45 www.printmonthly.co.uk July / August 2024 - Issue 349 STRATEGIES FOR MAKING YOUR CUSTOMERS FEEL MORE VALUED Anyone who's done a bit of self-development will likely have come across a book written by Dale Carnegie called How to Win Friends and Influence People. In this book, he came out with the following quote: “Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.” Customers get annoyed having to sit and listen to sales pitches without you really understanding what their needs are. It's important that you listen and understand their requirements, then you get the opportunity to do your pitch and hopefully come up with a solution to their problems. Use this as a fact-finding mission. When meeting with a client, I'll typically have a number of questions I'd like to get answers to before I leave the meeting and I'll come to them shortly but another important thing you want to do is your homework. Let them know you've researched them or their business, make them feel special, and that you value their work. LinkedIn can tell you so much about a person and can give you some key talking points as you try to build that relationship. Find Common Ground Finding common ground is usually paramount. It could be that you have a mutual friend or a similar hobby, you might like to holiday at the same destination, have kids the same age, like the same bands, or football teams. There is a plethora of things to look out for. Your meeting would be pretty dull if it was 100% focused on work so try your best to find these common grounds. Again, it makes them feel important, that you want to get to know them, and it goes a long way to sealing that relationship. Recently I went along to a meeting with a new client. It was potentially one of the biggest prospects I'd visited in my career. I still get nervous going to see a new customer but I'd done my homework and had a number of questions up my sleeve to try and break the ice. Now normally I set one hour aside for meetings of this nature but the meeting ran over by around another 60 minutes. We actually only spoke about business for around 30 minutes, the rest of the time we spoke about holiday destinations as we discovered we both had a passion for travel. Needless to say, the outcome of the meeting was as good as I could have hoped for, and not just that, because the customer liked me, dealing with them moving forward should hopefully be much easier now too. And lastly, pay compliments where at all possible. Show that you are being genuine and ask questions that tie in with your compliment. A couple of years back, my wife and I were attending a meeting with a number of University Professors in Nepal in relation to some charity work we were doing out there. We were struggling a little with the language barrier so it just made it a little more challenging. We'd been picked up from our guest house and as we sat in the back of the car travelling to our meeting venue, I commented on one of the professor's shirts. I said how nice it was and asked if it was from a local shop that I could perhaps visit before I left for home. His eyes lit up and he seemed ecstatic I'd even noticed. This was a genuine comment but in that split second, our relationship changed and it turned out he speaks more English than he initially let on. Ask the Right Questions If done correctly, this is a process you will start from initial contact with the customer and remain open until the relationship ceases to exist. I tend to break this into two sections but essentially what you are trying to do is build a customer profile. Colin Sinclair McDermott, aka The Online Print Coach offers his advice and tips on ways to make your customers feel important and valued Having been in the print industry since the mid-late 90s, Colin Sinclair McDermott entered the world of self-employment in 2004 and over the years that followed, experienced a number of highs and lows running his own print company, learning what does and doesn’t work. In 2022, he trained with The Business Coaching Academy to become a fully certified corporate coach with the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches. Through The Online Print Coach, industry members can access an online training platform, Print Mastermind and private 1-to-1 coaching with Sinclair McDermott. www.theonlineprintcoach.com INDUSTRY TIPS / THE ONLINE PRINT COACH Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely Dale Carnegie
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