How To Energize Your Customers And Transform Your Business By Selling Value

So you have a ready-made product or idea and want to sell it. How do you get people to listen to what you are offering? There are so many people out there all trying to sell similar things. How do you set yourself apart from the rest of the selling tribe, make your point, and transform your business? Here are some basic tips that could help.

Listen. Just like any engagement between two people or groups, buying and selling involves a relationship. There are two parties, both playing the same field, and to be successfully transform your business, the first thing is to be a good listener. Take the example of Google. It has created a culture of listening by encouraging users to complete surveys, participate in forums, and discuss how useful a particular feature is to them. For example, when Gmail introduced Labs, it was a space for experimental features the Google team was playing with, and depending on users' responses and feedback, certain features from Labs were finally integrated into Gmail by their engineers. That, ultimately, is what all the reputed companies do. They listen to customers, and then they show in their actions that they are listening.

Offer. Offer what customers want. Instead of thrusting a ready-made product at them, take some time to find out what their needs are. You could do it through a telephonic conversation, or a face-to-face interaction, or even a detailed paper or electronic survey. Then offer to customize your product according to what they need. The key in any successful business is to be flexible, listen and adapt your offering to what customers want, which helps to energize them.

Create. No amount of listening helps, if you are not selling something of value. Your product or service should make a difference in customers' lives, in big or small ways. Instead of thinking of selling a product, focus on creating and selling value. This is what will set you apart from the competition. The value could be in terms of a new flavor, a promise to speed up an activity, a stickier glue, whatever. It should be something that makes a difference to their life.

The bottom line: It's a simple cycle: Listening = Adding value = Making customers happy = Energizing them into sharing their feedback = Incorporating it into creating better value products. These are the basics of how to energize your customers and transform your business by selling value.