How does a customer decide on their preferences? Do they come to you with their preferences already defined, or does the way you interact with them have something to do with it? What if we told you that customer buying preferences are shaped by the options you present to them?
In all of our HVAC business training, we cover five customer buying principles that you need to know. This is principal #1.
Here’s what you need to know.
A Brief Overview: The 5 Customer Buying Principals
When it comes to your relationships with your customers, five distinct principles impact the buying pattern. Each customer goes through all five of these steps in the process of making a buying decision, whether that decision is large or small.
The process is always the same. The only thing that differs is how quickly a customer moves through the cycle.
If you’re deciding where to get dinner tonight, for example, you might come to a decision very quickly. If you’re deciding on which new car to buy, though, or where to purchase an investment property, you’ll spend more time working through the principals.
No matter where a customer winds up, they always start at square one: with the first buying principal.
The First Principal: Customer Preference
The first principle in the five customer buying principals is this: a customer’s preferences are shaped by the options your company presents them. This makes perfect sense when you think about it.
If a customer is coming to your HVAC company, they probably don’t have a vast knowledge of the HVAC industry. They know enough to know they need service, but they don’t know what that means exactly. So they’ll ask for your opinion, and then base their decision on the information you provide them.
From a business perspective, this is critically important to you. In fact, it should shape the way you format your customer proposals. After all, customers can’t buy what you’re not offering. If you aren’t telling your customers about all of your available products and services, there’s no way they can interact with them or form an opinion about them.
While this may sound exploitative to some HVAC professionals, there’s another way to look at it.
Your HVAC customers see you as an expert in the industry, and they trust you to offer an honest recommendation. So do just that.
When you do, you can cater to their needs for information. By giving them information about your various products, goods, and services, you’re helping them gather facts and establish a preference.
Without you, it’s tough for buyers to know what to do.
HVAC Business Training Can Help Your Customers
In light of customer buying principal #1, you have a duty to your customers. It’s your job to educate and inform your customers so they can start to form their preferences.
Throughout this process, you have to ask questions and listen carefully. As you do, you’ll start to understand what’s important to your customers, and how you can cater to them as effectively as possible.
No matter what, don’t judge your customers prematurely. Until you’ve spoken to them, you don’t know what they want or need. If you make this mistake, in the end, you’ll only hurt yourself and make it harder to deliver what they need.
With the right HVAC business training, you can help your customers, enhance your authority in the industry, and grow your contracting business the way you deserve.
