Are you selling what your prospect wants?

Are you selling what your prospect wants?

Have you ever given some deep thought to what it is your clients are actually buying when they decide to do business with you?

Sure they buy your services and products but I mean do you have a clear understanding of what problem they are looking to solve or what need they are looking to fulfill?

As business owners, this is an important question to consider if we want to maximize the effectiveness of our marketing .

So how do you find out what they’re thinking?

Simple. Ask them. Explain in an email or on the phone that you are revising your marketing plan and wondered if they could help you understand, in a sentence or two, the value your service offered them.

Here are a couple of unedited answers I got when I did it.

The most important ‘value’ I received from working with you Gerry was time. Time allowed me to concentrate on my business (using my entrepreneurial time wisely) while you used the info I gave you and weaved it into the ideal website for my business. Time management is something I support my clients with and I truly know the importance of delegating. In essence, that is what happened between us. You were the expert in copywriting and I have learned over the years to delegate to the ‘expert’!

You helped us give voice to the value of the services we provide with a consumer-orientation that helps differentiate us from others. You also offered the potential of a follow-up system that other marketing service providers did not offer or did not have a clear vision of its value. Your availability and follow-through is particularly appreciated.

When you analyze their responses, you can see they were “buying” different benefits.

The first found marketing very time consuming and unfulfilling. Why? Simply because that’s not this particular client’s area of expertise. In her case, she’s capable. But she determined that she would spend far more time trying to get a handle on creating an effective marketing message and strategy  if she tried to do it herself.

And whatever time she could find was not of a quality that would allow for the timely creation of an effective selling story. It was crammed into and around other aspects of running her business. She determined she would be missing opportunities if she tried to do it herself.

In the second example, the client simply realized he needed to stand out from his competition. He’s in a real “me-too” industry. The economy is playing having with his industry. His competitors all say the same thing so of course, when that happens, it always comes down to defending prices. He didn’t want to play that game so he decided not to.

You’ll notice he didn’t even mention time. In his mind, as soon as he decided he needed some help, he made an instant decision to find someone to help him.

By asking our clients why they bought from us, we can take their responses and build our marketing message around them.

With some careful content creation on our websites and in our other marketing communication, we can make sure we mirror back this value in such a way that anyone considering our products and services will clearly see it and choose us over our competitors.