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How To Get Customers Buying In The New Economy

October 14, 2011 By vip-admin Leave a Comment

We hear it all the time: What are customers actually buying? Thanks to tough worldwide economic conditions, money is tight, sales have never been tougher, and qualified leads are much harder to procure. Is there a way to get prospects to buy?

In our research, we’ve found that companies still want and need what you’re selling. They’re looking for ways to improve business efficiencies and reduce costs, but there’s a key difference: They need your help to make purchasing easier and to reduce their risk.

Overcoming Your Prospect’s Aversion to Risk

Selling in today’s down economy is a two-stage process. The first stage is the same as it has always been: Uncover your prospect’s needs and find ways that your product/service assists in fulfilling them—simple enough. But the second step is the new, critical one that separates many winners from losers right now: You must make your solution easy to buy. Even those companies doing well in this market and with discretionary funds available arehighly risk-averse. They simply don’t want to take any chances, so you’ve got to think in terms of how you can reduce their sense of risk as much as possible.

To do this, many of the fastest growing innovative companies have started offering risk-free trials, money-back guarantees, try-before-you-buy offers, pay based on the value received, and detailed ROI analysis that removes any sense of risk from a purchase. They promote cost savings heavily in their value proposition, and they’re finding ways for many customers to realize savings before payment is due.

One company we’ve worked with started offering leasing services that defer payments for anywhere from three to six months—enough time to realize a substantial ROI that will more than compensate for the cost. Another has switched from a one-time upfront purchase of its solution to offering smaller segments over the course of a year and beyond. This tactic has proven successful and has helped remove the “all or nothing” mindset that predominated before. Now this company’s clients feel a much greater sense of control over the scope and cost of their purchases, and its revenues have started climbing as a result.

How Can I Make It Easier for Prospects to Buy My Solution?

What options can you offer? As with so many questions, the answer is “it depends”. The possibilities will vary depending on your product, your industry, your competition, your client demographics, and more, but you can start by doing the following:

Ask yourself, If I were my prospect, what are some new/different ways of purchasing this solution that would feel “safer”? Get creative.
Do your homework. Find out what your competitors now offer in terms of buying options. Figure out ways to match or improve upon those.
Call into your existing client base. Ask customers how their purchasing process has changed and what it would now take for them to buy your product. Also ask for ROI testimonials. Poll them for ideas on ways they might be willing to pay for your solution if they were to buy it now.
If you work with resellers or distributors, encourage them to provide suggestions on how to make your solution easier to buy.
Look for new ways to segment your product, service, or pricing that could lower any sense of perceived risk.

In times like these, thriving—or even just surviving—requires that you offer extreme value with little or no perceived risk. Adding to that, you’ve got to do so at the very outset of the sales cycle, since any further in is often too late. Seek creative, innovative options that are above and beyond what you now offer. Don’t wait for your prospects to pull the trigger and buy. Instead, show them how to pull it.

Filed Under: Sales Tips

Cutting through the Marketing White Noise

October 14, 2011 By vip-admin 2 Comments

A strange irony has occurred over the last few years with the emergence of social media: It has never been technologically easier to get your message out to new prospects, markets and partners, yet there have also never been so many people trying to do the exact same thing.

So now it’s now easy to get your message out, but getting your message heard can feel almost impossible—a bit like screaming at a football game. How can you stand out from the millions of other marketing “white noise” messages being sent every day?

Traditionally, the focus in outbound lead generation has been to lead with a few key benefits, but the problem with this approach is that it no longer works as well as it used to. A few short years ago, leading with something along the lines of, “I’ll be in your area next week and wanted to stop by for a few minutes and let you know about our ability to reduce your costs” might have gotten the job done. Problem is, the benefits that most of your competitors use probably sound remarkably similar to yours—and they just don’t stand out.

Our own internal research has shown that the amount of time you have to gain a prospect’s attention has dropped even further than it was only a year or so ago—down to just a few seconds—to the point that we recommend introducing yourself with your name and company name as quickly as possible and then immediately jumping to your prospect’s pain point. Don’t waste any time talking about your company at the start. Instead, jump right to what you’ve determined to be the most painful and costly problem for the person with whom you’re speaking. Then follow with a strong example of how you helped another company with that same problem, and be sure, when possible, to back that up with a dollar value reflecting cost savings or revenue increases.

How do you determine what keeps your prospects up at night? The short answer is: Research. When prospecting, there are a variety of search methods that can be used to uncover pain points. As with most things, start with a Google search on the company. More than likely, just a few minutes of research will be well worth your while. (For additional information on this subject, see Ginger Cooper’s article, “Five ways to Uncover your Prospects Biggest Pains”.

Consider the example of a recent experience I had. I’d been purchasing a company’s product and services for some time and had no intent of switching. Fairly often, I’d receive calls from competitors of this company, but the messages all sounded the same, and my goal was to get the sales reps off the phone as quickly as possible. Then one day, I received a call from a salesperson who made me want to listen. “I bet you’re paying around X amount for these products and services if you’re using them, and you might be encountering these problems (he listed few things), ” he said in his message. “But if you’ll call me back, I’ll show you how you can get a similar product, with free support, shipping, better service, and a great warranty”. I called him back, and he won my business. This was the one in a hundred marketing attempts that got my attention and broke through the white noise.

What was different? This sales rep had clearly done his research before calling me. Rather than a pitch about who he was and what his company did, he hit me with specific issues that he knew were likely to get my attention. He left a voice mail that was, in short, a perfect prospecting call. He’s doing quite well I understand. I’m not surprised.

Before you call into prospects, take some time to understand the relevant issues in their industry (a good way to start this research is to find industry conference and webinar calendars). Use social media tools and do Google searches to seek out specific problems. Talk to your customers and use their experiences to position yourself and gain an understanding of the dollar impact of your products/services to their business. In the new economy, this approach will have you quickly realizing that sales opportunities do in fact, still exist—for those who know how to uncover them.

Filed Under: Marketing Differentiation

Why exactly are cold calls so damned irritating?

October 14, 2011 By vip-admin 31 Comments

The other day, one of our prospects asked me to explain the difference between demand creation and a standard cold call. “Honestly Errol, I don’t get the difference” he said. “Why is demand creation any more effective than one of our people just calling in, giving our value proposition, and asking for a meeting?” I told him this.

Imagine you’re at a party. You’re talking with several of your friends, when, suddenly, another partygoer approaches, interrupts you, and proceeds to change the conversation to what they want to talk about. What would you think?

“It would make me pretty angry, I suppose,” he replied.

Fair enough, but why?

“Well, it would be rude for one thing—and it would be annoying as well. Assuming I was already in a conversation, it would be socially awkward and would cause us to stop what we were doing to focus on something we didn’t want to talk about.”

OK, I replied. Now, let’s take that same situation, but this time, the same partygoer steps into the conversation and, instead of changing the conversation, he adds a new dimension to it.

“Such as?” he asked.

Suppose you’re talking about how you’d love to find tickets to a sold-out event you wanted to go to, but you’d had no luck and were going to end up missing it. Suddenly, this same person overhears your conversation, interjects himself, and says, ‘Hey, I just heard you needed tickets. I have a friend in my office that can help you out—she always has spares that she’s looking to sell. Give me your name and contact information and I’ll hook you up with her.’ How would you feel now, I asked?

“Well come on… that’s clearly very different,” he replied. “This was someone enhancing the conversation instead of changing it, plus it offered help with something I was focused on already. So obviously, it would be fine and completely different from the first scenario.”

Don’t Change the Conversation–Enhance It

That’s the difference, I told him. Instead of changing the conversation to what the salesperson wanted it to be, the salesperson joined the conversation in progress, looking for a way to help. People get upset at a cold-call because it interrupts their day and attempts to refocus them on the salesperson’s “topic” (product) and on getting them to spend money. It’s rude and unwelcome—and that’s why cold calls don’t work for the most part. Demand creation however, seeks to determine what the prospect’s conversation currently is, and then to help the caller join in. Itchallenges salespeople to enhance the conversation in progress so that they are perceived not as an intrusion, but as a welcome addition to the discussion. I asked my prospect if that made sense.

There was a brief moment of silence followed by a smiling agreement that could be perceived— even over the phone. “Yes, you definitely made your point- no comparison between the two,” he concluded.

The message to salespeople and marketers is this: It’s rude to interrupt someone in the middle of their conversation—being uninvited no less—to ask them to stop what they’re doing and do what we would like them to do. Why do we continue to do it? Yet, this is the primary and accepted method of cold-calling that salespeople use every day. Wouldn’t it be better first to understand what your prospects are talking about—what matters to them—and to then join the conversation?

If you were the prospect, which would you prefer?