Why do we fail in Customer Centricity?

There are many reasons why we may fail in customer centricity. One reason may be that we do not have a clear understanding of what our customers want or need from us.

Mads Winther

Another reason may be that we are not able to effectively communicate with our customers and understand their needs.

Additionally, we may also fail in customer centricity if we do not provide the right products or services to our customers or if we do not meet their expectations.

Finally, we may also fail in customer centricity if we do not have a strong customer service team that is able to effectively address customer concerns.

By understanding these reasons for failure, we can take steps to improve our customer centricity and increase our chances for success.

New sales approaches are being launched and marketed every year. Going from disruptive selling, over challenger sales, to tiebreaker selling, and regularly we also modernize the father of selling approaches, SPIN-selling. It is very difficult to keep track of all these evolutions.

But the question is: are we really trying to catch up with an evolution, or do we complicate things more than we should?

We are living in an era where sales practitioners are very interested in learning about new sales approaches, and this interest strongly relates to the ineffectiveness of the current approach. So, the common notion is that a new sales approach might be the solution to making selling easier.

Although these new sales approaches are mostly based on a very keen idea, it appears that these sales approaches want to completely overrule the current approach.

In fact, the current sales approach is usually portrayed as old-fashioned to use, and the presented new approach is the only good one.  This is often done by showing that the traditional approach only focuses on one thing, while the new approach has a broader focus.

However, the idea of customer centricity, which is the base for a lot of these new approaches, already exists for a very long time. So, what went wrong?

The reason that we tend to fail in customer centricity, is that we lose focus on the customer. It’s not that customer centricity is a new or a bad concept, it is just that we tend to forget about the customer when we try to implement it.

We either get too caught up in trying to sell them something they don’t want or need, or we try to offer them too many things at once and overwhelm them.

Additionally, we might also not provide the right level of customer service, or we may forget to follow up with them after the sale.

All of these factors can lead to a failure in customer centricity, and ultimately, a failure in sales.

In order to be successful in customer centricity, we need to keep the customer at the center of everything we do. We need to clearly understand their needs and wants, and then provide them with the products or services that they are looking for.

We also need to ensure that we have a strong customer service team in place to address any concerns that they may have.

By keeping the customer at the center of our business, we can increase our chances for success and avoid failure.

This one-size fits all customers’ approach is the reason why many sales approaches are not as effective as we had hoped.

Most sales approaches are not as effective as we think

Sales organizations have been working very hard to customize their offering to match the level of customer needs. When it comes to our sales pitch, salespeople adapt their presentation and social style to the person they are meeting, but in most cases, they use the same sales approach.

This one-size fits all customers’ approach is the reason why many sales approaches are not as effective as we had hoped.

At the same time, sales companies embrace the importance of understanding customers, and put them in the center of their organization. Customer- centricity is more important than ever before.

So, would it be an odd question to ask, “what sales approach would the customer like us to have?”

Is it fair to assume that the customer is always advanced in his purchasing approach; and does this customer think that our company is a strategic supplier to them, or not?

What if we would ask the customers what they think of our sales approach?

What if we would involve them in the design of our sales process?

We would probably get some very interesting answers, and learn a lot from their input.

Unfortunately, this is not happening as much as it should. And the reason for this is that we believe that we know what is best for the customer. We think that we are the experts, and that the customer should trust our judgment.

But what if we are wrong? What if the customer knows better than us?

It is time that we start involving the customers in the design of our sales processes. Only then can we hope to achieve true customer centricity.

Only then will we be able to create sales processes that are truly customer-centric.

Conclusion

We tend to fail in customer centricity because we lose focus on the customer. We either get too caught up in trying to sell them something they don’t want or need, or we try to offer them too many things at once and overwhelm them.

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