The Third Dimension Of Customer Realization
Posted by mike - 09/30/08 at 04:09 pm
In all my years of speaking to audiences around the world invariably focusing on the principles of the “How To’s” of developing more effective business relationships, I have yet to encounter anyone who has instinctively understood the “other side” of their customers and prospects. What do I mean?
In today’s business environment, where perhaps there is less a sense of “selling to” the customer as there is of the customer choosing to “buy from” me, no one seems to ask, much less think of, that “Third Dimension” (as I refer to it) that in many ways is what is essential in understanding your customers buying motives better than your competition. Without it, you’ll never capture the jewels of your Getting To Priceless™ (in the heart, mind, and soul) of your customer and prospects view of you! With it, well, as I’ve stated more times than I can remember when speaking, there is no traffic jam on the extra mile - that place where you have outdistanced your competition and you have the market to yourself.
And so what is this essential, and as yet unrealized, insight required as a profound ingredient in understanding the motives of what drives people and their companies to choose you to do business with? You know, those very people who you not only want as a customer but as a loyal and recurring customer - who also by word-of-mouth tells their peers about you thereby building momentum?
First, let’s adjust your mindset and perspective. Forget you and your customer/prospective customer for a moment. Let’s think, instead, about your customer and his/her customer/prospective customer. What issues are being faced by your customer/prospective customer in winning the heart, mind, and soul of this “Third Dimension”? Think about this, and try to visualize it and the impact of this then that it has on how you approach, describe, and attempt to persuade your customer/prospective customer and the solution that you have that ultimately - directly or indirectly - helps them with their customers/prospective customers. The insight, and I believe then the subsequent approach, to your success in selling is significantly enhanced by this unique, insightful, and clearer understanding of what is at stake here. Which person and/or company does not want to obtain a product or service from Party A that will significantly help them succeed themselves with Party C, especially if it gives them a competitive edge?
Talk about separating the predictable mindset of your customer/prospective customer towards you. They know you want to sell them something - yeah to help them but with no doubt that by doing so they are helping you fully realizing your vested interest. Nothing wrong with a little quid pro quo, but….. You change the Rules of the Game here by showing a more compelling concern and regard for your customer/prospective customer by not only showing them you are thinking about their customers, but also in the process more likely than not helping them to better think about their customers themselves! In the game of poker three-of-a-kind beats a pair always, and by including this “Third Dimension” you’ve separated yourself from the “Second Dimension only” ubiquitous competition, enhancing your professionalism, and further distinguishing yourself and significantly improving the chances of winning, and winning more consistently. You are always being evaluated against the other options available from your competition. Your challenge is to always set the standard of professionalism and thus distinguish yourself from the masses of competition.
This whole approach about perspective, and the crystallization of it in understanding the troika of you, the customer, and the customer’s customer is a key in the effort of greater human understanding as it relates to being successful in your business relationships. And, as I said at the beginning of this, that one perspective that in my many years of global public speaking and exchange with people in those sessions is the one that has yet to emerge in the lightbulb going off, which is why people continue to make the same mistakes and/or are still unequipped to end up being that person at that singular, extra-mile position ahead of all of the rest.
With more to come……..
Take care, Mike Muhney
