Where are you in this process? If you are not at the top of your game yet then don’t panic. Some focused activity and attention will enable you provide your customers what they really want. But do you know what that is?

Verry often when undertaking a sales consulting project the company is not quite sure what their customers want. When we discuss this and the company sees the importance of this knowledge for their business they immediately think of a brainstorming session, a strategy review and a trends analysis. Whilst these are all excellent ideas there is something else you should be doing first.

Ask your customers and prospective customers!

We very often spend hours trying to figure out what our customers want yet overlook the most obvious solution which is to just ask them. Below are some of the best questions you can use on a regular basis:

• What characteristics do you look for in a successful supplier relationship?

• What am I or my company not doing that we could be doing to serve you better?

• What is the one thing we would have to do to lose your business?

• What are the three most important criteria you look for when investing in our types of products and services?

• Wo are your man customers and what are you trying to accomplish with them?

• Whats your biggest turnoff when dealing with salespeople?

• If you were running our company, what would you do differently?

• What could we do to make life easier for you?

• What have other suppliers done that really impressed you in the sales process?

This is a fantastic list of questions to get you started which were largely influenced by barry Faber and mostly blatantly borrowed!

Make this your task for the next few months. Engage with your customers and find out what they want. Why guess?