One of the things that I like doing most is to read books, but I must admit that in the past few years I’m mostly into e-books. In my Amazon Kindle virtual library, I have downloaded more than four hundred titles, but I would say that nearly half of them were bought through the personal recommendations that the app has made, based on my previous purchases. This is made possible through an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm, which based on the result, has done a pretty good job as far as selling is concerned.
In the previous blog post, we discussed about how customer-centricity is defined, the different perceptions between companies and their customers with regards to it and what are the challenges that the organisations are faced with that prevent them from being customer-centric. The article did close with the question: ““Is there anything that we can do about it?”.
Read more: Customer-Centricity – Easy to Say, Difficult to Implement (Part 2)
Although customer-centricity is one of the most mentioned terms in today’s business, it doesn’t mean that is new as a concept. Back in 1954, Peter Drucker, one of the most influential and widely known thinkers of management, in his book, The Practice of Management, wrote that “it is the customer who determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper”.
Read more: Customer-Centricity – Easy to Say, Difficult to Implement (Part 1)
We all tend to think of ourselves as rational human beings that take decisions based on logical thinking, rather than “irresponsible” people that are governed by emotions. If this is the case, surely, when it comes to buying, we all prefer to stick to facts and figures, so based on them and using our logic, we proceed in concluding our purchases. Or maybe not?
In Sales, some people say that “No” is not the worst thing that you can hear from a customer. The worst thing that you can hear is, “I will think about it…”, not as a polite way to decline, but rather as a clear statement of indecision.