What Does Your Customer Care About?

Pop Quiz time……

Put everything away, pull out a pen/sheet of paper, open a blank document on your computer, or open the notes app on your phone.

Answer this question, you have 90 seconds:

What does your customer care about? What are the top 3 things that matter to them?

(For extra credit points, write down why)

Tick…….Tick…..Tick…..

Time’s up, put down your pens, fingers off the keyboard.

Look at what you’ve written down.

If you have been honest, you will probably observe that none of the things they care about includes you, what you sell, or your company. Even if they have responded to an outreach and are talking to you!

Humor me for a moment, let me add one more question to your quiz. You have 90 seconds:

What do you care about? What are the top 3 things that matter to you?

(For extra credit points, write down why)

Tick….Tick…..Tick…..

Time’s up, pens down!

That was a lot easier! Probably the answers had something to do with: Hitting your goals, making your bonus/comp, keeping your job, getting a promotion, keeping your manager off your back, what you are doing this weekend.

Probably no one answered something to the effect of “Helping my customers succeed.”

And this is the problem we and our customers face!

As long as what we, each, care about are aligned, we won’t make progress in attracting interest and moving forward.

This is so obvious. It is not new. And it is so simple. But most of the time, we simply can’t answer the basic question: What does my customer care about/why? Or even extending that: What does the person I’m engaging care about/why? (Managers pay attention to this to improve your coaching.)

We don’t train our people on asking this question and probing the customer responses. We train them in our products and why they might want to care about our products. We train our people in how to sell, but not in how to understand what our customers care about and why it’s important.

It is human nature to focus on ourselves and what we care about. There is nothing wrong with that.

But usually, what we care about requires us to interact and engage others. If we care about our jobs, comp, promotion, hitting our goals—we do that through engaging prospects and our customers. If we care about what we are doing this weekend, unless we are sitting alone and reading, we have to care about the people we want to do those things with.

When we are working with others, unless we understand what they care about and why, we find it difficult to connect the dots to what we care about. We can’t articulate how our interests are aligned, how we care about each other, and how, together, we can each achieve what we care about.

Sometimes, we purposefully or accidentally, manipulate others to care about what we care about. “Why are you interested in our products? What would cause you to choose us? What else are you considering?” We care about those things because they impact our success. But until we know what the customer cares about, we can’t help them connect the dots to respond to this. We can’t connect the dots to helping them understand how this helps them with what they care about.

It’s so simple.

Why don’t you try it?

“What are the top 3 things you care about? Why are they important? What do they mean to you? What scares you about your ability to get them? What scares you about not achieving them? Do you need help?”

Those are the only answers you need to connect the dots to what you care about.

And if you can’t figure out to connect the dots, to create relevant meaning, then you are wasting each other’s time.