Buyer-seller relationships develop over time and business has always been an endless series of games played by the two.
In Games Customers Play, author Ramesh Dorairaj shows you how to spot such games and change the rules to your advantage. So that it doesn’t matter what the deal is, you will always win!
Below we explore some facts about buyer-seller relationships, that you may not have known, from Dorairaj’s book Games Customers Play.
Customers have learnt to use these myths to design practices and templates for how to interact with sellers and suppliers. Examples include elaborate procurement processes, reverse auctions, price bench-marking during a contract’s duration, renegotiating contracts much before expiry, feigning dissatisfaction to wangle discounts, and with holding payments for flimsy reasons.
The result is cognitive dissonance or mental discomfort arising from a disconnect in personal beliefs, ideas and values. This discomfort has negative consequences, like increased stress and irritability.
They have to do this consistently as millennials and post-millennials are joining the workforce and becoming customers.
Not all customers want to have a ‘close’ seller or service provider relationship. The same service or product can be viewed by different customers quite differently. Understanding this can help you position a product uniquely for various customers. Your product can be seen in a new light by different people within the same customer organization.
It is now possible not to speak of market segments but have marketing campaigns that are customized to individuals. Some firms use predictive algorithms to gauge a buyer’s future needs. But these algorithms do not consider the nature of the interaction that a customer prefers. Some prefer a quick, one-click purchase, while others will take time to visit, speak to a sales or customers service rep, explore alternatives and arrive at a decision.
A set of engagements makes a relationship. Thus, relationships are born when there are a number of engagements between the customer and the seller. One-off engagements don’t create a relationship.
The Get It stage is the first part of the engagement and has to do with the customer decision to purchase goods and services. This stage is about all the interactions that happen before the seller delivers the product of the service. The Use It stage is when the customer begins to use the product or experience the service. The Fix It stage is when the product or service does not work as planned and needs to be fixed.
Tag: Secrets
Gift Your Child These Deliciously Spooky Tales This Halloween
Halloween is just around the corner and the chill in the air has begun to set in! As we pull out our pumpkin delicacies and prepare to make merry in the creepiest of costumes, here are a few amazingly spooky books for your child to feast on this Halloween!
Trick or treat? You tell us!
Secrets by Ruskin Bond
Set in the 1940s, all is not what it looks like in the sleepy little town of Dehradun. The quaint place has its set of dark secrets — from plucky old women to mysterious murderers, Ruskin Bond’s Secrets brings to life the delectably dark tales of a small town set in the black and white days.
Amelia Fang and the Barbaric Ball by Laura Ellen Anderson
Have you met the inhabitants of Nocturnia yet? Nocturnia — a place where sparkles, colours and unicorns are things to be afraid of. Oh, and it’s also home to the little Amelia Fang and her pet pumpkin Squashy, who are in for some trouble as they race against time and discover that Nocturnia is much darker than they thought it is!
The Puffin Book of Spooky Ghost Stories
An ominous collection of 13 spooky stories where you meet spirits in deserted bungalows, death traps on swings that take you a little too far away, a reincarnated goddess with an insatiable bloodthirst and a whole lot others from beyond the grave and the unknown!
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Grand High Witch is out to get you! She loathes children and schemes to trick you by dressing up as an ordinary woman, while being an extraordinarily evil witch all along! Only a little boy and his grandmother can stop The Grand High Witch from coming for you. Will they succeed?
This Halloween, tell us which story you read to your child in the dead of the night and celebrated the autumn nip with a chill down your spine. Happy Halloween!