John Smith - Part 5

Yesterday we were talking about the scenario where you want to buy a new Ford and you can't tell where the best place is to buy. It's the confidence gap. The customer doesn't have any ability to make any distinction whether any of the options are any different or any better than any of the others. So the big question then, obviously, is how do you overcome this? How do you build confidence? There are three key concepts to building confidence; you must do these if you want people to trust your business. Here they are stated in simple terms:

Find out what they want.

Next, find out how to give it to them.

And finally, learn to communicate what you do in a way that's believable and embraceable

First, find out what they want. Simple enough, right? Here's how you find out: THINK, ASK then SURVEY. That's it.

Think, this one is self explanatory, spend some focused, time thinking as if your were your customer, what would you want? What frustrates you? What would be the ultimate experience for you. Figure out some things that you could do that customers might really like and appreciate

Now the tricky part is how you ask and what you ask. I'll just give you some basics. Ask your current customers, past customers, and prospects who haven't become customers yet what they want in your kind of business. But don't just go ask them, "What do you look for in a printing company...or in a temporary personnel service...or in a hair salon?" Or whatever your business is. From the first step Think, you should have identified what some of the typical problems are when doing business in your industry. Then when you go to talk to your customers, in addition to just asking them what they're looking for when doing business in your industry, you can bounce your ideas off them and validate whether or not the things you've identified as important or innovative are actually important or innovative. But here's the important thing: Don't neglect to ask. Don't assume you just already know. If you did know, you'd already have all the business, right? So just ASK!

More Monday.

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