How to Convince a Potential Customer (Practical Approach)

 For the last five decades or so, marketing scholars and practitioners agreed that marketing represents customer focus of an organization ⁽¹⁾. In other words the core focus of your organization/business marketing should be your customers.

And for that reason customer relationship management area has been developed into an area of major significance in the last 10 years or so ⁽²⁾.  Considering this, one can easily conclude that the main focus of present day marketing is customer orientation. 
  

Customer orientation not only helps you to understand your customers but also helps you to take preventive measures against potential risks that leads to customer dissatisfaction. Not to mention that according to Harvard Business Review research, a dissatisfied customer shared his/her experience with 10 or more people ⁽³⁾.

You may also like to read Understand Customers Public Face to Convince Them Effectively

Clearly that’s an awful word of mouth or bad word of mouth that you don’t want to get!

Okay now let’s focus on customer orientation, what you as a marketing manager, marketing executive, sales person need to do is to act as a liaison between your product/service and

customer. ⁽⁴⁾

In other words you need to know what you are selling, why you are selling, why your product/service but also who are your customers, what they are looking for, why are they looking for that product/service etc. 

In other words the more good you are at customer and your product/service orientation the better.

Now there are five key areas where you need to be exceptional to convince your potential customer.

Five Key Areas:

1.      Product/Service Features

2.      Product/Service Specifications

3.      After sale services

4.      Demo’s

5.      Cross Questions

The first four areas relates to your product/service while the last one relates to your potential customer.

Product/Service Features

Product/service features or important characteristics are something that helps you to put your product/service in better position to your potential customers. The more you know about your product/service features the better you will be at presenting it.

Product/Service Specifications

A specification is a requirement which a customer looks for in a product/service, you need to identify and understand such specification thoroughly in your product/service. Each specification demanded by the customer should be related to product/service in one way or another, its up to you and your creativity how you connect the two "Features & Specifications". The more you know the better you will be at giving satisfactory answers to your customers regarding your product/service.

After Sale Services (Questions)

Customer often asks about after sale services once he/she makes up mind to buy your product/service. Questions related to such as guarantees, warranties, replacement, refund in case of malfunctioning or failure in delivery of service, spare parts etc etc comes in after sale services.

Demos

Product/service demos, esp in case of tangible items demo is the most effective way to convince your potential customers. The better oriented you are with your products the better you will be in demo, thus the first thing is that you know your product inside out then the second thing is to give flawless, effective demo to your potential clients/customers.

Cross Questions

Cross questions lies in the middle of this whole story of product/service specifications, features, after sale service, demos. In other words you need to be very good at, all of these things to effectively tackle customer cross questions and to convince him/her eventually.

You may also like to read Why Your Business Needs Market Oriented Approach

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References:

1.      Gro¨nroos, C. (2006), “On defining marketing: finding a new roadmap for marketing”, Marketing Theory, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 395-417

2.      Payne, A. and Frow, P. (2006), “Customer relationship management: from strategy to implementation”, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 22 Nos 1/2, pp. 135-68.

3.      Harvard Business Review, “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers” by Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman, and Nicholas Toman, July 2010.

4.    Moorman, C. and Rust, R.T. (1999), “The role of marketing”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 63, pp. 180-97 (special Issue).