To be perceived as a highly credible salesperson, you don’t just need to know about YOUR customers. You also need to understand YOUR CLIENT’S customers. Their customers’ attitudes about what your prospect sells could provide an opening for you to change their business for the better. Additional psychographic research will tell you about the lifestyles of your prospect’s customers.

Why is it important to understand your client’s customers? Because that’s what their business is all about, just like yours. Shoeb Ahmed, writing for Smart Karrot, says, “When you join hands with them [your clients] in serving their customers, you become a part of their team rather than an external vendor… By aligning your business with that of your customers, you ensure that your solution becomes an integral part of their business needs. And that is the sure shot way to retain customers and increase their lifetime value.”

Understand Your Client’s Customers

Facts to Use to Get the Attention of the Decision-Maker

How do you go about harvesting this customer data to present to your current or prospective clients? One way to understand your client’s customers is to research the customers’ online activity, says Scott Gerber in a TNW article. You can see how your client’s customers interact with them by taking a look at the company’s social media pages. Those interactions will reveal whether the sentiment is primarily positive or negative. When it comes to the negative posts, what are the common denominators among the posts? Is the problem something you could help with? You can also look at the reviews on both social media and the client’s website for similar information.

You can also take a look at the demographics of the people interacting with the client online. Are the comments made by customers who are mostly from one gender or age group? You can also dig a little deeper into the customers’ profiles to learn more about their professions and locations. This process can be time consuming, though. If you want to save time researching demographic and purchase intent information, you can refer to relevant studies such as AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel. The profiles on AudienceSCAN contain demographic information, as well as purchase intent and favorite activities of over 1,400 audience types to help you better understand them.

How to Present These Facts to the Buyer

Once you understand your client’s customers, you need to prove you did your homework to the client. Gerber quotes Reid Carr from Red Door Interactive with one recommendation for how to present customer information. “Everyone has different customer types. Once you understand that, you are better able to target messaging, develop product and drive value for both the customer and your business.”

An article from CFI indicates that you can categories your client’s customers into any of the following categories:

• “Loyal: Customers that make up a minority of the customer base but generate a large portion of sales.
• Impulse: Customers that do not have a specific product in mind and purchase goods when it seems good at the time.
• Discount: Customers that shop frequently but base buying decisions primarily on markdowns.
• Need-​Based: Customers with the intention of buying a specific product.
• Wandering: Customers that are not sure of what they want to buy.”

Once you separate the client’s customers into one or two of these client types, you can both showcase your research and provide solutions tailored to each type.