How can you become a source for information? This is where creating and curating copious amounts of useful information on how your products and services solve real business problems comes into play.
Creating is quite literally the act of having marketing and leadership write, record video and use graphical data to help your customer better understand your solutions. Curating means finding valuable sources and pointing your customers toward it via email, social media or other correspondence.
Inspiration: This is the part where suppliers can really set themselves apart. How do you inspire action from your current and potential customers?
It’s not just about getting them to buy, but about moving them forward in the process and creating a vision around the value your solutions provide. If the customer is truly informed (they are) and they think they know what they want (they do), how do you take that and help guide them toward maximizing the data (information) that they have consumed?
Related: 5 Tips for Creating Unparalleled Customer Experiences
Think about this from a practical perspective. People now love to do their own research. They think they know exactly what they want. As a solution provider, it is on you to ask questions, listen, check the facts and ultimately to make sure what they think they know is valid. Then it’s on you to ensure that they get what they really want, not just what they think they want.
In the end, your business exists because you bring value. The moment you stop adding value you will be commoditized, or worse yet, you will cease to exist. Focus on being the source of information and inspiration for your customers (old and new). This isn’t just what they want, but it is what they need from their suppliers.
Is your business customer centric? How do you inform and inspire your customers to assure successful outcomes?
Converting Knowledge
Did you know that the average organization allows its employees to dedicate less than 10 percent of their time to foster ideas of innovation? That means today’s knowledge worker isn’t being put to use to drive innovation, but rather to fulfill and support the business that is already there.
The word “innovation” may immediately make you think of technologists, developers and engineers; however, the number above is all encompassing and includes areas of innovation like business process improvement, customer service improvement and employee satisfaction innovation. Innovation while often only thought of as emerging technology is really the process of making anything better. This includes making better businesses.
Related: Serious Suggestion: Integrators Should Consider Offering ‘Free’ Trials
So what makes the perfect vendor? Put another, less subjective way, what company in their right mind would kick a vendor to the curb that is helping them improve their business?
With so little time being spent on innovation, there is an opportunity for your company to truly differentiate by helping your clients innovate. Doing this requires a few things, but nothing that we can’t do if we paid mind to it. These focuses would be on customer’s needs, emerging trends, adoption and application and, of course, continuous improvement.
Customer Needs: We discussed the importance of anticipating what your customers need. This comes down to selling the invisible or shedding light on something that may not be obvious to your clients at this time.
Remember the statistic about 70 percent of the sales process being complete prior to the customer engaging a vendor? Getting out in front of your customer needs allows you to circumvent the late entry into the process. By helping customers to gain clarity in where their business needs are mo ing you have put yourself at the forefront of the sale and brought yourself into the early phases of the sale.
