“Do I really need it?”, “Is it really helpful to my company?”... In the sales and marketing industry, these are some common questions by clients in times of uncertainty. The key is – how do a salesperson or marketer help them in decision making?
Always remember – understand their problems, offer solutions and they are likely to buy from you.
1. Understand their problems
First of all, it is important to understand their problem or dilemma. This is achieved by applying effective listening and communicating skills that you may learn through your life experiences. When you understand the issue from the client’s point of view, you are able to move to the next step.
2. Offer possible solutions
Next, help the customer brainstorm and come up with possible ideas. It is critical that most potential solutions come directly from the client during the conversation. You don’t need to analyse or evaluate the solutions first. Just try to be as imaginative as possible in order to list down the possibilities. When you have a list of options, you can proceed to evaluate the consequences and pros and cons of implementing a particular solution.
To help the client analyze the options, you can suggest them to consider the negative and positive outcomes of the potential solution. At this point, if the solutions are not realistic, you may be able to eliminate a few options immediately. Once they have less options left, you can help them with the “pros and cons” evaluation. List down the pros and cons of each alternative, compare and contrast and select the perfect solution.
3. Establish trust
If you want to influence your customers, you have to show that your attitude and behaviour are consistent and that you're always there to support their needs. By maintaining a constant channel of communication, you must provide them with outstanding service such as replying to calls promptly and following up with them regularly.
It is important to make them feel that they are your first priority so that they have nothing to worry about when they buy from you. Once they see you as 100% trustworthy, they will undoubtedly rely on your recommendations during their decision making process.
4. Share real-life examples
Stories and testimonials are a perfect way to help you develop trust and personality in the minds of your customers. When you tell a strong and unforgettable story, it can stir up emotions and have a powerful impact to inspire customers to take action. Clients will have more interest and confidence in your product or service when there are success stories.
To help clients make a correct decision, it is important to build customer trust and loyalty. Customer trust and loyalty is not only important to keep current clients, it can also possibly help to attract new leads or prospects.
1. Provide outstanding customer service
The level of customer support you offer greatly influences customer loyalty and satisfaction. That means that having committed staff members to handle before and after sale service is absolutely necessary to set high expectations for the quality of the service.
Once you've recruited and trained a customer support team, you need to make it easy to get in contact with your clients. It is important to offer several support channels such as live chat, email and call, and feature them on your site prominently so that clients can reach out to you immediately when they need help.
2. Follow up to get customer reviews and testimonials
It is normal that customers expect brands they support to value their preferences and demands. So, make sure to follow up with them regularly for reviews and feedback. For example, you can call them or send surveys on a regular basis and ask your customers to share their opinions. After that, you can publish the reviews on your social media page or create a testimonial page with their responses.
3. Create a loyalty program / membership
The easiest and most effective way to earn customer loyalty is through membership and loyalty programs. For example, e-commerce retailers often provide discounts or free gifts to regular customers. Also, companies can offer exclusive membership deals and early access to certain product launching. The ultimate goal is to create benefits for your current customers and ensure them to continue purchasing from you rather than trying out other available options. You have to understand that the more you fulfill their expectations, the more likely they are to be loyal to your brand.
To develop a long-term and strong customer base that leads to company success, it is important to build customer trust and loyalty that helps in their decision making process. The key to customer’s decision making is to put them as your first priority and eventually, they will not hesitate to buy from you in the future.