How to Meet Great Expectations

As competition gets stiffer, meeting customer expectations grows more challenging and more critical to keeping their business. To ensure more satisfied customers on sale after sale, sell with these buyer expectations in mind.

1 Solid information. Instead of just trying to find out what product you should present to your buyer, make your sales call an information exchange. Carefully formulate a list of questions to clarify your buyer’s needs and consider what information you can offer in return. Before every call, use your buyer knowledge to determine what questions they might have not just about your product but about buying other products like it and about the industry in general.

2 Options. Offering your buyers more choices – of products, of ways to pay, of solutions to their problems – increases the likelihood that one of them will be a perfect fit. Based on what buyers tell you they need, draw up at least two or three proposals with varying products, prices and payment plans from which they can choose. Talk to your manager to find out just what your options are for offering your buyers more options.

3 One-stop shopping. For many buyers, the lure of being able to do all their buying from a single vendor is hard to resist. Make sure you offer solutions to as many of your buyers’ problems as you can. Ask questions about all areas of their business and think about what role you and your company might play in each one. Compare the needs and challenges of all your prospects, and discuss with your manager how you might expand your product line to include items that meet the most common needs that you don’t handle already.

4 Open communication. By keeping the lines of communication open you strengthen your bond with customers. Offer clients several different ways to reach you and stay in close contact with them by sending questionnaires to gather feedback on your performance, cards for special occasions and newspaper or magazine articles along with other items of interest. When buyers or prospects leave messages, call them back quickly and let them know they can call on you at any time and for any reason.

5 Seamless relationships. Be careful not to let your transactions with customers define your relationships with them. Even when clients haven’t bought in a while, be patient and keep your name in front of them with newsletters, problem-solution case histories, product updates and general industry information.When your customers are ready to buy again, you want to be the first person they think about.