(Do you want align your sales process with your customers’ behavior. We can help ).

Intentions drive behavior. Intentions also bring people together or drive them apart. When you are selling something, the more your intentions are aligned with your customers’ intentions, the more you will sell. Your customers will know that your intentions are aligned, and will reward you with a purchase – or repeated purchases. How can you make sure your intentions are aligned?

You get up in the morning knowing that you must sell more in order for your business to succeed. You need to bring in more customers, and those customers must buy from you. That’s your intention.

Your customer, on the other hand, has no such intention. They don’t get up in the morning intending to buy from you, specifically, or from anyone, for that matter. Oh, sure, “buying stuff” is on their list of things to do, but whatever they’re buying is for their benefit, not yours.

This is so basic, you’d think everyone sees it. But something happens when we start a business or are responsible for sales. Our intention shifts to that of a seller, and we are thus immediately and dramatically at odds with our buyers.

If, on the other hand, you are determined to think like your customer (and it takes determination, to overcome the natural tendency to think like a seller), your customers will sense that you are on their side, that you’re truly trying to help them, and they will respond positively. You will have a significant edge over competitors who are still thinking like sellers and doing all those irritating, rude, and classless things that sellers do.

What is important to your customers?

You think you know.

The hundreds of CEOs and entrepreneurs I’ve worked with over the years always think they know.

Interviewing their customers always revealed a completely different truth. Always. Every CEO or entrepreneur, in the meeting where we discussed the interview findings, had one or several moments when they took a deep breath, shook their head, and said, “I had no idea.” And then, a few seconds later, “We’ve been doing it all wrong.”

This is both a sad but very hopeful moment, because it means that yes, the company was not in alignment with customers, and, thankfully, yes, now the company could be in alignment with customers.

There is no profitable substitute for interviewing real customers; it must be done. But, fortunately, there are also other amazingly powerful tools available to us that show us customer intent and buying behaviors. There is more data than ever before, and it is truly helpful when used correctly.

Again, seems obvious, doesn’t it? But, as buyers, we know how seldom it is actually done. I think of this every time I’m cooking and try to open certain types of packages. I tend to make a lot of sauces, and they often involve cream. One of the brands of cream containers simply don’t open well. And, as I struggle to open them as they are supposed to open, I think, “I bet the CEO of this company has never tried to open his own cartons!”

I’m sure the managers of the dairy think more about the cream than they do the packaging, but I think more about the packaging than the cream. The inability to open a package is enough to drive me to a different brand; one cream is pretty much the same as the other except for the packaging.

This is one of literally millions of examples.

It depends on what they’re trying to do. Google breaks their intentions into four categories:

Each intention requires a different type of content and accommodation. And, don’t forget what happens after they buy – they’re right back into wanting to know (how to use it or get full benefit from it), and doing (ditto).

If all of your content is aimed at “i want to buy,” you are ignoring 75% of what could lead them to you. You’re not being found – much less being appreciated and valued – because you have no way to address those other “intentional” phases that will guide them to you – or send them into the arms of a competitor.

Customers want sellers to know what they want, so the buying process isn’t so difficult. Your own customers, if you interview them, will tell you what they were looking for, how they looked for it, and why they were looking for it, if you interview them properly (see chapter 3 of my book for explicit instructions). But even people you don’t know will help you understand what they’re looking for and what they think is important, using tools such as Google Trends, Google Analytics, Google AdWords, SpyFu, and others. Millions of buyers are making billions of searches every day, leaving trails that you can follow and understand.

There is no longer any reason – or any excuse – for not understanding what your customer is trying to do.
Why should you care? Obvious, of course. There’s revenue there. That’s where it is, that’s where it has always been, and now you have more ways of finding it than ever before.