How Well Do You Know Your Customers? PART II

In my previous blog I suggested that you find your customers’ ‘hot spots’, or personality likes so you know better how to market directly to them. I suggested you make a list up of the questions to ask them in order to find their personality types.


Once you have your list ask the individuals who are in the ‘front lines’ of communication with your customers to find the answers to as many of the questions as possible without making it sound like they are ‘digging’ for this information. The individuals in the ‘front lines’ include your sales force, your service technicians, your Customer Service personnel, your after market parts sales people, distributors, sales representatives, and any other individuals throughout the company who deal directly with your customers. Another method to getting the information might be to bring copies of the list in a questionnaire format to a trade show and offer a free gift to anyone who takes the time to complete the survey/questionnaire. It may take a year to get enough of the lists completed to allow you to start compiling the data.

With the compiled data you now have an idea of what your customers like. You will probably notice that there are different personality groups within the compilation. Your marketing will need to target each personality group with ‘triggers’ about what they like. So plan on different campaigns. Track the costs of each campaign and the results. Keep records of what campaigns worked well and what ones did not work. You will want to re-visit the successful campaigns again in the future, maybe with some slight updating to make them look fresh.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.