Sales Lesson From A Baby

My granddaughter, Jessica, is around 10 weeks old and she reminded her grandad of a valuable sales lesson.

My daughter and son-in-law returned from holiday last Friday and decided to drop Jessica off with her other grand-parents, Liz and Alan so that they could unpack.

Liz had a pre-booked tennis match, so briefed Alan about feeding Jessica and left Alan literally ‘holding the baby’.

Alan is 72 and recently sold his business after a very successful business career. He’s mentally fit and tough.

How then did Jessica manage to traumatise him within about an hour. In fact, he was forced to place a desperate call to his son for help as Jessica was bawling her head off.

It turns out that rather than feeding Jessica with milk, he was feeding her water. She was telling him in no uncertain terms that that was not good enough and he had better sort it out quickly.

My son-in-law came to his Dad’s rescue and whilst he was feeding her the milk, a red-eyed Jessica was sending dark looks in Alan’s direction as if to say ‘this is how you do it’.

The sales lesson from the story is that rather than giving your customers what you think they want ‘you really need to listen to your customer’ – in this case Alan did not get the message from Liz.

If you ask the right questions, your customer will often tell you what they want and all you need to do is listen carefully and supply it. Also, if you cannot supply the solution quickly, then your customer will probably go elsewhere.

Alan also learnt,and then probably not for the first time, that a customer complaint is a great learning experience (once you get over the trauma!)

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