Jessica Dennehy is the CEO Spin and kill.
getty
Whether you consider yourself a salesperson or not, you use sales tactics every day. The question is, are you doing it all wrong?
Features vs Solutions
As a consumer, you buy with your emotions. You become emotionally involved in what the product or service can do for you – how it makes you feel better or smarter; how it can increase your income or accentuate a certain characteristic – which is what drives you to sell.
So if you know you buy with your emotions, why try to sell your own products or services based on facts?
Most sales pitches contain a litany of facts. The prospect is bombarded with so much information and logistics that they cannot think clearly. They can string together the content of the offer, but fail to see the bigger picture: how the offer can solve their problems. This confusion makes the sale more difficult to close.
Stop selling the features and start selling the solution to the customer’s pain. Connect the dots for the prospect so they can understand how your brand will improve their lives and ease their daily struggles.
The ideal customer avatar
There is a lot of talk about creating an ideal customer avatar, and this is obviously a useful tool. I practice this exercise for my own companies as well as for my consulting clients. But often when I see people describing their perfect customer, the description is about what the customer can do for them, rather than what they can do for the customer.
When you approach sales with this objective, your sales pitch comes across as selfish. You are actively and aggressively selling how great you are and all the features that come with your offering, rather than letting the customer know you are here to make their lives easier. Remember: you are here to relieve the pain the client is going through. So when you conceptualize your ideal customer, you have to put yourself in their shoes and write an avatar from their perspective.
What is your customer’s biggest problem in life or business? What keeps them up at night? Which stressor is slowly eating away at their happiness? Write it all down, in detail, as if you were them. It should be easy to write from their perspective, as your ideal customer is probably someone who is just a few steps behind you. You’ve been there to solve the problems your prospects are now facing. Therefore, you will be successful in solving their problems. It should be normal to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and write an avatar that really gets to the root of the customer’s problems.
Now that you’ve clearly outlined the avatar’s pain points, it’s time to write down the details about how you or your product/service relieves this pain and makes the customer’s life feel smoother and easier. It’s time to sell the dream!
This exercise is critical for all of your future marketing as it will help you create messages that will touch the hearts of your ideal customer without them even knowing you are trying to sell to them.
Final Thoughts
If you really understand what emotions the prospect is facing at their pain points, you can recreate those emotions in your ads. You can also recreate the feelings of joy and happiness that the customer will feel as they allow your company to solve the problems that plague them in their daily life or business.
These emotional sensations can feed into all of your customer-facing communications – email campaigns, social media posts, advertisements, commercials, and even sales calls. Connecting with the prospect on an emotional level will make them trust that you understand their pain and can sympathize with their particular situation, making them want to lean towards you for the solution.
Stop selling facts and start selling the effortless life your ideal clients have dreamed of.
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