Learn More About What Your Customers Want
The easiest way to sell is to give customers what they want and what they need. Sometimes the hard part is discovering what exactly that is. Finding out customer pain points is about more than listening, it’s about digging and research. It’s about understanding on a fundamental level how your product brings something new to the market. Here are four ways you can find out more about what your customer wants and provide them with the solutions they need.
Don’t Listen to the Words
Yes, when you already have a product on the market and you are focused on sales closing, it pays to listen to feedback about your products. It will show you how you can improve your offerings. On the other hand, when you are developing a new product, most customers can only tell you about what they already know. Imagine customers before the advent of home computers. Would most of them have imagined a world connected through the internet and cloud computing? It’s unlikely. For product development, instead of focusing on the words your clients are using; focus on what’s actually happening.
Learn Your Customers Lives
To achieve that focus you have to learn your customers’ lives. You have to put yourselves in their shoes. Think about situations like these: women’s military armor was built for them when the US military began accepting women in combat roles, but they forgot to resize helmets and shoes. Until 2012 crash test dummies were all based on an average-sized man. Even CPR mannequins aren’t shown with women’s clothing or breasts, which some scientists suggest is the reason women are less likely to receive life-saving CPR. These are design flaws where companies, and even governments, did not take into account half of the planet’s population. How much easier is it, then, to forget about differences based on race, religion, or regional differences? Create a very detailed image of your perfect customer and then fill in everything about him you don’t already know. Don’t assume based on your own experiences.
Solve for a Problem
Once you have taken a deep dive into your customers’ lives, you’ll understand more about how they approach the world, how their environment impacts them, and what sorts of issues they face for which you can provide a solution. Frame your solution based on its impacts, not the solution vehicle. For example, Amazon began as an online bookstore. The problem was clunky online checkout. Their solution was providing a streamlined shopping service that didn’t force customers to go through a full checkout for every purchase. They were able to leverage that solution into a business model that delivers nearly everything to your door in a day or two.
Use Technology to Track Existing Customers
Once you’ve got your product developed and to market, it’s time to learn about your customer habits through technology. Use customer analytics and behavioral data to learn when your customers shop, what technology they shop on, even where they click on your website. Check which pages draw their attention and which they avoid. Figure out what draws customers to you and replicate those elements across your site and across your business.
After customers buy from you, seek out feedback. Don’t just use reviews to bolster other sales (although they help with that too), use them to inform your development and sales team. When a customer finds a new use for your product, see if that’s something others might want to know about. When customers recommend improvements, take it to your research and development team to see if the ideas are viable, and discover if it solves for a pain point other customers are experiencing.
Knowing your customers, being able to articulate what they may be unable to, answering their needs before they realize they need it: it’s all part of knowing your customer. Knowing your customer is what allows you to beat the competition with innovation and creativity, delivering what customers really want.
