Recently, I had some opportunities to communicate with customers face to face on the spot, which was both nervous and exciting for me, who often did not travel on business. Communication with customers always allows me to expand my thinking and understand the differences between different regions. Through a deeper understanding of the needs, I also found that my understanding of the heating industry still has a lot to learn from customers. There is no end to learning. As you learn more, you will find that you should face each demand with a more modest attitude. Maybe this demand is not easy to achieve, maybe this demand is unreasonable, but you should believe that every demand has its own reasons and their stories. When you lift the veil to see them clearly, You will find that they are not what you thought at first. It not only expands our vision, but also makes our business knowledge more solid.
As our busy business season is approaching, there are many more needs to communicate on the project. I have a lot of communication with many friends who often have to face customers. In the process of communicating with them, I found that the young partners who had just participated in the work would appear timid when facing customers, and would not dare to communicate with customers more. When a customer describes a relatively complex business, he is immediately asked by the customer and does not know how to answer the call. For some partners who have already had some work experience, they seem calm when facing customers, but sometimes there are problems missing or unclear communication in complex scenes. In fact, we are faced with situations that both experienced and novices will encounter. When we encounter such situations, is it just a matter of letting nature take its course? Do we have any guidelines that can guide us how to do so that we can face these situations calmly? Of course, the method is always more than the difficulty. With some bad experiences, people will always grow up. Combined with our own experience, we put forward some ideas for us to face certain situations, at least to make ourselves less confused. In the process, we also need to practice more, to try, and only practice can give us true knowledge.
1、 Preliminary preparation
This link is easy to be ignored. Many new people just take over this part of the work, and do not know what to prepare? What should be prepared? Many experienced people naturally think that they have a lot of experience and can deal with all kinds of situations without preparation at all? According to my experience, experienced personnel should make more preparations. They are well prepared to provide customers with high-quality services from a more professional perspective, which is also what customers need. For newcomers, preparation is to let them face customers more calmly. At least, they will not talk with customers in the same way, and they can have common topics and stories to talk about. Some preparations can be made from the following aspects:
1. Know the products you are responsible for.
This is very important. I always think that sales personnel, R&D personnel, on-site implementation personnel and after-sales service personnel should have a deep understanding of our products. Only when we have sufficient knowledge and understanding of our products can we better match the functions that are more suitable for their use and provide them with more reasonable suggestions and services. There are a lot of resources in the company. If you don't know what to do, ask people in the company. Asking others for advice is not a disgrace but a manifestation of learning. Some of the contents are complicated. If you can't remember them, you can find a separate document to record them. If you have time, you can take it out and read it several times. You can remember some things that you didn't know before.
2. Sort out the framework of communication content.
To be clear is to talk about how and where to talk with customers. It is also necessary to ask questions carefully. Start from which business to understand and gradually deepen the business. Planning a well understood route will keep you in a rhythmic state of communication and will not be easy to miss. If the framework is not well planned, there will be a question here and there. It is not easy to form a system for the customer to answer the question there, and it is easy to miss the scattered questions. Taking the charging system as an example, we can sort out the thread of communication: customer → annual account set → charging → change, etc. For each business site, you can refine the specific questions you want to ask, such as: what types of heat users, property agents, and retail investors are there? What are the areas, buildings, usage areas, etc. of heat users? Generally, there will be more content to be investigated during a visit to the site, which can be recorded in electronic documents or written documents, so that you can prompt yourself how to do on site.
3. Prepare for some key contents according to the customer conditions learned in the early stage.
For example, in the early stage, we learned that the customer's management of audit and network access is relatively detailed. We can focus on these two parts to familiarize ourselves with the system functions, sort out the cases of other projects, and analyze them in combination with the situation of other projects. In this way, when the customer talks about this part, he has a prototype in his mind, and probably knows what it is. When the situation described by the customer is different from the situation he knows, he can have an in-depth discussion with the customer.
2、 Field operation
After so much preparation, we are about to go to the battlefield. Do you think everyone is nervous? You should rest assured that everyone has come here like this. Believe in the power of preparation, take a deep breath, and prepare for a magnificent debut
Check the content prepared before, and communicate one by one according to the context. During communication, the customer may deviate from what he wants to ask when he says it. At this time, he should first make some simple summaries of what the customer said, and then bring the customer's ideas back to his own rhythm, guiding the customer to communicate in a more systematic way.
Sometimes, due to practical reasons, customers' business is really complicated, and they have never met or heard of it for the first time. At this time, it is necessary to be strong in heart. Don't be intimidated by such complicated business, and firmly believe that there will always be things we don't know. It would be better if we could make them clear step by step. In the process, listen carefully to the customer's needs and record them (many quick thinking partners certainly disagree with this point, saying that they have a good brain and do not need to record, I can only beg to say that none of them are strong brains, not just honest records. What do you think if you don't understand the business and don't record? As the saying goes, "a good memory is better than a bad pen"). Maybe the response was not so quick at the beginning, so you can first explain to the customer that you need to think about it first, and then communicate with them. If you can communicate with them at that time, you can directly ask questions. Any customer is very happy to impart our knowledge. It's good to learn from these teachers with an empty cup of mind.
3、 Sort
It is finally time to classify and digest the needs, whether it is to cut through thorns or to have a smooth journey. It seems relatively simple, but it is a stage that has made me gain a lot. Thinking about the research content, refining and summarizing in the process of sorting are very important, which is also the basis for the subsequent implementation of functions.
You can try these stages first:
Gather together various requirements of scattered records. It also preliminarily classifies the business and puts the requirements of the same business together. For example, customer related and charge related items are put together.
Arrangement of all details in similar or the same business.
Describe the application scenarios of each sub node in its own language.
Match the application scenarios of each sub node with the function points proposed by the customer, and consider whether the requirements proposed are reasonable and the function positions proposed by the customer are appropriate. Suggestions or other solutions can be given for unreasonable requirements.
