Marketing, Sales Representation & Consulting Agency
By Vicki Lynne
Morgan, CMS
President – ANIMAL BRANDS®
UNDERSTAND THE CUSTOMER
To understand customers and the seemingly dumb things they do, you need to have a broader understanding of people in general. You don’t have to be a psychologist, but it would help to know some basic things psychologists know. For example, psychologists tell us that "everything a person does seems like a good idea to that person at that time." In other words, people don’t do dumb things on purpose.
The things a person does which seem dumb to us only appear that way because we are looking at the world or that situation from our point of view. If we understood how a person viewed and interpreted a particular situation, we would have understood why the person acted a certain way in that situation. This does not mean that you would have done the same thing or even agree with it. But you would understand why the person did it.
One simple truth about selling is that you will only get maximum cooperation from your customers if the things you want them to do make sense to them. This means that your analysis of all selling situations must be from the customer’s (or prospect’s) point of view.
From Why Customers Don’t Do What You Want Them to Do and What to Do About It, by Ferdinand F. Fournies (McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, NY)
COMMENTARY
Successful sales representatives understand three basic factors that together serve as a foundation for their individualized selling style. Those factors are: (1) product knowledge, (2) understanding customer needs, and (3) ability to meet those needs by selling the appropriate features and benefits of the product. Perhaps, we’ve left out a key pivotal factor – generational selling strategies.
Rocking the Ages, a book by J. Walker Smith, Ph.D., and Ann Clurman, suggests that generationally-determined lifestyles and social values exercise as much (or more) influence on buying decisions as more commonly understood demographic factors such as: income, education, and gender. Common experiences of a generation create specific sensibilities that effect its members in some way. Perhaps by knowing the motivations and values of three clearly-defined generations, we would be better prepared to customize our presentations for goods and services to meet our customers’ specific needs.
The authors have identified and named these generations. ‘Matures’ were born between 1909 and 1945; ‘Boomers’ were born between 1946 and 1964; and ‘Generation X-ers’ were born after 1965. Each of these generations has been affected differently by factors such as: advancements in research and technology, prosperity and depression, political and economic conditions, trends, fads, war and peace.
The challenge for those of us in marketing, advertising, and sales is to identify the deeply implanted preferences of each of these three generations and to adjust our presentations accordingly. We must also realize that as each group enters a new stage of life, their buying decisions will continue to be affected by their reactions to factors that have influenced their specific generations.
Copyright 11/98
Reprints by Permission
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