Today’s Customer (And Yesterday’s)

One thing I hear a lot from sales professionals: “the customer is really difficult these days.” That might be true, but I for one am not convinced that today’s buying behavior is different than normal. I’ll grant that customers do not come through the door displaying urgency, but when would that buying behavior ever have been considered to be “normal” ?

I’ll tell you when that was normal – 2005, that’s when. I believe this is a discussion in contrast. 2005 showed us completely unnatural buyer behavior, as people urgent to buy asked permission to do so. Please understand – there is nothing “normal” about such behavior from a buyer! A normal approach would be for a prospect to be reserved, standoffish, nervous, and “hard-to-get”. That’s normal!

We need to get back to a sense of reality here, my friends. The customers owe us nothing when they walk through the door. They are not supposed to be urgent. Rather, it is your job to get them to that point.

Change the way you see people…and you’ll change their world.