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Terry Forsey is a techie-guy whose ability to talk to people and communicate with clarity has given him a tremendous advantage in business. With years of experience under his belt, and high-profile clients in his portfolio, Terry has become a specialist in his field of marketing consultancy – helping software companies to sell their solutions to potential clients.

Terry’s theme for his talk was ‘customer focus for entrepreneurial success’ and how a small business can market and promote itself to win the customer’s trust. Customers are not interested in what you do as a business, but how you can benefit them.

When selling to win a client, Terry advised that a business should follow these three primary steps: make sure you clearly understand their requirements, help them to evaluate the alternatives and then evaluate the risks. He believes that being upfront about the risk clearly demonstrates to the customer that you’ve addressed all their areas of concern.

He was adamant that a small business should be a specialist in its industry and not all things to all people.  His key point was that a business should understand customers’ needs and focus on contestable (rather than accessible) customers, but remember that “a customer would rather live with a problem they can’t solve than buy a solution they can’t understand.”

My greatest lesson from the evening was when Terry advised: “make people pay as soon as you can.”

He concluded with one of his favourite quotes: “It’s your desire, not your ability, that determines your success”.

Based on an article by Marc Muzuva