Who finds who is very important!
Imagine these scenes. It could be any two situations where there’s a buyer and a seller…
Scene 1: A prospect is planning a wedding; she needs to decorate her home. You get lucky and just happen to call her that same day. The prospect was on your ‘list’ and you were able to meet her the next day.
Scene 2: Same prospect. She is planning the same wedding and wants to decorate. She starts keeping an eye out for a decorator. She talks to a friend, reads an article in a magazine – and hears about you. She calls you on the phone to see if you can help.
Which situation is most typical for you? Which one do you like more, scene 1 or scene 2? Well, unless you enjoy making phone calls that are uncomfortable both for you, you’d rather be living in scene #2, wouldn’t you?
But there’s another factor that’s very, very important:
In scene 2, you ALSO have TWICE the chance of getting the prospect’s business as you do in scene 1.
Why, because the buyer found you first.
In scene #1 you were prospecting.
In scene #2 you were positioning yourself.
The buyer naturally has more respect for you in scene #2 because everyone knows you must climb the mountain to find the guru. Gurus don’t come down from the mountain hunting for disciples. Who calls who first is very, very important.
A prospect who “finds” you first is more likely to buy from you, than if you find her.
The difference is positioning. The doctor is perceived to be an expert, so you seek his counsel.
A good marketing system, which helps clients find the designer, can do this for far less money than paying the designer to find the clients. Once an effective marketing system is in place, you can spend twice as much time in front of interested customers and double your income.
There’s a hidden benefit to this: When the client finds you, instead of you finding the client, his perception of you is different. She perceives you as a consultant, not a peddler. Clients don’t respect peddlers as reliable information sources.
Your Marketing Message
Your marketing & sales message must effectively answer the following four questions:
1. Why should I read or listen to you?
2. Why should I believe what you have to say?
3. Why should I do anything about what you’re offering?
4. Why should I act now?
These are very basic questions, but few sales people can fire back fast answers to any of them. There are all kinds of companies who are the greatest in the world, but can’t give you a really solid explanation of what they do or why it matters.
Your precise answer to these four questions is your Unique Selling Proposition. You must have this message clearly defined and focused. It must be written down and you must be able to repeat it in the middle of the night when your spouse wakes you from a deep sleep. Everything you do should answer those questions in a consistent way, whether directly or indirectly.
Your Sales Message
Every time you communicate with your customer, you should reinforce the core ingredients of your sales message.
People forget. It’s never good enough to say something just once. Once your prospects have contacted you, they should regularly get things from you that reinforce what you told them the first time, and every time you talk to them, you must communicate your core sales message.
It’s easy to get tired of constantly saying the same thing all the time, and it’s easy to stop doing things that work just because you get bored with them. But you must resist this temptation and consistently, persistently reinforce that message.
Your message will never be consistent unless everyone in the company agrees on what it is. If you change your message every month, you’ll never get real traction in the marketplace because customers will have only a vague idea of what you do.
An effective marketing system solves a number of very difficult business problems:
You have enough “deal flow” that you can choose customers who match your capabilities, rather than taking whoever you can get.
You have more negotiating power because you can safely “walk away from a deal.”
Clients have more respect for you because you didn’t “chase them down.”
You can anticipate variations in your available capacity and revenue stream and open up or tighten your sales funnel as necessary, rather than scrambling at the last minute.
You don’t have to alter your manufacturing process or systems to accommodate customers whose needs don’t match your capabilities.
Your time with customers is spent productively, because when they call you, they already understand exactly what you do, what’s unique about you and how you can help them.
You are able to focus on the nuances of solving your customers’ problems and building personal relationships with them, rather than worrying about whether or not you can close a deal.
If you sell a product or service, you should lead with information about solving problems, not information about the product or service itself.
It’s an old cliché, but it bears repeating: Nobody who bought a drill wanted a drill. They wanted a hole.
What this means for you is that instead of providing information about drills, you should deliver information about making holes. You’ll get a LOT more sales leads – with fewer literature collectors – and build more rapport with prospective customers that way.
This is Massively Huge!
This is NOT an afterthought. It is an entire shift in strategic direction that has created fantastically effective results for me, my clients, and my students. As in thousands of potential customers calling, sending emails, asking you for information. And you should incorporate this into everything you do, from your sales collateral to the presentations your sales people make, to seminars and white papers, to advertisements and press releases.
These are very basic questions, but few designers can fire back fast answers to any of them.
Your precise answer to these four questions is your Unique Selling Proposition.
You must have this message clearly defined and focused.
It must be written down and you must be able to repeat it in the middle of the night when your spouse wakes you from a deep sleep.
Everything you do should answer those questions in a consistent way, whether directly or indirectly.
Every time you communicate with your client, you should reinforce the core ingredients of your marketing message. People forget. It’s never good enough to say something just once. Once your prospects have contacted you, they should regularly get things from you that reinforce what you told them the first time, and every time you talk to them, you must communicate your core marketing message. It’s easy to get tired of constantly saying the same thing all the time, and it’s easy to stop doing things that work just because you get bored with them. But you must resist this temptation and consistently, persistently reinforce that message. Your message will never be consistent unless everyone in the company agrees on what it is. If you change your message every month, you’ll never get real traction in the marketplace because clienyts will have only a vague idea of what you do