Getting to know your customers is very important, not only because it establishes a relationship with the customer and it may ensure that they will continue to buy your products. For small businesses especially, creating a reason people to come in your store for something other than just getting products, it is something that rarely happens today. Now here are some things to talk to your customer about:
- Talk to them about them, and just start a connection with them. This will make sure you come off as someone who is looking for something more than just another sale. This will make them feel comfortable to talk to you and want to talk to you. Repetition is a key here, make sure they know you are there and if they need anything to personally come and get you. If you continuously talk to this one customer about some of their interests they will want to talk to you more.
- Once a baseline relationship with the customer is established start to ask what it is that they are trying to buy. This is where you find what their purchasing patterns are and you can even suggest different or new products to them. This will help you either sell more products or test products with customers that are going to be the most forgiving if the product isn’t what they hoped it would be.
- Find out why they buy the products they buy, this will allow you to gauge what products you can offer to them or even bringing new products to your business. Once you do this with enough customers you can offer different products to that group of customers that you got to know.
- Notice when they buy as well, like what days or time of the day that you see or hear from them. If you notice that they are looking to buy at certain times or days you can use that to your advantage to try and sell them more products.
- Some people prefer to online shop rather than go to a store in person or the other way around. Knowing this you can maybe offer them a coupon for a certain way of buying. That will make them want to use the coupon and spend money at your business.
- What makes them feel good about buying from you or your products? You can make their experience better knowing what makes them happy about you or your products.
- What do they expect from you and your services? Ask what they expect to experience when they visit your business, it could be good such as a greeting from someone. If what they expect to experience is a negative thing try and change that so they feel better about coming to your business instead of a competitor.
- What do they think about your competitors? What makes them pick your business rather than your competitors, if they think that your products are better than that’s great, there shouldn’t be anything to change. If they think your competitors do one or two things better, research what it is and try and implement that in your business.
Making a connection with customers is very important; not only to receive business, but that one customer could end up helping your business in ways you never thought of before. Customers control how your business makes its money, make sure the customers have a good experience and get what they want when they want. A long connection with a customer could be the change your business hasn’t been looking for but found anyway.