Anticipating customer needs is a key part of retail and wholesale businesses, especially in a stimulating sales environment that keeps them coming back. Anticipating needs is also an opportunity to grow personally and professionally. A business that is one step ahead by anticipating and satisfying an obvious need can bring loyal and loyal customers; even a humble employee who is attentive to any need and carefully observes the customer can hope to make a career.
While this leads us to notice the wishes of individual customers, it is also a way to put yourself in the customer's shoes, which takes some practice. The needs of a truck driver may differ from those of a pregnant mother, even when buying a cup of coffee. Here are some steps to be able to better anticipate customer needs.
Steps
Step 1. Do your best to put yourself in the customer's shoes during the transaction (fulfills a need)
Their needs may seem strange, recurring, or even non-existent beyond a basic purchase. Much of anticipating customers' needs lies in being aware when they are born, scrutinizing their faces or body language. Ignoring them is a risk to your business; a simple "need something else?" asked right makes a big difference.
- Have you taken the time to try or test your products or services? What do you think would prompt the customer to ask for help?
- Think about your overall experience as a customer. How do you like to be treated and helped when you request a service?
- Network in your market in a more relaxed environment by attending events such as conferences, conventions and informal classes. You will learn what your future best customers are looking for and what your random customers would like to find. Keep in mind that those who visit your business from time to time may have different priorities than those of more regular and serious customers. They may be more interested in price than features, or initially influenced more by advertising.
Step 2. Be receptive to unusual needs that are not made explicit by customers
This way you will make unusual needs easier to manage; while it often happens to receive a questioning and vague look, which in this case should not recur. If an unusual need becomes recurring and your company manages to meet the customer, the latter will become your best advertisement.
Step 3. Try to feel the need:
Realize that the correct attitude on your part towards their needs is essential. Understanding an unusual need, even if you fail to fulfill it, is equally important. On days when you don't feel your best as a service provider, get in character and pretend you're on stage. Pretend until it becomes automatic.
Step 4. Be accommodating:
Avoid conveying reluctance, lack of knowledge, or laziness to the customer. Instead, look for gentle, reassuring ways to let the customer know how their request is being met or explain why it's not possible. If you get defensive when a customer asks for something out of the ordinary, does it happen to you because it involves more work for you or because you're not sure what to do? Or maybe because you are rigid in your habits and don't like doing things differently? In any case, the problem is you and not the customer.
Step 5. Recognizing and meeting the needs of regular customers are the daily bread of a business
The customer could very well go one block and find the same product; remembering that the customer likes coffee with lemon zest, for example, and preparing it with a smile is precisely the reason that makes him come back to you. Also be prepared to be friendly and at least ask how he is doing, this will make the difference between you and another business.
Step 6. Take a few more moments, perhaps just with eye contact, to affirm the importance the customer has for you and your business
Only a few customers have no special needs compared to the usual ones. Their body language and facial expressions will tell you this; in any case they will appreciate the extra second you used for them. Waiters standing at attention, take note; sometimes the best service is no service.
Step 7. Smile:
This shows your willingness to provide a service, your accessibility. The phrase "the customer is always right" is another way of putting it. Customers instinctively seek places where they are not belittled or pushed aside, even for unusual requests.
In wholesaling, you may have advantages to offer; maybe a discount on large quantities if they become regular customers. For example, paper companies give printer companies that are fixed customers the fork price, so a ream of paper or a box of 500 envelopes has the price of the carton and a carton is sold in quantities, with free delivery only in some days, like Tuesdays, in that part of town or out of town. And they offer free delivery on certain quantities on other days, encouraging the customer to stock up
Step 8. Expect a certain amount of inactive trading, due only to the habit of customers showing up
People will come and spend money at your business, or during a certain employee's shift, just because they feel better doing it, the fact that it's a positive experience for them is important.
Advice
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People don't usually expect you to be able to read their thoughts, however it may help you with some frequently recurring requests.
Establishing a relationship and ongoing communication means having enough presence of mind to acknowledge an "unspoken" request, often through body language, hesitation, a strange customer attitude. Don't be shy and ask for clarification if you're unsure
Warnings
- You can't satisfy everyone all the time, if you are exposed to the public there will always be customers who will prove it to you. Perhaps clarification of a frustrated customer need in the right tone of voice can avoid misunderstandings.
- Anticipating customer needs is an ever-changing field that has been covered in a general way in this article, but in practice it is a specific field. If you know of effective ways to anticipate customer needs that have been left out here, you can add them.
