Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. – Napoleon Hill
What does that mean to you?
For me it means to work with the adversity, what is your customer’s pain point or adversity that they are experiencing, to get to a desired outcome.
To know your customers pain point, you will need to hunt for it, at times you may feel like the problem or adversity is not very clear to you, which is a message for you to dig deeper, until you are clear and understand your customers pain point.
One useful way that I would like to share with you, which has worked for me; I ask my customers to rate an experience for me; this will help you understand where your customer is right now and where they would like to be.
I ask my customer, ‘If you were to rate your current experience or situation (this may include service or product) from a scale of zero to ten, how would you rate your current experience?’ Zero being the lowest and ten being the highest.
Once you have received a response, for example if it was a five, you would then ask your customer, ‘If your current experience is a five now, would it be okay for me to ask you why you selected a five please, just so I get a better understanding of your experience?’ You will find that your customer will be happy to share and tell you a lot more than expected.
The next stage is to ask your customer ‘What would be your ideal number for you to be completely happy?’ ‘Where would you like to have your current experience at from zero to ten?’ The response may be a nine. ‘What will it take for me to bring that experience from a five to a nine, to bridge the gap and get to your desired outcome?’
Going through this process will give you greater insight as to whether you can help your customer with your services or not. I found that sometimes you just don’t have a solution for your customer. However, if I know of someone else that can assist them, I will always make that recommendation, this also builds trust and earns you respect.
If you can rephrase what you understood from your customers pain point, this will show that you were listening and create a connection, it will also let you know if you are on track or not.
I like to paint a picture of what I understood from my customers adversity, I do it by walking them through a scenario, by tapping into all their senses by using visuals, feelings and language, to get a real sense of the pain point. Once there is a clear vision, you can then sell your remedy or medicine (solution) to your customers pain point or adversity.
If you still are not very clear, I use the Columbo approach by excusing myself as being a little slow, I do it in a humble way, and I ask ‘Could you please clarify this for me?’ or ‘Help me to understand?’
