Which is more important?

Helping your customers or selling to customers? 

The business answer is we need to do both.  But what would the vote be in your business if you were told you could only do one of these and you had to choose?

My experience of trying to buy a flat screen TV last week would suggest the answer varies in different organisations.  I tried three different places:

Google: lots of helpful information, no selling, independent advice (no product experience).
John Lewis: helpful, little selling, clarity about the solution, real product experience.
Currys:  no help, stressful experience, plenty of selling, lots of offers, a good credit deal.

Interestingly Google and John Lewis are doing quite well whereas DSG (Currys) are suffering in these more turbulent times.  DSG management seem to be blaming the economic difficulties, but I am left wondering if their problems are to do with too much selling and not enough helping.

Google and John Lewis know that they must help their customers whereas in many businesses the emphasis on marketing and sales has been about getting the message across, making the offer, closing the deal.  But is this really want customers want?  Is this what is most important to customers?  Is this the most effective way to get more growth?

Businesses sometimes struggle to see what is most important to their customers.  Last ezine we discussed ways around this.  This article takes this one step further and suggests that by starting with selling as the source of growth many businesses are distracted from what is important to their customers.   This distraction and neglect of what is really important to customers is likely to lead to less growth and less success.

How well do you understand your customers problems?

How do you ensure your products and services help your customers?  Do you or your colleagues struggle to see that what customers want is help to solve a problem?  Do you focus on selling at the exclusion of helping?

Increasingly businesses that help are more successful than those that just sell.  Google is the ultimate "help not sell" company and seems to enjoy the highest brand valuation in the world (BrandZ published today)

How did this work in the case of my TV purchase.  My problem or opportunity is that I want to be able to relax with the TV only when really I feel the need.  I do not want the machine in my face every time I sit down in the living room, so we will put it in a smaller separate room.  When I go to the internet or the store I am looking for some help to solve these problems.  So my search extends to appearance, size, discreteness, on demand TV services, as well as picture quality and sound quality (the only thing anyone talked about was picture quality).

Customers do not want is to be sold a product.  Customers want to solve problems issues and realise opportunities that they face in their lives.  Features of products and services that businesses can offer them are only important when they help with this.  Businesses that help their customers will win.  Those that just sell to their customers are likely to lose out to smarter competitors.

So when you go and ask your customers what is important to them, ask them about their lives and their problems not just the features of your products and services.

Now if you were forced to choose between only helping your customers or only selling to your customers, which would you choose

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