If Only The Seller Would Think Like a Customer

If Only The Seller Would Think Like Customer ...

CRM will not work in the absence of two parties. There is a seller and the buyer. Let me take you to an example of where CRM had o link to the vendors.

I have repeatedly elaborated on this example as I find this one beats all the odds that we come across and is very valid no matter how we look at CRM, whether it works or fails.

My wife needs a fish. I go to the fish market after a drive of one hour. I am in the fish market where there are many stalls of different types of fishes from the globe around. I have just entered and I get the first lady, stall number 23, “Sir, these fish are fresh. See their eyes still shine.” I pass this off to the stall number 24. The man has the fish still stuck up in the hook and is trying to tell me he just caught this and others are on the box in the front of him. I look at these like we are not buying but only looking at them without any interest although we have the significance. I go the stall number 25 the small girl is pleading the mother about the school fees as soon as they see me and the mother tells me , “Please sir, but my fish as I have to pay the school fees for the girl tomorrow. I am cruel as I am parting with money and I do not intend to send some one’s child to school. I go to stall no 26, the story is same about the fish coming all the way from the Mediterranean seas and fresh by the speedboat to the fish market, and he just offloaded these.

Having seen the above, I know I need the fish. Do I have to create the need to the vendors? Must I just overlook all a drive home, as I am sick of the old stories told to me by many sellers and various markets? Who wants the product? There is a sale and I want to buy. Am I buying? Am I irritating the sellers?

If I sit down in the evening and write plethora that are in the offering and no purchase by me, what exactly is CRM to me?

I wonder many a time what is a customer who comes and shows his face without buying. I wonder how much energy the vendors put in opening the packets to show me the freshness or the brands or the make of the product only to see me go away.

The sellers are becoming smart now to know who is buying and who is passing the time.

Here we have the perfect being of the CRM.

What I am saying is, the sale is to know the product and the customers.
It is not just the customer is always right or delight him but also to know if the customer will really buy.

Then we have a perfect market for the CRM.

May be this is an extreme case but unlike the car purchase or the fertilizers buying. However, the attitude of the sellers is changing all over, the place except the supermarket where the prices are fixes and you have the list, you buy and pack up. You have the car you see or you know the book you have been recommended, you buy and you close the deal. There are many open areas of small vendors where we still need to see what exactly the CRM is.

I thank you

Firozali A. Mulla MBA PhD
P.O.Box 6044
Dar-Es-Salaam
Tanzania
East Africa