Solving needs

Tue, 7 Sep 2010 | By Paul Jacobs

We all have needs — especially our clients!

The trouble is that they are often loathe to articulate them, or are in essence surprisingly unaware of their own potential requirements. It is our job to discover these hidden needs; these latent and unrecognised service desires that lurk below the surface.

And, let’s be very clear from the outset: it is not an easy or quick process to uncover a current or prospective client’s wishes. If they are potentially oblivious to their own needs, it is clearly going to be a protracted process to identify the essential key requests that will unlock the barriers.

Sounds like psycho babble so far, don’t you think?

It is not a ’scatter gun’ approach

Mastery of using a broad range of closely linked and increasingly defined and precise open-ended questions — the ’Funnel technique’ that I described in my last article, is the basic skill that must be effectively deployed to determine a specific need to address and explore.

It is all about establishing exact gaps and potential requirements.

You have to be laser visioned and focus upon an explicit target, rather than randomly fire in all directions in the vain the hope that you will get lucky and strike a subject matter of real and tangible note. 

All clients will have a limited level of concentration and patience when engaged with an initial and exhaustive set of exploratory questions and any attempt to explain your businesses full range of features and benefits, will result in a very short conversation indeed.

Identify the ’sweet spot’

Place yourself in the shoes of your client and consider your product from a consumers’ perspective. Consider an everyday example of purchasing a valuable product, say a car.

The salesman presents you with a brand new expensive model that can move from 0-60 mph in under six seconds, has leather upholstery and a full set of sports features and looks stunning, but actually you wandered in to the showroom considering buying a vehicle to drive to the local supermarket that will easily take your shopping, the kids and the dog.

You may well be able to afford the beautiful sports car, but the reality is that it is not compatible with your need to purchase a family vehicle that you do not mind getting scratched in the car park and have the kids mess up with dirty shoes and crisps. 

The salesman got it wrong — he assumed you could afford the new sports car judging from your current vehicle, but failed to question you to establish your essential needs.

Selling recruitment services is no different to selling a ’hard’ product; it is still about identifying a customer’s ’sweet spot’ and then presenting a feature of your service that corresponds and adequately addresses the perceived need.

One step at a time

Uncovering every potential need takes time and it is an unrealistic expectation to consider that you will identify and sate a client’s full range of requirements in a single meeting or conversation — and you do not need to!

You are seeking an opportunity to gain business, perhaps for the first time, and in a sense you are attempting to hook a prospect — and then gradually reel them in.

Over time your aim is to develop a robust relationship built upon trust and outstanding service levels and as your understanding of the clients’ requirements deepens, you will be provided with opportunities to ’up sell’ your product offering and ultimately increase your business share.

It’s taking it one step at a time, and recognising as the old adage would have it that ’Every marathon starts with the first step’.

Of course you want all of the business available, but you will not achieve ’ownership’ of a client’s full service requirements overnight — it takes time.

A need to know basis

Identifying a need, and just one is all that it takes to embark upon a journey with a client, is the primary target. You will undoubtedly discover many needs over a period of time that you can provide solutions for, and ultimately you must identify every need to ring-fence the client.

You have to start somewhere and presenting a single feature of your service offering and then explaining the benefit of using this feature to the client gets you in the game. Your need is to know the needs, and then find a solution for each of them. It is not an easy process, but it is an essential process if you are serious about winning and retaining business.

Constantly understand and solve your client’s needs, build trust and you will have a long-term client who will become an advocate for you and your business.

Paul Jacobs is managing director of LoveWorkLife.

Email: paul@loveworklife.com M: +44 (0)7960 550756