13 Things Your Customers Want You to Know

Keep these simple facts in mind to build solid, long-term relationships with your customers.

Flickr/Mr Ush

Selling is more than a financial transaction; it's a personal interchange between two human beings'one that ideally leads to a long-term business relationship.

Sales guru Jerry Acuff once sent me a list of what he called "13 fundamental facts about human beings."

If you want to build solid customer relationships with your customers, keep these simple facts in mind:

1. Customers want to feel important.

2. Customers crave to be appreciated.

3. Customers are not particularly interested in you.

4. Customers want two things in life:  Success and happiness.

5. Customers want you to truly listen.

6. Customers will not connect unless they feel valued by you.

7. Customers buy emotionally and defend logically.

8. Customers have, on average, a very short attention span.

9. Customers enjoy people with whom they share common interests.

10. Customers want to be understood.

11. Customers are drawn to those who show genuine interest.

12. Customers love to teach things that they know.

13. Customers want help in some aspect of their life.

I need hardly point out that Jerry's facts about customers are also true of everyone else in your life, whether at work or at home.

And I honestly believe this list offers a roadmap for making other people happy'which is, after all, the quickest way in the world to achieve success.

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Geoffrey James writes the "Sales Source" column on Inc.com, the world's most-visited sales-oriented blog. His newly published book is Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies From the World's Top Sales Experts. @Sales_Source