Practical Methods For Difficult Customers

Here are some ways to improve communication with difficult customers:

• Be receptive. Tell the customer you want to hear what they have to say, then give them a chance to say it.
• Put on their shoes and walk around in them for awhile. If you were faced with their frustration, how would you feel? And, just as importantly, what would you expect to be done to correct it?
• Use descriptive, non-judgmental words. Instead of saying “that’s wrong” try “that’s one way to look at it.”
• Set limits on the problem by excluding things that happened in the past or aren’t relevant to the current situation.
• Break the problem up into smaller pieces and try to reach an agreement on each one.
• Emphasize the things you have in common. “We both want the recipient of your gift to be happy,” for example.

Listening is the most important skill a sales person can possess in every situation, from trying to get an appointment with a new prospect to making a presentation to your biggest client. It’s essential when dealing with a difficult customer, so remember the first rule of listening:  you can’t listen if you’re talking! Let the customer talk. Don’t pounce on the things they are saying by trying to give them an answer before they’re finished saying them. In fact, watch out that you don’t just pretend to listen when you’re actually phrasing your answer while they’re talking. A remarkable number of difficult customers just want someone to listen to their problems, so learn to offer that small service automatically.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides and Handbooks, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, and management strategy.

How To Lose A Customer - Method #3

You can’t please everybody. Some days, in fact, it seems like you can’t please anybody. The paint color is a shade lighter than the customer thought it was going to be. There is a squiggle in the upholstery seam that only the customer can feel. The shelf is higher on one side than it is on the other—you can’t see it, but the customer can. How do you handle impossible, irrational complaints? (No, a slap upside the head is not a viable solution.)

The first step in handling a complaint—rational or otherwise—is to hear the customer out. Listening is the most important skill in customer relations, so remember the first rule: you can’t listen if you are talking! Let the customer talk first. Don’t pounce on what they say by trying to give them an answer before they’re finished. A remarkable number of complaining customers just want someone to listen to their problems, so learn to offer that particular small service automatically.

Is the customer always right? No, but they should never be told flat out that they’re wrong, either. Soften it a little by using phrases like

• “I can see why you feel that way…”
• “Let me look at that again…”
• “I understand what you’re saying…”

Then make an adjustment if you can, or explain—politely and respectfully—why you can’t. It’s tough to generalize because complaints can vary from the frivolous to the catastrophic, but the key factor in the customer relationship is the way you communicate with them about it.

You may have to shave your profit on a job to make the customer happy, but it doesn’t really happen all that often. There are people who try to get something for nothing, but if we start by assuming that the customer is trying to take advantage of us, we’re never going to resolve the problem to either their satisfaction or ours. In fact, the damage to our relationships with good customers far exceeds any loss we’ll experience by giving in to the unfair demands of the single crooked complainer.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides and Handbooks, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, and management strategy.

Don't Lose Customers On The Phone!

We like to think that things like the quality of our company’s products or service and the fairness of our pricing are the most important factors when it comes to building customer loyalty. To a certain extent, that’s certainly true. But there are several other things we do (or don’t do) in our operations that can sour the customer’s feelings toward us and, all too often, drive them into the welcoming arms of our competitors. Most of those things seem like such small items that we can’t imagine losing a customer over them. But customer relationships can’t be taken for granted because even the smallest molehill can turn into a mountain if we’re not careful.

There are several areas of business operations where mountains are likely to grow. One of the first places to look is your telephone, often one of the first points of entry to your business for your customers. When the customer calls, does it sound like you’re glad they did? Or does the way you answer the phone send the message that their call is an intrusion? If you answer the phone with a supposedly neutral statement like, “Dave’s Guitar Shop,” you’re making the customer work to justify their call to you. If you just add something a little friendlier such as, “Can I help you?” it makes the customer feel wanted. This applies when a real live human answers the phone, of course.

If your customer’s first telephone interaction with your shop is with an automated attendant, some different rules apply. Since most people detest dealing with machines, it’s essential that you make their experience as painless as possible. Here are some guidelines for setting up your automated telephone answering system:

• Make the welcoming message cheerful and short.
• Offer an immediate option—like “press zero”—to speak to a real person, then repeat it after the other options.
• Keep the number of choices to a minimum. If your customer has to wait to hear, “Press twelve for the parts department,” you’ve lost them.
• Label your choices by functions the unfamiliar new customer will recognize, like “parts,” “machine shop,” and “estimates,” instead of “Charlie,” or “Susie.”
• Don’t make them press more than one number before they’re connected to a human.

If you absolutely must use a voice mail system, make sure it’s customer friendly, too. Everyone’s greeting should be pleasant and promise a return call as soon as possible. At the end of each message, repeat the option to “press zero” for an operator.

Whether you use a voice mail system or have someone who takes messages, make it an absolute rule that every customer message gets returned that same day—although within an hour is even better. Even if you have to call back to say you can’t talk to them now, make an effort to acknowledge the call.

The degree of customer-friendliness of your telephone system is easy to test. Just take a page from the manual of the retailers who employee “secret shoppers” and call your shop from outside to see what it sounds like. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and ask yourself if the person that greets you—recorded or live—sounds like he or she is smiling. Listen to the entire greeting and ask yourself if you feel welcome. If you have an automated attendant, press every option at least once to see what happens. If you end up in voice mail purgatory—where you don’t know if the message you’re leaving is for the right person—you know you’ve got a potential problem.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides and Handbooks, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, and management strategy.

Making A Sale On The First Call

One of the great myths about selling is that you need to make a series of calls on a prospect to determine their needs before you can make a proposal to them. If you’re selling anything less complicated than enterprise computing systems, this is time-wasting nonsense based on a misunderstanding of consultive selling. Why wait? You’ll speed up the prospect’s decision-making process and save yourself hours and hours of selling time (which you can use to make more sales) if you present a specific proposal on your very first call.

This suggestion invariably sends traditional consultive sellers into convulsions and they say things like, “How can you make a proposal without ascertaining the need?” “Won’t the prospect think you’re arrogant to come in with a proposal the very first time you meet them?” “What if your proposal is wrong?”

This response comes from a lack of understanding of my method. You’ll notice that I want you to make a proposal on the first call—but that doesn’t necessarily mean that that call will be the first time you’ve visited the prospect. Nor does it mean that you haven’t done a needs analysis. In fact, the time and effort you put into needs analysis (before the first call) will dwarf that of a typical consultive seller who goes into the first call with questionnaire in hand. And your needs analysis will be more accurate, which will mean a more accurately targeted proposal.

Selling on the first call isn’t as simple as it sounds, of course. It’s not a matter of taking the same product to as many prospects as possible in hopes that you’ll stumble across someone that needs to buy something today. Nor does it mean that you ignore the prospect’s individual needs and try to sell them a one-size-fits-all product. To make a sale on the first call, you need to research the prospect in advance, ask probing questions during your presentation, and be ready to change your design or other elements of your proposal—on the spot. It takes preparation and a set of ears finely tuned to what the customer is saying.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

How A Creative Sale Is Made

There are two kinds of salespeople, order processors and idea sellers. The first one serves a certain function in any business, but it’s the second one that will make the business boom.

Who are idea sellers? Salespeople who size up a prospect’s business and take them a proposal for a product or service to meet their needs. They plant the idea for the solution to a need in the prospect’s mind even though the prospect may never have acknowledged that need to start with. By doing so, the idea seller creates demand for his or her products.

Here’s an example:  Let’s say the prospect is an insurance agency and you, the idea seller, have a small business making gift baskets—those elaborate assortments of gourmet foods, trinkets, and colorful goodies that solve a lot of gift-giving problems. As a real idea seller, you will take a look at the insurance agency and think up ways they could use gift baskets to sell more insurance. They could buy a basket every week to award the agency’s top producer, for example, or send a basket to every new client as a way to say thanks. Maybe they could reward clients who go three years without a claim or send a gift basket to prospective customers as a door opener. In other words, there are lots and lots of ways the insurance agency could use gift baskets.

But if no one suggests it, the insurance agency probably would never think of it themselves. That’s where the idea seller steps in. You pitch one of these ways the agency could use the product and gives them a specific proposal (how many—of what—at what cost) on which to act. That’s idea selling in a nutshell. It’s very creative.

Gift basket makers are generally very creative people, so they should be very good at this. The key is to put some of the same wonderful creativity that goes into designing baskets into ways that your prospective customers can use them. I’m sure you noticed that the “ideas”  mentioned for the insurance agency aren’t different types of gift baskets—they’re different applications for the gift basket product. It’s conceivable, in fact, that the same gift basket design could be used in all four—or more—ways mentioned above. The creative part of the sales process is in finding new uses for the product.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Making Sales With Your Ears, Not Your Mouth

In my consulting practice, I never talk about the salesperson’s speaking ability—I always refer to their communication skills. Communication is a two-party, two-action process. In sales communication as in other types of inter-personal communication, each person takes turns speaking and listening. Person A talks and Person B listens to what they say. Then Person B replies and Person A listens to their answer. There is a completed communications loop—hopefully.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen that way much of the time. In fact, I’m sure you can probably identify plenty of instances where the communications loop isn’t completed. Your spouse is talking to you about the necessity of squeezing the toothpaste tube strictly from the bottom, but your mind is on what your best customer was complaining about today, so you don’t “hear” a word that’s being said. The sound physically strikes your ear drums. Your neural system transmits it to your brain, but it doesn’t register because your brain is busy with something else. And so you have the same “conversation” the next morning.

Or your sales manager is going over (for at least the tenth time) the pricing strategies for your fall line but you’re busy mentally calculating the effects of the new pricing on the sales incentive payouts and, besides, you’ve heard this spiel nine times already. He’s talking and you’re hearing, but you are not listening. There’s a big difference.

It happens all the time. One of my favorite examples occurs when you use that automatic conversation opener, “How are you?” Most of the time, you’ll get an automatic answer like, “I’m fine. How are you?”

Every once in a while, though, the answer is far from automatic: “I’m terrible, my dog died yesterday and I’m just heartbroken about it.” But you’re still in auto-answer mode, so you come back with, “I’m just great, too. I know you’re busy, so let’s get right into the presentation.” I’ve done it and I bet you’ve heard it happen, too. You think you’re paying strict attention—but you’re not listening to the other person.

Most people think that a salesperson’s job is to talk. Even worse, many salespeople think that. And salespeople who believe that their job is to talk the prospect into submission then fail to complete the feedback loop by listening to what their prospect is saying. And they wonder why their closing ratio is so low.

I won’t belabor the point. Just remember that more sales are made with your ears (and what’s between them) than your mouth.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.