Ask the right questions
So you’ve made it a priority for your employees to interact with customers and understand their needs. Now you have to actually execute.
“Superficial attempts to gain information get superficial responses,” Nies says. “Human beings are conservative. By that I mean we want to try to do the least amount necessary to get a result. That’s good if it produces a result, but it seldom works.”
Simply, you can’t skimp on your communication with customers and the amount of feedback you acquire. You need to have direct, frequent and continuous conversations that will allow you to properly identify the customers’ needs and then provide solutions to meet those needs.
“Our emphasis is on inquiry, questioning, listening and curiosity and then trying to come up with innovative and progressive responses to what they want,” Nies says. “Rather than sitting around our own offices trying to dream up better ways to sell them what we’ve got or what we want to build or produce.
“You can’t fall in love with your own opinions. You have to confirm those. You have to interact directly with the customers and prospects and ask them. Listen to what they have to say in a very empathetic way.”
Nies and his employees use three essential questions when it comes to understanding customers and their needs: What do you want? Why do you want it? How can we help you get it? The “you” is stressed in each of those questions.
“The key point here is the emphasis has to move away from the provider and promoting himself (and move) to the customer and what they want, why do they want it and how do they want you to satisfy their needs,” he says. “That is a major quantum shift in the orientation of modern business. Modern business, up until these times, has been able to pretty much sell everything it can produce, because the world economy has been growing over the last 50 years, since the second World War.”
As the CEO, you need to lead by example. Spend time with your customers and ask the important questions. Nies does exactly that, either meeting with the CEO or the highest member in the company to gain a better understanding of the broader goals of the customer’s business.
“If I were meeting with a senior executive, I would personally not meet with him and tell him what he should be doing,” Nies says. “Sit down with him and say, ‘What are your plans to improve the competitive position of your business? Are you satisfied with your current rates of revenue growth? Are you satisfied with your current market share and its changes positive or negative? If you’re satisfied and believe this is working, what can we help you do to do more of it? If you’re not satisfied, what would you like someone like us or some other provider to do to help you reverse your situation?’
“My discussions with them would be almost totally inquiry-oriented. They know their business very, very well. They’re experts; they’re sophisticated thinkers. For me to be a provider to them or a helper, I need to know what they want and how do they want me to help them.”
Asking the right questions is an essential first step in being able to serve a customer. Without a total grasp on where his or her company is headed and what he or she is looking for in a product or service, you won’t be able to properly analyze how your company can meet that customer’s needs.
Nies’ method of understanding the customer is partially proven in the results the company sees on quarterly customer service surveys. Routinely, between 97 and 98 percent of those who have used Cincom’s customer service report they would recommend others to buy the company’s products.
“The key idea here is that one cannot serve customers that one cannot create,” he says. “The entrepreneur has to understand what those customers want and why they want it so they can satisfy them and provide answers for their wants and needs. If they can’t do that, then they have no reason for being in business.”
How to reach: Cincom Systems Inc., (800) 224-6266 or www.cincom.com
