The Power of Educating your Customer

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"Adam, over the past six years, I've had the pleasure of 'bumping into you' on at least three business and marketing related forums. Your contributionsto discussions have always been courteous, astute, incisive and practical,delivered with good humour, and based upon 'real-world' business experience. You are clearly an experienced business professional who actually knows what he is talking about. I wonder if your clients know what a gem they have in you? As one business professional to another, I salute you.

Good Wishes,
John Williamson - The Wealth Coach
www.thewealthcoach.com
www.retaildisplaysecrets.com

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I just LOVED "7 Clues to a Profits Leak".

Steven Walker - Profit Improvement Advisors
Calgary, Canada

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You will be proud how your protégés are proceeding! We have expanded the business to Katherine and Alice (Tennant is also on the list). T he catering side of the business is far less stressful and is actually profitable, now that we only take the good jobs.
We will never forget the assistance you gave us in re-inventing our business!

Karen Sheldon

Managing Director

Karen Sheldon Catering

Darwin, Australia

+++++++++++++++++++

The chap is Adam Gordon whom I have known for many years. He is a former resident of Darwin having lived here for perhaps 25 years, is an excellent communicator and has a very good appreciation of small business, business plans and all that goes with it. In fact Adam is regarded as a business guru.

Charles Wright, QS Services, Darwin, Australia

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Thanks for the catch-up the other day. It's great to be working with a legend in the small business community.

AJ Kulatunga, BLKMGK ICT

Darwin, Australia

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The 7 Clues is a great.

What I like the most in the Seven Clues report is that it clearly explains that accounting is merely a subset of proper financial management and

that only the business owner can practise financial management. The accountant does the accounting, and in doing so supports the business owner's financial management. And the business owner uses the accountant's information, but relying on the accountant to do full-blown financial management is short-sighted.

The report nicely "grounds" an otherwise complex topic which many business owners are afraid of touching, so they often move ahead in blissful ignorance. The water hose and the soggy soil under the leak makes an excellent and easy-to-comprehend example, upon which the financial management concept is nicely built.

Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur Dynamic Innovations Squad
Personal and Firm-Wide Performance Improvement for Management Consulting Firms

Vancouver, BC Canada

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You have played a very important role in my development in business.

You were there with the right information at the right time, I thank you for that.
By adding the next level of systems, and marketing knowledge that you brought to the table we able to identify our objectives, acknowledge the gaps in our business and put in place the planning so as to achieve those objectives. Within 5 years we achieved 9 of our ten stated objectives. In that same year we won the NT Telstra Small business of the year"

Greg Haigh
Director - Trade Group
Regional And Northern maintenance services
RANms

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Recent newsletters include:

How well do you know your market?
How turning away customers leads to profits
How to create Superior Value
How to win against your competition
Do you need to make changes to your business?
"Our customers are costing us too much!"
Why competition is good news
What makes a web site effective?
Most businesses have one, but...
How to improve your quotations
How to raise prices without losing sales
Is your business resilient?
How to develop a new product in your niche
How big is your profit gap?
How discounting destroyed value
Benchmarking for best practice
From all customers to some customers
How to take the guesswork out of growth
Should your USP be based on logic or emotion?
How to triple your quotation success rate
How to dramatically improve your quotations
How to make more effective decisions?
How to develop your USP
Do you want to make better planning choices?
Are youmaking these mistakes in planning?
How to use SWOT properly
Does your sales conversation balance the scales of justice?
The perils of profitless cash flow!
So what is more important, cash flow or profit?
Are you getting value from your pricing?
Do you report to yourself monthly?
Follow the money trail!
Performance also counts!
Get more bang for your buck!
Without measurement there can be no improvement!
Where would your business be without customers?
Using your monthly report to improve your profits
Just who is your customer?
And what do you know about your customer?
How branding can increase your profits!
Can branding make you more money?
How to balance the value equation
Tilting the balance in your favour
How to pin the tail on the donkey
Are you groping in the dark with your real cost of labour
Mastering core marketing principles
Building a 5P marketing plan
Profit leaking processes
Should you be trying to increase or decrease cash flow
At times it is folly to hasten
5 steps to create your future
What will be the X-Factor in 2009
Lies, damn lies & statistics
How to use a squad profit leak detectives
Confidence leads to action
Increase sales - so easy to say
So you want to know how to increase sales
Is selling a necessary evil?

The Power of Educating your Customer

Are you trying to educate everyone?

Having written on this subject in the last blog I then read an article which lead me to think that I should come back and clarify some aspects of the blog, just in case I had you busy trying to educate everyone in your sales efforts.

Education to assist customers see the solution to their problem is a powerful and effective sales tool, but trying to educate everyone puts you on the road to failure.

But just in case you were, the clues were in the blog:

Note "your customer" - it is not everyone you are trying to educate, just your customer.
And I quoted a bloke called Doug D'Anna "The best salespeople aren't trying to sell you anything. They are trying to help you get what you want in relation to what you're looking for." Note the "what you are looking for". In other words, they're likely to be a customer

The article I read was by a bloke called Gary Bencivenga. Now you are not likely to have heard of Gary. He works in the field of copywriting, which is writing direct response sales material such as sales letters and advertorials. I'm not talking of your common or garden type advertising here but someone who understands that copywriting is salesmanship in print.

As he put it, the ultimate secret of how to sell anything is "Find out what others want and help them get it." He then made the point that you can't educate someone in to realising that they have a problem. You can't motivate them to want something they don't already want. If you have to do that, you're already losing the battle.

And that means you have to listen before you can educate, and find out if they are a potential customer. Otherwise you are wasting your breath, and the potential customer's time.

To reinforce this, a bloke in a workshop on Customer Management I was running recently commented that a problem many sales people have is that they try and present their solution before they've heard what your problem is.

In fact that is the perfect way to lose the sale. Either the customer will decide that they are not being listened to, and walk out. Or the product or service being offered will not solve the customer's problem. Both situations could have been resolved had the salesman listened.

If you are the one making the sale, and as a reader of this blog you probably are, then your job is to find out what is motivating your potential customer, why has he or she come to you, what is their problem.

And that is where the education comes in. The customer is not likely to know as much about your area of expertise as you. Sometimes they will have no idea of the best way to solve their problem, so need to understand the options available. Sometimes they will have already decided on a solution, the wrong solution.

Either way, your job is to educate them and show them how they can solve their problem through your product or service. Only then will they buy.

But if you have to educate them to understand that that they have a problem, then they are not your customer. You are not trying to educate everyone, just your customer.