How do you make friends with your customer's little inner voice?

You ended the week with the news that your customer has made the decision to move forward. You are delighted to hear the news and no doubt, you intend to spend at least some of the weekend celebrating – but what about your customer? There’s a good chance that as soon as they told you the news, their little inner voice kicked in with questions and concerns – which could put your sale at risk.

How do you make friends with their little inner voice and prevent it from wreaking havoc?

Well, it all hinges on you having done a good needs assessment. Understanding your customer’s needs is the most important step of the sale – it’s truly what separates you from being someone who is simply pushing a product to someone who is a sales professional. If you understand your customer’s needs, it puts you in a great position to be able to overcome objections and address concerns to close the sale in the first place. And double whammy – it also enables you to address secondary concerns that often arise post-close.

Customers start their buying journey thinking about all the great things that can be achieved with a purchase – how it will make them feel, what their friends and family may think and how it will help them accomplish something. This is the ‘dreaming’ stage of the buying process. As they move along the buying journey, the practicalities of the purchase start to get layered on – how much is it going to cost, what are the lead times and what are my delivery options. Sometimes, it’s hard for a customer to dig themselves out from under all those practical realities and remember why they wanted to make the purchase in the first place.

As a sales rep, if your customer starts to have second thoughts, your job is to replay what they told you earlier in the sales process and remind them how this purchase will align to their needs and what they want to accomplish. You can only do this effectively if you’ve taken the time to ask good questions and determine their needs.

What else could you be doing to minimize buyer’s remorse?

How about getting in front of it!

Right after your customer agrees to move forward, drop them a note, first to thank them - and while you are at it, take the opportunity to summarize what you talked about. List out what they told you and remind them how this purchase is going to help them meet their needs.

The buying process is not all that complicated – some customers just need a little bit more hand holding to stay the course. With a good understanding of their needs, you are in great shape to be able to support them right through to the end of their buying journey.