When closing customers, one important skill to have is to be flexible. Or like water, you adapt to the behaviour, mindsets and goals of your customer.
Adapting To Mindset
The mindset of your customer shapes their perception of your gig. Each customer has their own psychology.
Going into detail, each customer has different expectations, mental states and way of looking at situations.
To close a sale we must let go of how we view something and always adopt the view of the potential customer.
For example: The perception of the customer that this particular product will be the next hot selling thing and wants you to design ads for it. You might disagree, but they might know something you do not.
The best action is not to argue with them but to see the reasons that make up their mindset.
When to communicate an issue with them
- Customer is really inexperienced in your field
- You have experienced dealing with a similar mistake
- Customer is about to make a disastrous decisions
Examples like requesting a whole legal document to be written in Comic Sans will be disastrous and it’s time for you to intervene. But always remember to intervene in the customer’s best interests.
Adapting To Goal
Some customers might have a different goal for your gig than what you have in mind.
Their application of your work might be completely different from what you are used to.
It is important to adapt to this.
For example: You usually build websites with ecommerce stores that have a family of related products. But a new client of yours requests for an website with his products, but none of them are for sale. The customer just wants to showcase their inventory.
The customer has a completely different goal for their website that what you usually do. Be open to switching processes to cater to another goal.
Adapting To Behaviour
The behaviour of the customer is probably the most important thing you can adapt to.
Some customers are very cold and terse. Replying your queries with one liners. While your personality might be chatty and bubbly, it’s best to match their behaviour, more specifically, their communication style. Do not make overly long small talk. This customer just wants to get to business. Match their tone.
The same goes for chatty and bubbly customers. Even if you are having a bad day, you have to match their energy else they might sense something is off.
Make your customers feel comfortable by adapting to their behaviour.
If you want to close more sales you have to be like a chameleon. Masterfully adapting to each customer so you can get close enough to snag them.
