1.2. Collect Customer Details, Needs and Expectations

To understand your customers well, you need to be attentive to them whenever you are in contact with them. The potential rewards are great: you can increase customer loyalty and bring in new business through positive word-of-mouth recommendations.

There are three main ways to understand your customers better. One is to put yourself in their shoes and try and look at your business from their point of view. The second way is to collect and analyse data in order to shed light on their buying behaviour. The third way is simply to ask them what they think.

Sale of products and services

A sale is the act of selling a product or service in return for money or other compensation. Signalling completion of the prospective stage is the beginning of an engagement between the customer and vendor or the extension of that engagement.

The seller or salesperson – the provider of the goods or services – completes a sale in response to an acquisition an appropriation or a request. 

Selling is the art of matching product benefits with customer needs or desires. Sell your business offerings by communicating the value of your product or service to your potential customers. Lead the customer through the buying decision and facilitate a satisfying transaction.

• Know your product. Imagine every question a prospect might ask and arm yourself with answers, linking each product fact to a customer benefit.
• Explain your offering in a sentence. Condense everything you know into a brief explanation that can grab interest and cause the prospect to think, “Hmm, this will benefit me.”
• Know your prospect. Visit Web sites, read company brochures, talk to mutual associates, and do any research necessary to arrive armed with prospect knowledge.
• Know what message your prospect is ready to receive. Especially if yours is a new or unusual offering, you may need to help the prospect see the need before asking for the order.
• Set your sales presentation goal. Often, your aim is an incremental step — to prompt the prospect to request a proposal, to schedule a meeting with a higher-level decision maker, to arrange a demonstration, or to take some other step to move the process toward its final step.
• Dress for success. The general rule is to protect your own business image well while dressing at least as formally as those to whom you’ll be presenting.

Collect information to meet customer needs and expectations

The main reason for collecting information from customers is to improve the quality of the service you provide to them.  In addition to improving the product or service itself, information can help you to; develop new products and services, improve delivery or promotion, or improve other elements of how the organisation is run.   

Customer information can be used to help you develop new products and services, but this information sheet does not address other aspects of market research such as assessing new markets for your products and services.   

The act of carrying out customer research can have other benefits, depending on the customer. It can engage your customers in your activities, and as a result of increased contact and communication, improve your relationship with your customers 

By focusing on your customers’ needs and developing a culture of responsive customer service within the organisation, you can enhance customer loyalty and ensure that customers continue to come back. This ensures your survival as an organisation, whether your customers are paying themselves or a funder is meeting the cost of your service to them.   

In addition to using information to improve the quality of your products and services, customer information can help you report back to funders and evaluate the impact and outcomes of your activities.    

Lastly, information will help to monitor the health of the organisation. Information about customer numbers, turnover, and satisfaction act as good indicators for the organisation’s overall health.