3 ways not knowing your customers can kill deals

Introduction

Selling isn't just an art; it's also a science—one that's backed by data, investigative analysis, and educated deductions. Not understanding how these factors work together, and failing to deploy them in your sales efforts, can prove to be counterproductive and cost you deals.

Talk to others in your own sales team and you'll probably hear horror stories about deals lost because sales reps called customers at the wrong times, said the wrong names, or sent out emails that were simply too long.

Customers have high expectations of brands, particularly when transactions are online. The digital medium offers plenty of scope to collect, analyze, and track customers' digital footprints. So it's only natural that customers expect brands to treat them with empathy and provide personalized experiences. Not fulfilling these basic expectations can threaten smooth customer relations.

Here's a hypothetical example: Sarah wants to cancel her father's internet subscription after he recently passed away. She reaches out to the internet service company, where she's also a customer—as is her whole family. The customer support rep routes her to the bereavement department, who asks her to provide several personal documents, along with her father's account credentials. Procuring those documents takes several weeks, during which she has to continue paying for the internet service. While she understands the legal complexity involved in terminating a digital service and the timeline involved, what she doesn't appreciate is the lack of empathy from the company. Each time she emails support, a different support agent writes back asking for the details all over again. Each time she calls, she gets bounced around and asked to repeat her issue. Fed up, Sarah cancels her own subscription after she finally manages to cancel her late father's.

This is a cautionary tale for brands. Regardless of the industry or the audience you serve, not knowing what customers want can quickly cost you deals. In the example above, the brand could have saved a customer in many ways: by tracking Sarah's service requests centrally, merging her requests with her father's account, or simply jotting down Sarah's request on a note and saving that to their CRM. In today's blog, we'll explore more ways brands can lose deals if they fail to truly understand what their customers want. 

1. Not using data to decode what a customer needs

What do Amazon, Netflix, and Starbucks have in common? Yes, they're prosperous and profitable businesses, but they're also businesses that know their customers better than anyone.

Nearly 80% of the content consumed on Netflix is a result of its exceptionally impressive recommendation engine. Netflix analyzes watch history, ratings, preferences, and the time spent watching each show to suggest the most appealing shows. As a result, the audience gets highly curated suggestions and Netflix sees increased product usage.

Starbucks analyzes each customer order to decode customer preferences, improve product recommendations, and introduce new products based on customers' ages, preferences, times of purchase, regions, and more. This results in happy customers on one end and leaves Starbucks with a range of new products that are guaranteed to win.

These examples demonstrate the payout in profits and growth when businesses invest in decoding customer data. Businesses that fail to leverage customer data for personalization, proactive support, and product innovation stand to lose a great number of deals. Imagine what would happen if Netflix suggested Korean dramas to a die-hard action buff, or if Starbucks suggested a latte to a someone with lactose intolerance. Instant dissatisfaction and a drop in sales will follow any business that fails to tap into customer data.

Not using data to decode customer preferences can lead to poor personalization in your marketing and sales efforts, missed sales opportunities because of misaligned or poor solution suggestions, and poor customer trust due to poor customer experiences. Losing deals this way is particularly painful given that your CRM already has the data you need to make changes, and also because it would be impossible to measure the extent of the losses you've incurred.

2. Operating your CRM as a solo entity

Your CRM is where your deals get closed, but it isn't a singular entity; it should be integrated with other processes related to finance, accounts, operations, onboarding, logistics, supply chains, OEMs, dealers, sales, and support. If your CRM can't track customers' journeys from start to finish, sales team will be unable to deliver personalized experiences to customers.

Here's another story: Adam, the regional sales head for a fin-tech company, wants to cross-sell a newly launched product to their existing customers. Laser-focused on boosting sales of the new product, Adam sends out personalized mailers to existing high-value customers, pitching the new solution. Ten percent of customers write back to express interest in the new product, 25% of them write back in anger asking Adam to fix issues in their current product, and the rest never respond. Renewals for the month also take a hit, although neither the company nor Adam connect the two events until it's too late.

Businesses that don't invest in bringing customer data together into their CRMs stand to lose a lot more than just deals. At times, this failure can even cost them goodwill and the reputations they've worked for years to build. A stunning 93% of the companies surveyed by Straits Research say they've improved customer satisfaction rates by leveraging CRM data, of which 84% believe that they need to use their CRMs better to gain in-depth insights into customer behavior and market trends.

In the example above, an alternative approach for Adam is to contact only happy customers of existing products or customers who have recently had their support requests resolved to their satisfaction. Riding on their positive sentiment can boost Adam's sales efforts.

CRM systems already collect dozens of customer-related data points that can help paint a complete picture of their wants, needs, sentiments, preferences, and more. Soon, autonomous AI agents might be able to help surface the most appropriate leads for salespeople to pursue, as well as suggest talking points that might resonate well with leads based on data inputs. For this to work, CRM systems should transform into insight engines that are well-connected to applications used by finance, marketing, support, insurance, and other departments. Only by making sense of the data already in the CRM and putting it to good use can your CRM truly enhance your sales efforts. 

3. Not preparing to deal with objections

Ask your sales team about the one thing they hate about their jobs and they'll unanimously agree that it's dealing with objections in the penultimate stage of the deal discussion. Objections can arise at any point in the sales journey—from the first hello to the signing of the deal—but objections at the later stages of the sales journey can be devastating to the salesperson as well as to your forecasted sales figures.

Predicting objections and preparing to tackle these objections in the latter half of the sales journey is critical to closing deals. Without a solid objection handling strategy, sales teams can get caught up in the whirlwind of objections and lose deals that are on the verge of converting.

The good news is that it's possible to predict these objections using the data in your CRM. For instance, a customer who once requested a comparison between your product and its close competitors is likely to bring it up in the future as well. This doesn't mean that the salesperson didn't answer the question effectively the first time; it simply means that the customer has a soft spot for the competitor. The trick is to break down the competing product's shortcomings the second time the customer brings it up. Your CRM can give you valuable clues related to customer preferences and help you prepare an objection-handling strategy to tackle such questions. 
 

Conclusion

In the age of data, not knowing customers' wants, needs and preferences leaves businesses disconnected, creates discord in their business relationships, and can cost them major deals. Businesses have always struggled to leverage customer data to drive deals forward, but the solution is not to add more technology to your stack; it's to use the data you already have and get it to work for you. Transforming your CRM into a unified platform that has customers' purchase histories, profiles, and interactions in a single view can give salespeople the complete picture of customers they need to improve personalization efforts.