Learn Your Customers Needs and Wants

Satisfied customers are your best bet for FUTURE sales! When making up a customer file after the sale, put down everything you notice about your customer or prospect. I mean everything: kids, hobbies, travels, whatever you learn about the person. It gives you ways to talk to them about things in which they are interested in. There is nothing more effective in selling anything than getting the customer to believe that you really like and care about them and their interests. An experienced salesman can read a customer. If you pay attention to details you can learn a lot.

I can walk around and look inside a person’s car and tell you everything about it and about its owner.
There are obvious things, like how many miles on the odometer, and the number of service station stickers on the door-jamb and their mileage. Obviously, they tell me how much driving the man does in a year and how carefully he takes care of his car. When I open the trunk to look at his spare tire and I find fishing tackle, I have something else to talk about. Fishermen love to talk about where they fish and what they have caught. I’ll ask him about where he’s been fishing lately, and pretty soon he’ll tell me about a fish he caught that was this big.

Another thing I keep an eye out for is windshield and bumper stickers. Political stuff I say nothing about, because politics is not something you can talk about with a customer without getting into trouble. I want to talk about the other kinds of stickers that resorts put on or that you get when you go to a national park or other tourist attraction. If I see a trailer hitch on the rear end that tells me even more about him. He is a camper or a boater. And if there is a baby seat or any toys, I have learned something else about the man, his needs and his interests. What I look and listen for are things that will open him up, get him talking, so that he will tell me about himself. I may ask him what he’s got in mind or what he’s driving now, but mostly I’ll just be passive while I watch and listen.

You can learn a lot more by watching and listening than you can by talking. The more the prospect talks, the more they reveal about themselves to you. The more you understand about their needs and wants, the better equipped you’ll be to provide them with the right solution and product! My customers were like family to me. I was in it to win and to make winners out of my customers. I kept them coming back for more and more. And I made sure they enjoyed the experience over and over, again and again. The payoff comes with REPEAT business and referrals by satisfied customers.