Salespeople get to witness the exact reasons why customers buy from your company. Most often it is a comfort level with your products, services, and price. Reliability and relationships are also huge factors for why customers select you over competitors. How easy or difficult it is to do business with you is often a swing factor.
However, our studies have shown that most employees in a company have less than a 50% understanding of exactly why customers really buy and what makes customers keep coming back. This is a tremendously important finding! It would be like a football team where the players only understand s half of the playbook!
Many employees have perceptions about why customers buy, but this is not enough. More people in your company have to be familiar with exactly what the salesperson understands.
There are nuances that need to be understood to be united as a company in putting your most prominent qualities forward every day when engaging with customers and prospects. Having this knowledge allows every employee to help pull off what I refer to as Best Choice Marketing.
Don’t misunderstand, employees that work in functions other than Sales or Marketing are quite interested in customers! They like the idea that customers enjoy and value what their company has to offer. And often these employees are excited to go above and beyond to satisfy customers. But most employees don’t fully understand how they can help customers!
It all starts with a dissection of why customers really buy. I call this the Buyer Index.
Organize a Buyer Index Team in your organization. Let them delve into the reasons customers buy. Use real customers as material. Look closely at why you lose a deal or an entire customer. Always have at least one customer-facing “front line” employee on this team.
I believe even a 10% increase in understanding the Buyer Index will yield a 15% increase in customer loyalty and a 2-10% increase in sales – just from this one action. The ROI on this effort is over 500% as the cost of education is nearly free.
