Knowing What Your Customers are Interested In

Forrester reports that only 165,000 out of 1.8 million online sales leads are closed by the auto industry each month. This is a problem with lead processing technologies and follow up. Forrester suggests better performance could increase online vehicle sales by 40%. The auto business simply doesn't acknowledge that their customers are interested in shopping for vehicles online.

Wow, what an opportunity for increasing business. So many businesses struggle to generate sales leads and here is an industry trying to keep up with the flood of leads they are already receiving.

Most businesses are somewhere in the middle. They would like to increase sales leads and the number of sales resulting from those leads. Developing customer intuition is a way to do both. Knowing what products, services and experiences your prospects are interested in allows you to know which of your offerings they are interested in buying. Technology is a great aide in this process. Being able to read your customer's mind is a process of knowing what they are interested in. There are many ways to know what your customers are interested in. Listen to what they talk about, the questions they ask, the comments they make, track what articles they read and which information they download; all these things can be valuable windows into the mind of your customers and prospects.

Yesterday, Oprah and I both had jury duty. One of the attorneys who questioned the panel I was on asked each person where they got their news, which TV stations they watched, what newspapers they read etc. Clearly he was trying to gain some insight into each prospective juror's mindset by knowing where they get their information. Do you ask your clients and prospects what publications they read? Not just trying to know where to advertise but in a way that provides you some insight into what they are interested in and how they think.

Once you have some idea about what your customer is interested in you can better address their needs. Both with your own offerings and by recommending other offerings that may be of value to them. If you find out that your best customer reads a stack of travel magazines every month you may not know better how to sell her your widgets but you certainly have useful information when you want to reward her for her customer loyalty. Beyond that you might want to send her links to some good woman oriented travel sites like Adventure Divas or Let's Go Girl.