Thinking about how to treat customers

It was a story I heard from a client I visited for the first time in a while, as the Corona situation had calmed down a bit.

The company in question was very committed to blog marketing, so I wanted to draw a line because it was a different area from mine, but in the end, I also realized that I was an outsourced company, so I just listened to their story quietly. Whether it was anger about past work with me or anger about their current relationship with other companies, I decided it would help me understand the client in front of me. Above all, these situations happen more often than you think. I've experienced it when I was running my own business, and I've also received the same kind of look when I was working for a company. So I started to get more and more curious.

Why were they angry?

Actually, based on my experience, the biggest reason why this kind of situation happens is because of different expectations and misunderstandings about “responsibility”. For example, let's say an external company said, “We'll take responsibility for your sales and make them go up.”

Honestly, unless it's the company's CEO, it's just a lie to say that someone can take responsibility for increasing sales. Why? Because sales are entirely determined by the CEO's charisma, ability, and the completion of the business. Even if the number of new customers who have found the company due to more exposure than before has increased, the fact that the customer who is visiting in front of you decides to make a payment is not something an external company can touch. This is the company's misunderstanding of the scope of responsibility.

So what about the CEO who hires them? Frankly, I've seen many CEOs who haven't paid enough attention to their work and have been lazy in their studies before they could say, “I believed what the external company said.” (The company mentioned above is not one of them.) In those situations, it's difficult to judge the scope and meaning of what you want to get, so there is often a lot of desire for performance that is inherently unrealistic, which leads to ambiguous expectations and the shift of responsibility.

In summary, this is why honest confirmation and recognition of the limits of both the hiring and the hired party are absolutely necessary.

Here is a CEO I met who was the scariest.

The strongest (最强) CEO I met after leaving the advertising company was the owner of a grilled meat restaurant across from Yeongdeungpo Station.

“I want to fill ten more tables between 5 and 6 pm. I want to make sure office workers who get off work early see our restaurant's ads. It doesn't matter if it's a blog or a Facebook video ad. But I want the cost to be lower than the profit I get from ten tables, right?”

I'm not sure if I've conveyed why I called him scary.

To explain, in this case, the CEO of the company has a very clear goal of what he expects, namely the number of sales. (The average sales amount per table is the standard) And he has enough experience to clearly state the exact time when the company's ads should work and the target audience he expects. Furthermore, he clearly sees through the essence of the business that makes companies look professional, such as data and online target analysis, and his expectations for ROI are clear to the point of being surprising. Adding to that, the fact that he has clearly summarized the limitations of the proposed cost so that the company can understand it is something I would call the icing on the cake.

So how should you sell?

To be honest, I'm not very good at sales. The best I can do is keep going, asking questions about the situation, and then coming back. Jay Jirundon, a LinkedIn sales manager from Singapore, said that sales are very effective when done aggressively, but it is difficult for me. (If you don't use this solution, your sales will drop next year. Are you sure you won't?)

That's why I'm writing about the best sales expert I've met, just in case it helps anyone who's going through the same struggles as me.

His profession is a ‘Korean medicine doctor’.

Some of you may ask, “Why a Korean medicine doctor?” But a Korean medicine doctor meets dozens of patients every day and does face-to-face sales. I was also surprised when I conducted interviews to survey sales related to non-reimbursable items like Korean medicine.

And this person is a Korean medicine doctor who is often visited by the top richest people in Korea.

I heard that many opening doctors and Korean medicine doctors had to consider closing their businesses until early March due to the Corona virus situation. However, in this person's case, more patients came to see him than before regarding their immunity. This is because the wealthy people mentioned earlier introduced him to their relatives as well.

Above all, the biggest reason I'm talking about this person is

For this person, sales are 100% voluntary by the patients.

They don't even have a website, and their clinic is in a small space next to a gym, but patients keep coming back.
Now, I'll reveal this person's secret.

“How is that kind of sales possible?”
“There's nothing special. I just try to eliminate the pain my patients feel as quickly as possible.”

Well, I know. I asked again.
Why, how on earth do they do it, that so many wealthy people have been going there for over a decade, I was so curious.

But that was really it. 100% focus on the patient in front of them.

Even when other opening medical practitioners spend an average of 2-6 minutes on one patient (it's relatively longer during the first visit. This is because it has to be done in order to get the minimum n number required to maintain the hospital), this person spends 30 minutes. Even considering their personal preference to not see too many patients, how do they treat and build relationships with those difficult wealthy people that they are able to establish a system where patients do the sales for them?

Here are a few patterns from what this person told me that I could somewhat understand and summarize.

1. Never ask first.

Even if there are many treatment options, they mention only the cost and expected effect of each, rather than recommending the items that are profitable. And they wait. The choice is up to the customer. Even if I suggest it and it works well or isn't as good as expected, that's an experience due to the customer's choice. It's not my achievement.

2. They solve the customer's immediate issue.

I had a near-death experience from a rare disease when I was young, so I think that solving the patient's pain should be the top priority. Medical practice is bound to have different interpretations and subjective evaluations. So they empathize with the immediate problem and use all means to solve it. If it's an area I can't cure, they refer them to another place to focus solely on eliminating pain as quickly as possible.

3. Don't get caught up in achievement.

If I were them, I would want to use my long-term relationship with the top level businesspeople in the country for promotion. But they don't. They say that one thing that the real wealthy people have in common when it comes to dealing with people is that they never “look down” on others, no matter how old they are. It's like saying that they respect others as much as they respect themselves and maintain their own boundaries.

That's why, even if there are occasional patients who come to the clinic through other channels, evaluate their skills arbitrarily, and make them feel uncomfortable, they just remain quiet. And later on, all they say to themselves is, “If you don't get treated by me, you're the one who's missing out.”

Based on my experience, every client company and related project is different.

Most of the time they are unique and in fields I don't know, and the scope and meaning of what I can solve for them is something I couldn't really decide on my own. I've often received more help in building, studying, and refining, and I've grown more by being paid for it.

That's why customers are very precious. And for the same reason, they are a fearful presence and a necessary object that I need to convince in order to survive. And the question comes back to how to make those customers find me and how to go to them and convince them.

Perhaps it's influencing but pretending not to, existing in a nearby place. I think that's the conclusion I can reach based on my experiences so far. (If you have a different opinion, please let me know in the comments.)