Getting into your customer’s mind is a crucial skill you need to learn — and not only by you. Your whole company must be capable of doing it — your customer support representatives, sales people, marketing staff, and the list goes on.
Most importantly, it should primarily be in your chief financial officer’s skill set. He is the one who manages your company’s financial crises and concerns.
Together with you, he spearheads the business towards your company’s ultimate goal and targets. And he can only keep up with you if he is capable of understanding you, your company, your employees, and ultimately, your customers. That’s why it’s important that before making any decisions to contract CFO services, you should make sure that the candidate you are eyeing is able to delve into your target market’s purchasing behavior and psyche.
The best example of a CEO who can read customers’ minds was the one and only Steve Jobs. Notice that in every keynote presentation he hosted, he would generously pepper his speech with terms such as “cool,” “wow,” and “amazing.”
Why? Simple. Because he only speaks about what his customers want to hear. Why do those people buy his products? Because he only provides the gadgets and features people want. Sometimes, he thinks ahead of them. And that makes him capable of starting trends.
How can he do that? How can you read customers minds? How can you take advantage of that skill? Here are some tips:
- First of all, it is not done through magic or psychic powers. Reading customers’ minds is done by using rock-hard data about your customers. Knowing the small details like where people buy their products, how much time they are willing to wait, and how satisfied they are with every purchase they make will allow you to be privy on what’s going on with their minds. Surveys work on this part.
- The next step is to talk or communicate with them. Get the information you need straight out of their mouths — even if they live in Toronto or Zimbabwe, it is still worth it to talk to them personally. Of course, this will need some social skills. To squeeze out the information from them, you need to be a good listener, capable of speaking their “language,” and establish rapport.
- It is unavoidable that you cannot have the time to do the previous tip if you have a large company. That is where your customer reps come in. You have two options to choose to get the information you want. It is either that you get your customer reps to provide the experience and knowledge they have gathered while talking to the customers. Or you can make them take the initiative and talk to the customers to get the information you want.
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