Talking to your customers is a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of how this crazy economy is impacting their business, their customers, and the implications of all of this on how they work with you.
By reaching out to proactively talk to your customers, you can learn a lot about the pressures they are dealing with which may include:
– their customers are pushing to get more for less
– cutting expenses
– attempts from your competitors to get their business
– and more!
If you show an interest in understanding their pressures/challenges, you could gain their undying loyalty which is ultra-important in times like these.
Talking to your customers can be as simple as just picking up the phone. Once you are clear that your intent isn’t to sell them anything, but to just talk and understand where they are coming from and what has changed for them, your clients will be grateful for the opportunity to vent.
Who should talk to your customers? The higher level the person making the call, the better—nothing impresses a customer more, or makes them feel more important, than a call from a senior exec. Obviously senior execs can’t connect with all of your customers, but you could develop a strategy for assigning some of your key/highest stakes customers to each of them…and coordinate a plan for salespeople and/or support staff to reach out to others.
It’s quite simple…and something that can have a very high return on the investment of time… a simple phone call can differentiate you in a huge way from your competitors…and that’s a good thing for ANY business!