<a href="http://numbersbalanced.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/customers.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-524" alt="customers" src="http://numbersbalanced.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/customers.jpg" width="250" height="258" /></a><span style="color: #000000;">'80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers'.</span>

<span style="color: #000000;">It is important you know who these customers are. </span><span style="color: #000000;"> Here are 6 strategies to help you research, interprete and handle information about your customers in the most effective manner.</span>

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<span style="color: #000000;"><strong>  1.Get to know where they are coming from.</strong>                                                             </span><span style="color: #000000;">It's essential to understand where your customers are  coming from.                         </span><span style="color: #000000;">What are their demographics and income ranges? <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">                                                       </span></span></span><span style="color: #000000;">Do they live in particular locations?                                                                               </span><span style="color: #000000;">Why have they chosen you over someone else?                                                         </span><span style="color: #000000;">Who will they patronise when they leave?                                                                     </span><span style="color: #000000;">The answers give you a feel of the motivations of the people who buy from your company<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;">.</span></i></span>

<span style="color: #000000;"><strong>2. Learn their motives for buying your product.</strong>                                                       </span><span style="color: #000000;">Are they choosing your product or service because they are reacting to some sort of mistake they want corrected — or to achieve something more proactively?                </span><span style="color: #000000;">The answer can speak volumes!                                                                                   </span><span style="color: #000000;">You need to know what kind of motivation so that you meet their unstated psychological needs.</span>

<strong><span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"> 3</span></strong><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>. Do they want a lot of options or only a few?</strong>                                                        </span><span style="color: #000000;">The consuming public has a decidedly split personality. </span><span style="color: #000000;">Some want lots of options, while others are more comfortable with a limited range of tried and true choices. </span><span style="color: #000000;">Above and beyond the product or service itself, it's important to know just how wide a menu to present to customers. </span><span style="color: #000000;">Too much or too little can ultimately be alienating.</span>

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>4. Strive for a holistic understanding of your customers and their needs.</strong>          </span><span style="color: #000000;">The salient point about customer service is simple — the more you know, the better positioned you are to move beyond mere selling and establish a relationship that's far more deeply embedded. </span>

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>5. Make gathering customer info an ongoing effort.</strong>                                             </span><span style="color: #000000;">Many business owners believe that customer information is limited to surveys, focus groups, feedback questionnaires and the like. Those are indeed part of the overall effort.                                                                                                                              </span><span style="color: #000000;">But try to make customer information an ongoing focal point of attention. Listen to what they say, watch what they do and encourage everyone around you to do the same. From there, take what you've seen and heard, couple it with information from other venues and try to draw as complete a picture as possible of what they genuinely value and why.                                                                                                                       Don't take anything at face value. Assume what you have heard and observed is merely the tip of the iceberg. Then you need to drill down to a rigorous interpretation of what is going on below the water line.</span>

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>6. Be thorough — but above all, be ethical.</strong>                                                            </span><span style="color: #000000;">How much information is too much and an intrusion into privacy? </span><span style="color: #000000;">Lay out an information code of ethics that specifies what you want to know, how you'll gather it and what you intend to do with it. </span>

<span style="color: #000000;">Remind them that anything they tell you is based entirely on their willingness to do so. As long as you start with a code of ethics, you'll be fine.</span>