Maximize Your Marketing Efforts & Sales with this 1 Great Tip…
If you want to boost your sales figures or just increase the number of clients you have, here is a quick marketing tip for you to remember: “People buy for their reasons, not yours!”.
Many small business owners make the mistake of selling their services, based on what THEY think matters. In other words, they look at their products or services and because they know it so well, they assume they ALSO know why each individual prospective client would want to buy it! That is the wrong thought process when it comes to maximizing your marketing efforts and sales profits!
Buying Motives
Focus on Buying Motives!!! Maybe you noticed but in the last paragraph I used the word ‘individual’? This is mainly because people have their own, individual motivations for making a purchasing decision. In marketing and sales it is called a buying motive. If you try to sell or market your service to someone based on what you assume will be of most importance to them, you will most likely lose their interest. However, if you take a moment to discover what matters to your prospective client base, you will know exactly what to focus on.
Discovering the buying motives of your clients and then focusing on what they need will not only increase their interest but also can increase your return rate tenfold!
Here is a quick example to illustrate this thought process. A few years ago, I was going to get my first smart phone! I visited a local phone store and was instantly greeted by a salesperson. He asked me how he could help. I proceeded to tell him I was looking to buy a new phone; he then asked me a few simple questions:
· What would I be using the phone for?
· What features and capabilities I wanted?
· Who was my provider?
· Do I have a contract?
· What my budget was?
After giving him my answers, he was able to point me in the direction of a small selection of phones that did exactly what I was looking for. Then, by answering my questions, we were able to spot a clear winner. The sale was a success because he discovered my buying motives and focused everything on getting me a phone that fit my needs. I got a great phone and he made an easy sale! When you look for what a client needs it turns into a win-win situation!
Also, discovering someone’s buying motives always allows you to provide better service to them. With this example above, at no point did I even feel like I was being sold to. It felt like he was using his knowledge to advise and direct me rather than sell, so that I could make the right decision based what I needed.
You can apply this idea to the IT world as well to better cater to the needs of your clients. Many products and services that you have in your solution sets will help clients to fix pain points that they have and you just also need to ask the right questions and offer them the services that they are looking for and see a need for in their businesses.
Upon speaking with a prospective client or customer for the first time, always make sure that your primary focus is to establish what is most important to them and what they are looking for. If you get it right, people will never feel like you are selling to them, but rather providing them with what they need or fixing a pain point for them. You will also come across as a professional who is helping them make the best decision possible, based on their needs – not yours!
Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com
