Street Smarts: Listen Up!
We all like to think we listen to our customers--but do we really hear them?
Published July 2006
EMAIL THIS ARTICLE
PRINTER FRIENDLY
COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE
BUY A REPRINTSix years ago, I decided to take up skiing. I figured that, at 57, it was about time for me to learn--if only because I was tired of watching my wife, who had been skiing her whole life, have all the fun out on the slopes. So Elaine and I rented a place in Telluride, Colorado, and I hired a full-time ski instructor, Dennis Huis, with whom I spent nearly every waking moment for the next two weeks. He taught me how to ski, all right, but first he had to learn a lesson about listening to customers.
Midway through one of my early sessions, Dennis told me I had to raise a ski as I was moving forward. I told him I couldn't do it. He assured me that I could--I just had to try. Again I said I couldn't.
"No, no," he said. "You've got to do it."
"No, I don't," I said. "Listen, here's the deal. I'm the customer. You're the instructor. You have to find a way to teach me within the bounds of what I can do, and I'm telling you, I can't do it the way you want me to." He didn't want to hear it. He was obviously unhappy with me when we parted.
But something changed overnight. The next morning, he said, "Okay. You can't do what I asked yesterday. We'll try something else." He had me do other exercises that created the illusion of my remaining on two feet, even though I was actually balancing on one foot. It worked. I learned what he wanted me to learn and was able to take a big step forward.
"That was great," I said at the end of the lesson. "What happened?"
He said that he had gone home frustrated the night before. He'd told his wife, "This guy is completely insane. He won't listen to me. He won't even try to do what I tell him. He says I have to find another way to teach him, as if I haven't already taught a million people how to ski."
"Maybe you should just listen to him and find another way," his wife had said.
Dennis had had to admit that she had a point. He had a sprinkler business in the off-season. There he did what his customers wanted him to do. But when it came to being a ski instructor, he had forgotten a basic rule of business. From then on, Dennis and I got along splendidly. When I showed up the following year, he was wearing a huge button that read, yes, norman. I laughed. "You're the customer," he said.
I only wish it were always so easy. Listening to customers seems to be a lost art these days. To be sure, we all say that we listen to customers, and that we always try to give them what they need. The problem is, we often assume that we know what they need better than they do.
Recently, my wife, Elaine, went out to buy a coffee table at a local furniture store. She told the salesman she wanted a square one.
To a certain extent, that's understandable. Most of us are experts in whatever service we provide or product we sell. We take pride in what we do, and we like to think that we know the best way to serve customers. Sometimes, however, that's not how a customer wants to be served, in which case you have to be flexible. I've been able to land accounts simply by saying yes to a prospect who's been told no by my competitors because they're convinced that the prospect will be better off doing it their way. (See "Listen and Earn," March 1997.)
The problem, I believe, has to do with being focused on what you're trying to sell rather than what the customer is trying to buy. Recently, for example, my wife, Elaine, went out to buy a coffee table at a local furniture store. She told the salesman that she wanted a square one. "You've come to the right place," he said and proceeded to show her a selection of round coffee tables.
"You've come to the right place," the salesman responded--and he proceeded to show her a selection of round coffee tables.
"They're very nice," Elaine said. "But do you have any square ones?"
"Oh, yes," he said. "Let me see..." He took her to a different part of the store. "Perhaps you'd like this one."
It was another round table. "I really need a square table," Elaine said.
"Apparently we don't have any in stock," he said.
"Do you have photographs I could look at?" she asked. He promised to send her some. Four days later, 10 photographs of coffee tables arrived in the mail. All of the tables were round. Elaine threw up her hands and vowed never to go back to the store.
That is, in fact, the risk you take when you don't listen to customers. You may lose not only the sale but also the customer. Had the salesman said up front that he had no square tables, Elaine would have looked elsewhere for one, but she wouldn't have given up on the store.
