Meeting customer needs
Featured in the Call Centres: Maximising Performance training manual
By Tony Lockwood
Category: Sales Skills
Credit price: 4 download credits (Single user)
There are three steps to follow in order to sell effectively to customer needs: identify the need – finding out what the customer wants; what information and from where? – knowing where to go for the answer; and the right response and follow-up – knowing what to do next. Once the customer’s needs have been identified (see ‘Sales and service – the psychology of a sale’ and ‘Fact-finding skills’), further skills are required to determine what products and services an organisation has to offer which will meet those needs. This training activity looks more closely at product and service knowledge. Using a series of interactive exercises, it enables the participants to understand more clearly the products offered by their organisation, recognise the features and, therefore, the benefits to the customer of using any specific product or service. In certain circumstances, however, it may not be appropriate for that member of the team to deal with the query themselves and they have to determine where to go to find someone who can. Their knowledge of the organisation as a whole, and the different departments’ responsibilities, is therefore important here. Finally, once the customer’s needs have been correctly identified and an appropriate product found and accepted by the customer, what happens next? It is simply not enough to ‘sell to a customer’s needs’, the member of staff must be able to follow through on that sale in the appropriate manner, and interactive exercises in this training activity offer guidance on how to do this.
Introduce the training activity by briefly summarising the importance of identifying customer needs and explaining that, once you have this information, it is essential to be able to go on to the next stage of actually recommending an appropriate product or service. To this end, the participants look at sources of information, and cover product/service knowledge specifically related to the products offered by their organisation, through a series of participative exercises. They go on to examine their personal belief in the company’s products and services and consider the benefits of being a customer of their organisation, giving them some positive reminders of why someone would want to be their customer. The next exercise is designed to guide the participants to make the appropriate response and follow-up to an accepted recommendation through the processes in place. Finally, the participants look at what a customer expects when purchasing from the company – their five key expectations.
Who is it for: This training activity is intended for use by trainers to enable participants recognise when a customer will commit to buying and provide them with techniques and skills to ensure that they meet the customer’s needs.
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 4 |
| Max Group Size: | 8 |
| Typical Duration: | 03:25:00 |
| No of Pages: | 23 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Additional resources: Different coloured Post-it Notes (optional).
Purpose: This training activity is intended for use by trainers with all members of call centre staff. It enables experienced participants to review their present performance and more recently appointed staff to understand what they can do to improve performance and profitability within the call centre.
Download the training activity, Meeting customer needs as featured in the Fenman training manual; Call Centres: Maximising Performance