Listening

Most business consultants will tell you how important it is to listen to customers (as a recent example, note how much “listening” is mentioned into this article on what makes a great entrepreneur).

We’ve all heard that before. This week Peter Francis, principal of Clinical Laboratory Sales Training is setting an example for us by doing it.

One of Peter’s customers loves reading his articles on laboratory sales techniques, but he spends a lot of time in the car and wishes he could listen to them instead of just read them. “Maybe you could send me an audio version?” he asked. Peter took the suggestion to heart and sat down in the recording studio. Now he’s starting to offer free audio versions on his website. How generous is that?

In our next quarterly web marketing review, we’ll be tracking the analytics to see how popular they are. From there we can determine what kind of next steps to take with digital audio.

Ideas for Further Development

  • Sell CDs: maybe it’s valuable to package several articles and sell them on disc?
  • Podcast: if they like articles maybe they would like other kinds of recorded conversations?
  • Promotion: use the recordings to promote other business offerings, such as seminars, coaching, or the newsletter.

Do Something: Lessons from Peter

  1. Care about your customers more today than you did yesterday.
  2. Listen to their words and the desires behind the words.
  3. Play with options for how to give them what they want.
  4. Become a responsive, dynamic resource for customers and they will reward you.