3 Surprising Ways to Impress Your Customers

Impressing customers isn’t actually that hard to do – if you are consciously intentional about doing so. Unfortunately, too many salespeople put customer service on cruise-control – and the customer can tell!

That leaves a gaping customer-service void, just waiting to be filled by sales professionals who make it their goal to impress every customer, every time.

If that’s you, here are three simple but surprising ways to impress your customers right now.

# 1  The Reflex Response

You have been thinking about buying a specific product for a while and you finally find the time and the money to make it happen. You walk into the sales center and start heading for your product.

Suddenly, a salesperson comes out of nowhere and asks, “Can I help you find something?”

Stop.

What is your reflex response? I bet I know. Is it, “I’m just looking”?

Odds are that’s what you would say. It’s what most of us would say.

The question is why?

The answer? We’ve been trained to do so. It’s what I call a reflex response.

When Daniel Pink wrote his recent book To Sell Is Human, he surveyed over 7,000 non-sales people with a word association exercise.

He asked them to give the first word that came to mind when he said “salesperson.” The number one answer… “Pushy.”

For years, salespeople have manipulated customers into departing with their hard-earned cash using fear, intimidation, and tactics that even Frank Underwood (Netflix/“House of Cards”) would hesitate to use.

So what do we do? How do we overcome this deep-seated reflex response?

Commit yourself to develop and maintain an attitude that serves your customers. Concern yourself with them, get to know them, try to connect relationally with them, find out about their needs and wants, and guide them toward the solution that’s best for them.

Then tackle it one customer at a time! Eventually you’ll have a dossier of very impressed (and very satisfied) customers.

#2  The Pattern Interrupt

Years ago I was selling new homes in Phoenix. Like most sales environments it wasn’t uncommon for customers to walk in and be a bit apprehensive to engage with a salesperson.

For some reason though, I was getting way more resistance than usual. In other words, I was getting a stronger reflex response.

I asked my sales partner, Steven, if he was having the same problem. He told me the way I was greeting customers was almost identical to our competitor across the street. Guys who would make Alec Baldwin look like an amateur.

Steven gave me some great advice. He told me to interrupt the customers’ pattern. When I asked how, he said, “Be different.”

Sounds simple, but it worked.

I made sure that I greeted customers differently. I asked different types of questions. Where other salespeople zigged, I zagged. I did anything and everything I could do to break the customers’ pattern.

If you want to impress your customer, you need to break the customer’s experience pattern.

#3  Be Human

Impressing customers isn’t actually all that hard. Once you recognize their reflex response and you’ve broken their pattern of thinking that you’re like all other sales people, here is all you need to do…

Be a human being.

I know. Earth shattering. But this simple approach is quite powerful considering most of your competitors are NOT acting like human beings. They sound like a bunch of scripted sales robots that don’t care enough to connect with their customers.

Show your customers that you genuinely care and that will impress the heck out of them.

“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all that ever have.” Margaret Mead

So there you go… three simple ways to impress your customers and perhaps even change their world.