What Is So Hard About Listening to Customers?

Are you so busy talking about how important the customers are to your business that you don't listen to them? If you are an accountant, management consultant, trainer, lawyer, or any of millions of other small business partners who say they are in the professional services business, you are way behind the rest of the world, from a marketing perspective, according to Michael Schultz, publisher of RainToday.com

Hold on, you say?  Are you saying you know other businesses, other than professional services, that lose money and sleep just because they fail to work on their listening skills every day?  That may be true, but there's a wowser of a report over on the RainToday.com website called  How Clients Buy: The Benchmark Report on Professional Services Marketing and Selling from the Client Perspective.

The report comes from surveys with nearly 200 purchasers of professional services at firms ranging in size from less than $1 million in annual revenue to more than $1 billion.  The analysis shows that while many buyers are planning to increase their professional services spending soon, the service providers they are using now have done little to differentiate themselves and satisfy the customers.  Why do you think many professional services are unwilling or unable to move past their messages about great customer relationships into actual practice?  Schultz says he talked to 20 to 25 accountants at a conference and asked each what differentiates them from other CPA firms.  Each one said the same thing!  They said "The people that we have differentiates us."

For a price that is less than a morning of hours -- billable or wasted, you can buy and download this report at RainToday.com. That might be a great idea if you have had these questions in your head or on your back for some time:

• How open are buyers to switching to a new provider in your service area?
• How important are brand...referrals...industry expertise...and other factors in the decision making process?
• Do buyers attend seminars, conferences, and webinars (and, if so, how do they find out about these events)?
• Do purchasers of professional services visit service provider websites? How influential are those websites in the purchasing process?
• How important are your fees in the services purchasing process?

While checking out the site, you might try the free newsletter.  There's a lot a great information that doesn't cost a nickle, as well, on the RainToday site.

Tell us, in the comment area of this blog, what pops into your head when you see this piece of news: 74% of Professional Services Purchasers Say They Would Be Much More Likely to Consider Hiring a Service Provider if They Listened Better.

Have you noticed that nowhere in this discussion about customers are we bringing technology into the conversation? The only "cool tool" of marketing we are emphasizing here are your ears.  Both of them--without any iPod plugs or Bluetooth earpieces in them.  Just ears and a brain, totally focused the reality that all that you want in life is going to come from one place--customers and other valued relationships.

These powerful communication tools costs nothing extra.  They came home with you from the delivery room.  You've had them the whole time. So why don't we use them more?  Why are we making this thing called business, along with marketing, so difficult?

A lifetime of moving your mouth is not making you the money possible through listening, which builds trusts and that builds relationships.

If you are serious about immediately or dramatically improving your professional services business, stick with books and advice that come from David Maister.  He's simply the best.  And he's devoted his life to one thing.  Your success.   We've met and worked with David, as have many business leaders around the world. We adore the clear and bold statement in the middle of his homepage:  Everything we want in life (riches, respect, fame, love, the chance to work on exciting things, cooperative colleagues, supportive staff) has to be given to us by other people.   Accordingly, all our questions (business and personal) come down to this one:  How do we get another human being (client, colleague, subordinate, romantic partner) to give us what we want.  My work is dedicated to answering that question.  -- David Maister

Comments

[Abhijit Sukul]

I just went through this website of a book called www.theicecreammaker.com
I feel this book is surely going to add some new dimension to listening to customer. The Ice Cream Maker has been written by world-renowned quality expert Mr. Subir Chowdhury. The main character of the book, Pete is a manager of an ice cream factory and he's having a tough time there with low sales and other problems. With the help of a mentor, how he fights back, that has been depicted in the book. A new concept called LEO-- Listen, Enrich, Optimize has been introduced here. This book shows how to win back your customers by listening to them. It is going to be released worldwide on 4th October 2005.