If I got remarried every time I heard this response, I’d be over Zsa Zsa Gabor! It’s usually followed by other equally precious phrases:
“I don’t have the patience to discuss the price all the time.”
“Customers don’t realize that they’re going to get a high quality service.”
“It’s very tiring to listen to the customer’s guesses all the time and explain why it’s better to do as I suggested.”
There are so many professions where you don’t come into contact with clients. You just have to choose one. This is what I instinctively feel like answering when I hear those phrases. But I don’t answer.
It wouldn’t solve the problem either. These questions, and the same comments, would become about colleagues in other departments, suppliers and partners.
If you have a commercial role, you deal with the customer, and you don’t have a commercial role, you don’t have a commercial role.
Idea 1
What matters is that “they” need it – the customers. What need do they want to solve? How does this service/product help them?
Simple and complex. Simple to understand. Complex to do.
I know you know it’s like that, but you end up explaining everything for YOUR reasons and not those of the Other (the client).
If you’re thinking “I never do this”, I can interview 2 or 3 of your clients and we’ll confirm it for you.
Idea 2
When customers and future customers ask questions, they are showing interest.
If you don’t want to have to explain the price to the customer,
Idea 3
People are always people. They don’t change because they’re buying or selling. They change their perspective and goals, but they’re the same people.
So why does anyone
- explain themselves in words that customers don’t understand?
- present magnificent product/service features without showing the value they bring to the customer?
- think first of their own objectives and then of the customer’s?
Is this how you like to be greeted by your doctor, mechanic or insurance agent?
Looking from the customer’s perspective is worth gold. And it works
Zsa Zsa Gabor died in 2016 at the age of 99. She had nine husbands and said she was an excellent housewife. When she got divorced, she always kept the house.
(Photos: Skitterphoto, Andrea Piacquadio)
