An important aspect of providing an effective customer/consumer experience is in the development of the sales strategy/plan. This comes from developing an in-depth knowledge of who your customer is. Your customer may be the same or entirely different than the consumer of your product or service. By definition, the consumer is the end user of your product. The customer is the entity who initially buys your product or service. To illustrate this point consider your product to be a hairbrush. If Target buys your hairbrush to sell at its stores, then they are your customer. When Sally buys your hairbrush at a Target, she is your consumer. If Sally would buy the hairbrush from you on your website, she would be both your customer and your consumer. The key difference you must remember to be effective in business is – you market to your consumers but you sell to your customers! A separate plan/strategy must be developed to both of these groups even if they are the same person. Many businesses fail to establish both an effective consumer based marketing plan and a great sales customer focused selling strategy. It is a one two punch combination you should NEVER be without.
Just as in developing an understanding of your consumer, you must develop a through knowledge of your customer. This knowledge must be based on asking:
Who is your customer?
What are their buying patterns?
Why should they buy from you?
How are you going to do business with them?
What do you offer that your competitors do not?
What is your value proposition?
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