When I discussed this matter with a sales friend, he said with a wry smile, business is getting harder and harder now, and old customers who have cooperated for many years have to bid for new projects. Every bid is like a beauty contest, and all suppliers try their best to show it.
Last month, he just bid for a software tender, with a bid amount of 654.38+100,000 yuan. As a result, he went to 29 companies to bid. In the end, he won the bid with the experience of his old supplier, but his profit was also tossed away by half. He said that in the past, the quality of service could not be guaranteed, so he had to wait and see "a new generation for the old".
But why should the two sides who have cooperated for many years test each other like this? Where is the trust between people?
In the end, how can we gain the deep trust of customers and become "irreplaceable" people in his mind?
With this question, I first searched the psychologist Hosmore's definition of trust:
The definition is good, but the description of "irrational choice behavior" makes the trust relationship more elusive.
Fortunately, at this time, I saw the book "Trusted Consultant: Being an irreplaceable person in the hearts of customers", which perfectly answered my doubts.
This book has sold millions of copies around the world, dominating the Amazon consulting category 17 years. All three authors have worked in service companies for many years, especially the main author, David Meister, who is an internationally recognized authority on the management of professional service organizations. His management thoughts on professional service companies are as famous as peter drucker's general management thoughts.
This book clearly puts forward a point: the key to the success of a career counselor lies not only in mastering the superb professional skills in his own field, but also in having the ability to cooperate with customers, winning trust and increasing confidence in cooperation through cooperation with customers.
The author hopes to dedicate this book to readers who are interested in becoming professional consultants, including consulting, accounting, law, engineering, public relations, headhunting, insurance brokers, investment banks and similar industries.
But I think we are all serving or being served by others in life, so this book can be said to be worth reading and learning.
Since the authors attach so much importance to the trust relationship, they have summed up a trust formula: T=(C+R+I)/S(T trust; C. credibility; R reliability; I have a sense of closeness; Self-directed and self-directed).
According to the four elements at the right end of this trust formula, we can use the following four tricks to gain the trust of customers and establish a more lasting and harmonious cooperative relationship.
Look at the credibility first. Both individuals and enterprises have to rely on majors to win, so credibility is closely related to majors.
The so-called professionalism, on the one hand, refers to whether there is enough evidence to prove our claimed professionalism, which is a rational side; On the other hand, it is also determined by the customer's actual experience of professionalism.
If you are selling to an enterprise, you usually need to show the relevant qualification certificate of the company, the social honor of the industry association, the typical customer, the testimonial letter of recommendation from the customer, etc. These third-party objective evidence can be used as rational evidence.
Friends of IBM proudly told me that as long as they have the opportunity to visit, they are confident to convince the top management of customers with relevant successful cases, so that customers can fully believe in their solution capabilities, because they can provide very professional evidence in terms of qualifications, cases, customers, industries and so on.
At the same time, the customer's perceptual experience is also very important. If customers doubt the information or materials you provide, or even worry about fraud, then you basically lose trust.
Once, a company wanted to cooperate with our company and sent out company introduction materials first. After reading it, I politely but firmly refused the request to meet. The reason is that I found:
1. The 400 service telephone number in the data is actually the 400 number of Suning Appliance;
2. In the customer list of successful cases, the enterprise search website (a credit bureau of an enterprise) has cancelled four companies;
In this way, I can directly judge that such a company has no credibility, and the cooperation and communication will stop immediately.
Recommended practices to improve credibility:
1. Think about how to present as many facts as possible, unless some facts will hurt others.
Don't lie, even if it's just an exaggeration. Never tell a lie, never.
3. Avoid saying things that may be considered insincere. For example, "We must arrange the best staff on this project." Really? Who is the worst employee? Who will decide who is the best? Aren't the best employees very busy? )
Reliability refers to whether customers think they can rely on you and believe that you will always work for them.
If we cooperate with customers for many times and customers get a positive cooperation experience every time, then customers will definitely think that you are a very "reliable" supplier.
Reliability subdivision also has two dimensions:
The first dimension is to be "reliable".
There was an online hot article in the previous paragraph, which described the characteristics of "reliability" in three sentences: everything has an explanation, everything has a landing, everything has an echo, and it really tells the essence.
We take the express delivery industry as an example. I think most people will think that SF Express is very reliable and can provide quality and quantity services on time. For other courier companies, it may not be very reassuring. Why?
Because SF's characteristic is "fast", there is a detailed description in the express tracking information: when and where to leave, where, when to expect to arrive, etc. And the current position is also shown with a visual map.
Moreover, SF "does what it says" and the time estimate is very accurate. Even if there is a time deviation in manual delivery, it is generally within half a day, which is acceptable to most recipients.
In contrast, the service gap of other courier companies is very large.
I once chose a courier company to deliver the goods from the buyer to Guangzhou transfer station, and it only took 1 day. But after staying for 1.5 days, it was delivered to the delivery point near my home, and the delivery point waited for 1.5 days. You can imagine how anxious I am when I look at the tracking status. I can only nag: this company is too unreliable! I haven't used this courier company since.
The same is true for individuals. When we finish something that others say, we should never think that we will have an explanation when we finish it, as long as we have the final result. The progress in the process is synchronized with others according to the nodes, and whether it is completed or not, it is timely fed back to the relevant personnel. If there is any abnormality, timely follow-up or early warning will give people a sense of trust. This is called "everything occupies something, everything has a position, and everything echoes."
The second dimension is to meet expectations.
Reliability is also a perceptual judgment, and the actual results need to be compared with expectations. If our service can meet or even exceed others' expectations, others' perceptual judgment will think you are reliable.
Why does everyone say that the sea fishing service is good? Because whether you are a new customer or a frequent visitor to Haidilao, every time you go to the store, their innovative service practices usually exceed your expectations a little.
And customer satisfaction = actual result-expectation. When you experience services that exceed expectations again and again, Haidilao's service is very "reliable" and has a good reputation.
Recommended practices for improving reliability:
1. Make some very specific promises to your customers about some small things: for example, find the article by tomorrow, finish the first draft by Monday, and then keep the promise on time without expression.
2. Pay attention to every communication meeting with customers, and send the meeting materials to customers in advance before the meeting starts, so that they have time to review in advance; Prepare a clear meeting schedule and follow it; Any meeting resolution will be followed up and implemented as promised.
3. Inform customers of any significant progress, risks and options in the cooperation task in time, and fully negotiate;
4. Seriously follow up any matters agreed with customers, at least meet or strive to exceed customers' expectations.
Being close is also important for trusting relationships. Proximity refers to the closeness of personal feelings of both parties, so it is the most obvious perceptual factor.
With a sense of closeness, our cooperation is like a duck to water, just like a huge and precise machine, which can operate efficiently after careful and thoughtful lubrication. On the premise of maintaining mutual respect and maintaining the necessary boundaries between the two sides, intimacy comes from emotional frankness and willingness to expand the scope of the topic.
Establishing a sense of closeness usually means that one party exposes a part of himself to the other party, and the other party either responds (thus enhancing the sense of closeness) or is unmoved (thus drawing a clear line). It is conceivable that this is a very personalized feeling, and it will also bring risks if it is not handled well.
I have a sales colleague who works very hard and often contacts customers at night to enhance feelings. But one day, he said that he annoyed a female client inexplicably and asked me to help him analyze the reason.
It turned out that that night, he chatted with a customer who was following up on WeChat and learned that the female customer was going home from work. He offered, "You send me the detailed address of your home, and I'll call you a Didi taxi. Just wait, don't move! " What he said was firm, and there was no room for rebuttal to the client.
As a result, the customer replied to him: "I don't know what this means!"
This is because the intimate relationship between the two sides has not yet been established, and his presumptuous request makes the other side feel very uncomfortable.
After my analysis, my colleagues sincerely communicated with customers and apologized. On the contrary, the other party had a more personalized impression on him through this "conflict" and soon accepted me as a colleague.
Recommended practices for increasing intimacy:
1. Don't be afraid! It takes courage to build a sense of closeness, not only for you, but also for others. It is very likely that you have had successful experiences in establishing intimate relationships in your life. Establishing intimacy with customers is no different.
2. Observe whether you have crossed the line and walked too far and too fast. Ask yourself whether you are in the customer's position, and the corresponding topic is the one you are willing to talk about with each other.
3. Practice in advance. It is true that it is difficult for a person to acquire natural skills through practice, but you can try to practice wording. For example, write down two or three different statements on paper in advance, test the effect of each statement, and then choose the most suitable one to apply to practice.
4. Take the initiative. The enhancement of intimacy requires one party to take personal risks and share his thoughts with the other. If the other party responds with the same action, the sense of closeness will be enhanced and the trust will be enhanced. It is an endless and useless internal struggle to think that customers should take the initiative in this relationship. As a professional consultant, you can't control each other. The only thing you can control is your behavior and take the initiative.
But I also remind you that taking the above measures cannot guarantee your success. This is a start, because establishing intimate relationships requires constant attempts.
Nothing affects our trust in front of customers more than "only caring about our own interests" The most extreme form of self-orientation is of course undisguised selfish behavior, which is called "mercenary". But self-orientation doesn't just mean greed. It contains all the behaviors that make us pay attention to ourselves instead of customers.
In the movie If You Are the One, there is a clip of Ge You dating a girl who sells a "blessed land" (graveyard). After chatting for a few minutes, the girl first lured Ge You to buy a blessed land with the rhetoric of "honoring her parents", and then further said that the blessed land could appreciate. Ge You asked, "If it is sold, where are my parents buried?" The girl said naturally, "You can buy two, and our company can give you a 5% discount!" " "This scene really shows the" self-orientation "incisively and vividly.
Farage, a network master, said in Don't Dine Alone: The biggest secret of success lies in generosity and altruism. You must learn to be generous. If you can't recommend your circle to others with the same enthusiasm, you can't expand your circle. The more people you help, the more help you get, and then you can help more people.
Adam Grant, a professor at Wharton Business School, said from another angle: "Most people think that self-directed motivation and others-directed motivation are two ends of a continuum. However, I found that they can be completely independent-you can have neither or both. " In other words, you can realize your dreams and help others.
Therefore, although we are not "selfless" when serving customers, we will eventually help customers and customers will repay us through the altruistic behavior of "caring for customers' interests". This is a virtuous circle.
Recommended practices to reduce self-orientation:
1. When talking with customers, treat them as friends. Even if the customer is not your real friend, you can still act like a friend. Our tone and tone can be like friends.
Focus. Maintaining a low level of self-positioning requires a high degree of concentration on the other side. This does not mean paying endless attention to customers or potential customers, but devoting yourself to face-to-face communication with customers at the beginning of every transaction, every research or every project.
3. Don't give an answer before you get the corresponding rights (when you win such rights, the customer will let you know), and use thinking listening skills to sum up what we hear, so as to ensure that what we hear is consistent with what the customer wants to say, and try to understand the customer's feelings and situation.
To sum up, the book "Trustworthy Consultant: Being an irreplaceable person in the eyes of clients" holds that the key to the success of a career consultant lies not only in mastering the superb professional skills in his own field, but also in having the ability to cooperate with clients, winning trust and increasing confidence in cooperation through cooperation with clients.
According to the trust formula in the book: t = (C+R+I)/s (tTrust; C. credibility; R reliability; I have a sense of closeness; Self-directed), we need to take the following four measures:
Only in this way can you gain the recognition and trust of customers, help your career to be more successful and help you climb the peak of your career bravely!
(Text: @ Middle Management Diligent? | Read through classic books and take a good career path | One day, I will comprehensively update the ManagerUp series in the near future ... so stay tuned! )