Your focus as Sellers, Startups, as well as Doers, should always be seeing yourself through your customers’ eyes. Having a laser-focus on yourself, through your customers’ eyes, involves making certain they, in return, acknowledge the value of the outcomes you deliver. In creating mutual-recognition and appreciation, let’s develop your ability to see yourself through your customers’ eyes.
No matter what role you serve in your company, sales or technical, ask yourself: “How visible am I to the folks making the decision to purchase my products, platforms and services?”
Seeing yourself through your customers’ eyes, you may be the only face, voice or email persona with whom they develop a relationship. You become the Voice and Brand of Your Company. The role you serve in your company may make you an essential piece to their revenue-generation puzzle. Have you ever thought about yourself in that manner?
As the Voice of Your Company, seeing yourself through your customers’ eyes, your ability to communicate and collaborate with colleagues and customers becomes a huge differentiator. What’s in your collaboration toolkit that makes your customers see you, and value you, with “new eyes?”
Seeing yourself through your customers’ eyes, delivery of outcomes is huge. Regardless of whether you are a sales person or fulfill a support / doer role, delivering valuable outcomes involves more than delighting customers with your deliverables.
It’s more than differentiating your company’s competitive output.
With that type of focus, you can’t hide inside your cubicle, waiting for the next in-coming request or lead so you can “do” or “sell,” can you? When it’s you, seeing yourself through your customers’ eyes, your job functionality becomes an entirely different matter, doesn’t it?
Seeing yourself through your customers’ eyes leverages a professional development strategy for creating demand for YOU: how you articulate, translate, and transact business.
This month, call your best five customers, the ones you enjoy serving. Discuss an article you read, related to their industry. Discuss a trigger event, such as a merger or acquisition, a change in regulations, or a new technology. If you don’t regularly access this type of information, develop the daily habit of keeping up with business and financial news. Gain a business perspective outside of your own professional discipline and comfort level.
Take notes on your five customer conversations. You may find that your customers are relieved you are not selling “at” them or asking for another RFP. In articulating your observations to each other, you may discover information about your customer’s company leading to business development opportunities. In translating your technology to them, your discussion may bring relevant insight to their business table.
Take some time to develop an insightful way of seeing yourself through your customers’ eyes.
Not every conversation is a selling conversation. However, adding collaboration tools and communication skills to your professional arsenal can become the fulcrum for business development, revenue generation, and differentiation. Your customers may “see” you in a completely different light.
Babette N. Ten Haken, Founder & President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers®, LLC, brings entrepreneurial mojo and business- and revenue-producing collaboration and communication tools to small and mid-sized businesses and startups. She was named one of the Top 50 Sales & Marketing Influencers 2013. Her book, Do YOU Mean Business? focuses on technical / non-technical collaboration strategies and tools. This article first appeared, in part, in the August 2013 edition of Top Sales World magazine.
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