“Think about the needs of the customer.” 

So how do you get a customer to value you and your company regardless of what you are selling. Here are some techniques:

• Make sure the Customer Knows You Won’t Take Too Much Time. Use time to put the customer at ease. It’s an effective tactic for building customer engagement given how busy people are and the risk they perceive when you threaten to take too much of their time. This is especially true when people feel like a company or another person is trying to market or sell something to them.
  • Marketing. For marketing, this means making ads, content, and other communication tools easy to consume. Recent research into the types of content and media that customers like to consume supports this point. It shows that people are attracted to content that is easy to consume more than they value the substance of the content itself.
  • Sales. For sales, this technique can be used to put the customer at ease during phone calls and in-person meetings. At the start of a meeting or conversation, sales people should articulate how long the meeting will last, an objective for the meeting, and a clear agenda that shows the customer that you will stay within the time limit.
• Slow Down The Rate at Which You Present Information. Speaking slowly and pausing to allow customers to catch up to what you’re saying is certainly important, but there are other forms of communication, such as the amount of information we include on a presentation slide, where this technique can pay dividends as well. This tip can help sales and marketing build engagement with customers.
  • Marketing. For marketing, communicating slowly also involves presenting information in a way that highlights the key points you want the customer to retain. Think of great ad or landing page copy. Limiting the amount of copy and structuring the presentation of that content so that it’s easy to digest is one of the most important things you can do.
  • Sales. For sales, it’s important to remember that buyers are unlikely to remember more than three things from any conversation you have with them.
• Put The Customer’s Wants, Needs and Perceptions Ahead of Your Own. In this day and age, you would think that every sales and marketing professional would understand how important it is to suspend their ego and make the customer the priority. In practice, very few people do this, but it’s one of the most important things we can do to engage the customer. Suspending your ego is nothing more complex than putting other individuals’ wants, needs, and perceptions of reality ahead of your own. This technique can make specific sales and marketing tactics more effective. For example, sales people should ask the customer to tell their “story” first. It not only makes the customer feel important and valued; it allows you to tailor what you communicate to the customer later on.