organization involved in the decision making processthe sales person is able to address individual needs closely. As mentioned earlier, examples of needs could be technical, commercial, motivational or even personal; example include favorable price and payment terms, high product quality, timely delivery, risk avoidance, personal feeling towards the sale person, after-sales service and technical support etc. We will now take a closer look into customers needs by first looking at a B2C scenario. Charles Lee works for a high-end fashion retailing outlet. He has been taught to look after the implicit needs of the customer and not just how much a customer is willing to pay. He understands the rationale why a particular customer prefers dark-colored suit over a light-colored one. He learns to create a comfortable shopping space with his walk-in customers. Some customers prefer a direct probing approach with May I show you the latest fashion in town? while others prefer to be left alone without interruption while shopping. Charles knows that through careful study of customers reaction, active listening to what the customer says as well as asking the right questions, he would be able to understand the customer needs better. Charles believes What prompted a customer to buy could be just a split second decision. Price, design and color are important; but my customers are expecting us to deliver our attention to their individual tastes, patience to changes in their decision, willingness to provide comments and suggestions, praising their choice of merchandise etc. it is more about addressing their emotional needs and feelings more then anything else. Though a B2B sales situation is different from that of B2C sales situation; the key motives to be considered by a customer in both cases is similar and can be classified into Facts and Feelings; though their relative importance varies case by case. Factual needs (Facts) are easy to understand as they are rational, obvious and easy to evaluate. They include considerations such as product and quality specifications, terms and conditions of a business agreement, the logistics requirements and key elements of a technical support etc. Whereas, Feelings underlies the culture, belief, value, emotion, motivation, attitude and even the willingness to take risk. Fact and Feeling work hand in hand. A customer who likes to look for a cheaper supplier to cut down raw material cost by 5% or extend the payment terms by 30 days for all vendors could at the same time concern about the risk of switching to a new supplier or causing a stir in good relationship with the existing supplier. It is normally easier to collect fact information. However, the ability for a sales person to secure feeling information would be able to prepare a more customeroriented proposal and thus has a better chance of success. It is most important to create a good first impression, Lily Wang, the sales manager for a packaging company said then the customer will have the confidence to reveal more information to the sales person. Our competitors will be behaving just like us, they know what
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basic information to collect from our customers, such as who are the current vendors, what is the purchase quantity, what are the problems in the production process, when would the purchasing decision be made, what is the budget, who are the decision makers etc. Lily believes that more in-depth information should warrant attention. We also need to ask questions relating to opinion, feeling and motivation. For example, once we know who the current suppliers are, we need to probe into how the customer feels about their performance thus far, what are the strengths of their cooperation with the current supplier and the weaknesses experienced etc in order to look for areas of opportunity. Another example: it is not enough just to know about the current production difficulties faced; it is necessary to find out how the customer evaluates the current difficulties and what their priority is? Fulfilling customers need is the eternal truth. In fact, all sales persons should continue to develop their questioning techniques in order to probe into customers needs with much depth. Only through creating the gap that exist between current and desired states will a sales person be able to motivate customer for a decision and action that benefits both parties; thereby complete the whole sales process.

Calvin S Lim at calvinlim@netvigator.com