Is Your Customer a Walled City?
At times you may have asked yourself, how can I truly connect with my customer and increase my sales closing ratio? With regards to that question, I have good news and bad news.
First the bad news. We need to be totally aware that in the sales process you, I and all of us are walled cities. We have a defensive wall up against sales efforts all of the time.
Whereas, this is not typically the case with regards to marketing efforts. The marketing function does not tend to encounter the same resistance that the sales process does because of two things: First, good marketing generally is not presented in a way that tries to invade our walled city but is usually very subtle and even entertaining. Secondly, marketing is not done one-on-one, whereas the sales process is always interpersonal.
The Good News
How does a business overcome this wall in the interpersonal sales
process? By connecting with your target customer so that they take the wall down themselves. It is almost impossible for you or your business, as an outsider, as an invading army if you will, to take the wall down. The customer has to personally dismantle the wall for you to enter.
The height and strength of their wall is determined by their temperament, personality and upbringing, the nature of your product, and the setting in which they find themselves. A person who would be considered very cynical would have the highest and strongest wall. An individual’s wall is overcome by connecting with them from the start with something that is of emotional importance to them before going into the details of your sales presentation.
Connecting Emotionally Gets You Over the Wall
The emotions, either positive or negative, your customer feels regarding the need for which your business offers a product/service is the ladder that will enable you to get over the wall. The benefits in the form of the facts and the claims of your product are carried by your sales person on the ladder. Present the attractiveness of how your product/service fulfills their need or want in words and concepts that emotionally reverberate throughout their heart and soul and you most likely will get the sale.
How to Dramatically Improve Your Sales Process
The first thing that needs to be done is to gain a thorough comprehension of the needs of your customer related to your product. Better still is to understand the goal(s) they are trying to accomplish through the purchase of your product. Next you have to understand the emotional state they want to be in as a result of buying your product. Where do they want to be emotionally once they have used or consumed your product?
For instance, in the selling of life insurance an emotion your customer mostly like wants to experience is the assurance that they are taking care of their family. In the purchase of a zero emission car they want the emotional gratification of helping to save our planet. Or in the purchase of a high quality desert they are trying to emotionally reward themselves with a special treat whose taste satisfies them.
Then comes the easy part. You need to create a detailed list of major features of your product. This includes documenting the usefulness of your product to your customer. Finally you want to identify the uniqueness of your product in fulfilling their needs and achieving their desired emotional state.
Ask Questions to Emotional Connect
With this effort done you can now create an effective sales script to “get over the wall”. You do this by asking a question that can emotionally connect you and them. A question is utilized because the human mind automatically wants to answer a question posed to them. To do this you want to utilize the emotional state information you have garnered in questions like:
- Is having the assurance if something happened to you, your family would be taken care of something you would be interested in?
- Wouldn’t be buying one of our zero emission cars be a great way of making sure our planet will be great place for your children and grandchildren to live?
- Do you think bringing home one of our mouth-watering deserts would be a good way to celebrate special times with your loved ones?
Take a few minutes and write down various questions you could use to emotionally connect with your customer.
An effective sales process brings the emotional attractiveness of your solution to life. An outcome-based sales approach is very successful because it identifies the need, lack, want, or desire that a potential customer is feeling and presents your product in terms of providing the emotional outcome they are seeking.
If you need assistance with reeving up your sales process by emotionally connecting with your customer so you can take your business where you want it to go, please feel free to contact us for assistance.
www.FountainheadConsultingGroup.com
Office phone: (770) 642-4220
