Customers Are People too. Talk to Them (GoNerdify experience)

There’s a saying you often hear from salespeople, especially those who’ve been around a while: “People buy from people.” You hear it so often, in fact, that it’s a cliché; but sayings become clichés because of the element of truth in them. And this one is true. People do buy from people. If you think someone else is on your wavelength — rings your chimes — speaks your language, you’re more likely to buy from that person than from someone from whom you feel remote.

How to get through to people — that’s the question. It was all right for the drummer going around Victorian cities or remote farming areas in a horse and buggy. Walk in the door and people knew who you were. They’d seen you before. They were expecting you.

It isn’t like that anymore. Whatever someone wants (and never forget they may not yet know they want it), the sound of voices trying to get their attention is cacophonous. Okay, it isn’t a sound because you can’t hear it. You can see it, though. Emails you never asked for; pop-ups on websites you went to for something quite different; newsletters; and FORMS!

Forms are useful, no doubt about that. And yet, at Nerdify, we don’t use them. I’m the marketing manager and it’s my decision. I’ve seen the range, I’m familiar with the various software add-ins, I know what you can do with forms. They gather information. They can be split: answer a question one way and you’re taken to one part of the form; give a different answer and be led elsewhere. Companies collect email addresses and phone numbers with forms, and mount whole sales campaigns on the basis of what form-fillers tell them. Useful? No question. And yet — I say it again — we don’t use them.

Why? Let’s go back to the beginning: that people buy from people. There’s only one way to find out what someone is like, what they want and what they don’t want, how they like to be addressed and how serious they are about building a relationship and that way is: to talk to them.

It’s a way of doing business that our parents would have felt at home with. They’d have called it “conversation.” So that’s what we call it. Conversation helps us avoid one of the limitations of form-filling: a form must, to some extent and inevitably, be a box-ticking exercise. You offer people alternatives. Do they want this type or that type? Is their need based on a short-term imperative or a long-term need? That’s fine to a point, but you can read one of those forms and know something about what the customer wants but you’ll have learned nothing at all about who she or he is.

If you could meet your personal nerd on the street instead of online, would you expect to fill in a form? No; you would talk. You’d say, “This is what I want,” and the nerd might say, “How about…” and you’d bat it back and forth between you until you both understood what was needed and the best way to get there. Forms are closed and conversation is open; forms limit choices and conversation doesn’t. Conversations are more difficult than form-filling. FOR US. But not for the customer. Successful conversation means more than listening; it means hearing. Is there a difference? Oh yes.

So conversation is harder, but it brings you to the heart of who the customer is, what the customer needs and how the customer feels about it. Forms will collect information, but only conversation builds long-term relationships. Want to start a conversation with us? Simply text us at 77467 or leave us your phone number on gonerdify.com and we’ll text you back.