Jeremy Hutton's Key Ideas from Think Like Your Customer: A Winning Strategy to Maximize Sales by Understanding and Influencing How and Why Your Customers Buy
by Bill Stinnett

Communicating in terms your customers care about (like outcomes and metrics) builds immediate credibility. Avoiding internal jargon helps ensure they understand and trust your message.

• Use terminology and metrics that matter to them (like ROI, productivity, cost reduction).
• Avoid technical jargon that only makes sense inside your company.

Customers care less about what you’re selling and more about what it helps them achieve. Shifting the conversation to outcomes moves the discussion from price to value.

• Frame your solution in terms of the results it will deliver.
• Customers care less about features and more about achieving goals.

Becoming a trusted advisor means offering insights and guidance even when you’re not selling. This long-term approach builds deep trust and loyalty.

• Become indispensable by consistently helping customers make better decisions.
• This means guiding them even when you’re not selling anything.

Effective sellers know who influences and makes the final buying decisions. Engaging all stakeholders prevents surprises and stalled deals.

• Understand the buying process and all stakeholders involved.
• Map out influencers, approvers, and end users.

Tie your solution to the customer’s top business initiatives to increase its relevance and urgency. When you help advance their big goals, you become indispensable.

• Link your solution to initiatives already on their radar.
• Show how you help advance their big-picture goals.

Put real numbers behind the benefits you provide to help customers justify their investment. Quantifying value strengthens your business case and reduces price resistance.

• Put numbers to the business impact of your solution.
• Help customers justify investment internally.

Great salespeople ask thoughtful, open-ended questions and listen deeply to uncover real needs. This consultative approach builds stronger solutions and trust.

• Use open-ended questions, active listening, and deep discovery.
• Focus on diagnosing before prescribing.

Show customers the cost or risk of doing nothing to move them toward action. Helping them understand the downside of delay accelerates decision-making.

• Help customers understand the cost of inaction.
• Show the consequences of delay in clear, business terms.

Focus on the lifetime relationship, not just the one-time sale, by continually delivering value. Long-term clients are more profitable and more likely to refer others.

• Focus on lifetime value, not just one-time transactions.
• Cultivate relationships over time with consistent follow-up and value delivery.