Customer Orientation Article Index for
Customer
Website Links For
Customer
 

Information About

Customer Orientation




Customer orientation and sales orientation are two extremes in dealing with customers. A salesperson can never adopt both attitudes in serving a customer.

Customer orientation places an emphasis on listening to customers (e.g., I try to find out what kind of product would be most helpful to a customer) and Dialogue (e.g., I try to get customer to discuss their needs with me). Customer-oriented Salespeople tend to exhibit behaviors that enhance long term Customer Satisfaction , possibly at the expense of immediate sales.

On the other hand, sales orientation encourages Opportunistic means (e.g., I paint too rosy a picture of my products to make them sound as good as possible) if these are necessary to make the sale. Sales-oriented salespeople tend to focus on immediate sales regardless of customer benefit, possibly at the expense of long-term satisfaction.

There are seven key behaviors that strongly indicate a customer orientation attitude:
  • Thinking and talking about clients a lot

  • Continually assessing your customers’ perceptions

  • Resolving priority issues in favor of the customer

  • Giving in, compromising, adding value for the customer

  • Making amends to customers for poor treatment

  • Employing a "whatever it takes" policy to satisfy special needs

  • Redesigning processes, re-deploying resources and when they get in the way of service quality



REFERENCE

  • Peter F. Drucker (1994) The Practice of Management, New York, Evanston.