Understanding Customers

Making the sale and delivering

great customer service
 The customer relationship

• Meeting
• Engagement
• Pre-nuptial agreement
• Marriage
• Divorce
 Meeting

• Pre-qualification
• Approaches
• Trust
• Knowledge
• The sales techniques
 Engagement

• Clarity and fairness

• Get out issues on the table
• One opportunity to manage
expectations
• Hairdresser syndrome
 Pre-nuptial agreement

• A good relationship means that you

never have to look at the contract
again
• Always keep the moral high-ground
• Don’t be greedy
• Don’t be naive
 Marriage
• Leading with values
‘Words contradicted by behaviour are worse than
insufficient’
Leonard L Berry- ‘Discovering the Soul of Service’
• If I asked everyone in this room how highly you
would rate your customers, every one of you
here would say that your customers are very
important indeed.
• So why don’t we do what we say?
 The emotional bank account
‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ Stephen R Covey

•Every relationship is a personal one

•There are deposits and withdrawals-
•Self-fulfilling prophecies
•We should not expect people to change because we
want them to. The problem is not out there it is in here.
•The paradigm shift.
 Seven deadly sins
• ‘we know everything; they know nothing’
• ‘we have to do what they want- even if it is wrong;
misguided; illegal’
• ‘No news is good news’ or ‘I am waiting for them to get
back to me….’
• ‘We are really too busy to do this at the moment
• ‘Sorry I am late- I was working with another client’
• ‘They will obviously try to get their pound of flesh so let’s
get in first’
• My God- who cut your hair last time-did they use a knife
and fork?’…..
 Marriage Guidance

‘Your most unhappy customers are

your greatest source of learning’

-Bill Gates
 Conflict
• Invoking the pre-nup
• You have probably failed
• The alternatives to war and a messy
divorce
• You cannot be the victor- just get used to
that concept
• Don’t ignore the conflict
 Difficult People; difficult situations
• The ranter; the moral blackmailer; the
backstabber
• What is the motivation? Nobody is born
that way? How can we change the
relationship?
• Transactional analysis:
– critical parent hooks rebellious child or
adaptive child
– Break the pattern- become an adult
 Motivation
• ‘The significant problems we face cannot be solved
at the same level of thinking we were at when we
created them’.
- Albert Einstein
• Like matter, energy- cannot be created;
energy transforms matter and gets passed
on.
• This is also true of all relationships
• Treat your employees exactly as you want
them to treat your customers.
 Divorce
• You give away your clients- your
competitors don’t take them
• Always behave professionally

• If you choose to walk away- always keep

the moral high ground
• Lessons learned.
 A happy marriage

• Trust
• Honesty
• Openness
• Respect
• Mutual benefit extends outside the
immediate relationship
Understanding Customers