Four tips to gain new customers

Here we discuss four ways to gain business from potential clients.

All businesses need a steady flow of new customers to grow and even survive. So here are four top tips to convert potential customers into paying customers.

1. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes

For your first meeting, it should not be about what you want to sell. It should be customer centred – finding out their problem to see if you can solve it.

Put yourself in their shoes. What are they thinking? What do they want? Are they unsure if they can afford your product/service? Thinking about their priorities and pressures will allow you to understand how you can alleviate these problems. If you write these thoughts down and focus on them in the meeting, it might just turn out to be a very productive encounter.

2. Start with questions

Asking questions from the get-go will make your clients feel more involved in the meeting. It also gives you an indication on what the customers might want or need, and what they currently think of your product/service. You can then adapt your pitch to suit their needs, emphasising your product or service’s features to solve their problems.

3. Listen to the customer

If you are product of your product/service, which you most likely are, all you want to do is rant and rave about how good it is. Although the customer might respond well to this, generally they want to be listened to.

When they are speaking try to nod, take notes and ask follow-up questions to let them know you care about what they are saying.

4. Use stories to captivate your audience

Try to avoid basing your whole sales pitch on statistics. Even though you think your customers might want to know the percentage of people who have health insurance or the number of people that are receiving relationship counselling, they probably don’t. These stats don’t apply to them.

Try talking about previous customers that you have helped that were in a similar position to the one you are talking to. Then focus on how your product/service helped them overcome the problem.

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