Linking the questions you ask your Apple customers

In our last Apple post we gave you some suggestions as to what questions you can ask your customers to unlock further conversations, creating potential for a larger sales. This week we want to explore customer profiling a little more and give you something you can try out straight away with your customers.

Profiling your customers might be an approach that is completely alien to you or it maybe something at which you have become somewhat of an expert. Either way, our vision at Westcoast is to bring our customers together to collaborate on what those techniques may look like. Try new methods out. Share successes and challenges. But most of all, join us in becoming the experts in selling Apple Solutions.

We want to give you something you can try

out straight away with your customers.

We recommend remembering the process we call

C.H.A.I.N.

 

This is the process by which you determine your customers current situation, background, aims, pains and business needs. The result gives you a crystal clear understanding of who it is you are talking to.
You must ask the relevant questions in order to understand who you are talking to, what role does that person play and what is the environment for the company.

The idea behind using CHAIN is that by linking the the questions you ask your customer, you will start to…

 

build a solid foundation to understanding what

the full solution for that customer may be.

 

Here is the CHAIN model:
 

CURRENT SITUATION – what is their technical situation as it currently stands?

HISTORY – what is their company background?

AIMS – what is the purpose of the purchase? ISSUES – what problem is this purchase trying to fix?

NEEDS OF THE BUSINESS – what overall business need is this in response to?

A full Apple solutions goes beyond the the Apple Products themselves.We want to share with you what we do to uncover the solution. By doing this the customer benefits and you benefit by selling more products and services.

Next time we will to share with you some examples of solutions that could come from a sales conversation structured around CHAIN.

Until then we would love to know how you get on with trying this out.

Join in the discussion here!

 

Profiling your Apple customers

In our previous Apple blog post we talked about what selling an Apple solution meant, and we encouraged you to get involved in the conversation with any specific challenges that you face when selling an Apple solution, we said that before you sell anything to your customer there were a few things that had to happen.

One of those things is how to profile your customer.

This week let’s take a look at why it’s important to profile your customer and what that means to you as well as them.

Profiling your customer has huge advantages…

… but the main one is that if you know your customer profile you can ask your customer the right questions, which will help you provide the right solution.

Before we look at the solution side of things here are a few reasons why we believe it’s important to profile your customers. You will…

– have a stronger relationship with your customers
– have more trust between you and your customer
– find it easier to uncover opportunities
– know more about what your customer wants and needs – increase your reputation

– sell more.

So those are the benefits. Here is an example of some of the questions that you can ask your customers. All of which will lead you to the right solution.

Current technical situation

• What are you currently using?
• Who is currently using it?
• What’s working for you now?

History (Organisational background)

• What industry are you in?
• What is the size of your organisation?
• What is it you do?
• Who is your customer?

Aims

• What are you trying to achieve with this purchase? • What does success look like?
• What is the vision of this technology?

Issues

• What problem is this purchase trying to fix?
• What isn’t working for you at the moment?
• What will get in the way of this being a success?

Needs of the business
• What overarching business need does this address?

Share how it felt and what the results were like with this community…

• Is this purchase intended to reduce waste, reduce cost, increase efficiency, etc..?
• Who is ultimately the decision maker?

Asking more questions is going to give you a whole load of information that you’ve never had before about that customer.
This maybe something that you are already doing, if not then we strongly encourage you to give it a go. If you do be sure to share how it felt and what the results were like with this community.

Asking more questions is going to give you a whole load of information that you’ve never had before about that customer. How to break that down and link it to a solution is something we are going to cover in our next blog.

Until then happy profiling.