During a Remodelers Advantage roundtable meeting that I was facilitating, the topic of how to understand your prospect better came up. I offered some top-of-mind suggestions. Thanks to note-taking by Ben Thompson of Thompson Remodeling in Grand Rapids, Mich., I can repeat here the example that I gave then:
“Ask your customer the story of how they shopped for their last car.
- What was their experience like?
- Were they satisfied?
- Did they end up suffering from decision fatigue? (We ask our customers to make dozens of selection decisions. For a lot of us, we get overwhelmed and then just tune out, and then revisit the decisions later, and change our mind. Have you ever seen that happen?)
- What was important to them at the beginning? Did those priorities shift over time as they went through the process and learned more about the available options?
- How long did it take to choose?
- What was the original budget vs. final budget?
- What do they love about the car now?
- Do they have any regrets?
“The point: Learn about your customer because you are walking them through an in-depth, long, buying process that ends with a high dollar purchase. You want to make sure they 1) Buy from you AND 2) Enjoy the experience of buying from you.”
The idea is to learn how your potential client thinks BEFORE you have them sign a design agreement. Otherwise, you and your team will waste a lot of time trying to work with potential clients who were never a fit for your company in the first place.
Give it a try. You have nothing to lose except a lot of time and money!