This is one area that you should devote a great deal of time to… for obvious reasons.

Understanding one’s customers is so important that large corporations spend hundreds of millions annually on market research. Although such formal research is important, a small firm can usually avoid this expense. Typically, the owner or manager of a small concern knows the customers personally. From this foundation, understanding of your customers can be built by a systematic effort. A comprehensive system for understanding is what Rudyard Kipling called his six honest serving men. “Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.”

If you can understand where your customers are literally coming from, selling to them will be a lot easier. Most of the time, we tend to try to use our own reasons and they won’t always work. For example, why Mrs. A will buy a jar of hand cream will probably not the be reason Mrs. B will buy it.

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