CHAPTER ONE
THE AGE OF THE CUSTOMER
How Did We Get Here?
EVERY YEAR, AS PART OF STAYING IN TOUCH WITH OUR CLIENTS’ customers, I visit retail locations to observe how customers behave in-store and how well the floor staff and sales associates are interacting with them throughout the sales process.
A couple of years ago, on a warm and sunny Saturday morning, I visited one of our automotive client's dealerships to spend a morning observing customers in order to get an idea of the car-buying experience from a customer's perspective. I watched for a while and then spent some one-on-one time with several of the sales associates to discuss how the sales process was working. On this day, the dealership was filled with customers shopping for new vehicles, always a welcome sight, but it was really how they were shopping that caught my attention—it felt completely different than just a few years back.
Customers were less interested in product information and more interested in taking a test drive, deciding on the spot, and negotiating an offer. This differed from just a few years ago, when the average customer would visit a dealership at least three times before beginning to negotiate a price. They needed these multiple visits to build up their product knowledge prior to making their final decision.
Today, the opposite holds true. Before visiting a dealership, customers have spent countless ...
Get Customer-Centric Marketing: Build Relationships, Create Advocates, and Influence Your Customers now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
