The Customer Experience is the Product

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Top Takeaways:

• The product or service you sell isn’t actually your product—the experience you provide your customers and clients is your product! In short, the experience is your product.
• Your goal should be to create a beautiful product, and then elevate that product to another level through the amazing experience you provide.
• Salespeople must consider the tactics they’re using on their customers and ask themselves if those tactics would work on themselves. If you wouldn’t respond well to a certain tactic, odds are your customer won’t either.
• Customers often make purchasing decisions based on subconscious factors rather than specific, tangible metrics. Often, it comes down to the customer’s experience and how a business made them feel.
• Experience beats virtually everything else. When everything else is equal, the experience is what will set your business apart.
• Think about not only what contributes to a great experience, but also about what detracts from that experience. Work to eliminate those factors for your customers.
• Traditional sales “closing tactics” can actually become a detractor to the overall experience. Studies have shown that customers will resist when they feel their freedom to choose is restricted.
• Remember that a good experience is one without friction!
• Oftentimes, the products and apps that consumers love most (because of the way they’re designed) are designed by companies with an amazing culture and amazing employees. An amazing experience is pervasive.

Quotes:

“The experience is the product, and everything is about that experience. We are all in sales and therefore we all have a role to play in terms of creating that amazing experience for our customers.”

“Nowadays, when there are a million products and services that do similar things and customers have infinite choice, they will choose based on experience more than the intrinsic properties of the product itself.”

“Sell to your customers in an empathetic way that they believe and feel. At the end of the day, experience is a discretionary feeling. Value is a feeling.”

About:

David Priemer is the founder of Cerebral Selling and the author of Sell the Way You Buy: A Modern Approach to Sales That Actually Works (Even on You!). He is the former VP of Salesforce, where he created the Sales Leadership Academy program.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.

This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions … and more:

1. How can I become a more effective salesperson?
2. How is sales a part of the customer experience?
3. Why does the customer experience matter so much?
4. How can I improve my customer experience?
5. How can I connect and engage with my customers?