Home >
Marketing Ideas >
Sales >
Sales Coaching Small
Business Marketing to Melt Resistance and Increase Sales
by Charlie Cook
©2006 In Mind Communications, LLC, all rights reserved.
Getting a prospect to buy is like melting
ice. To get them to make a purchase you need to get them
to give up the status quo, whether it’s their present service
provider or lack thereof and make a change. The problem is your
prospects are often frozen in their thinking and you need a way
to thaw it so they’re purchasing decisions flow in your direction.
It’s not that prospects don’t want your
products or services it’s just that they’ve been used
to doing without them and now you need to help them make a change.
What’s the best way to thaw someone’s thinking and change
their mind?
You could try the direct approach. You
could tell them how effective your products and services are. You
could try to persuade them to buy your products and services. If you’ve
done this you know how frustrating it can be.
Its hard, sometimes impossible, to persuade
or convince people to do something new. Most of us want
to keep doing things the same way we’ve been doing them. You’ve
come up against this when you’re talking to a prospect and
trying to generate a sale.
If you want to get that prospect to become a buyer,
you need to find a way to help them to let go of their past ways of
working, change their mind and take the action you want. How do you
do this? It turns out that the most successful strategy for marketing
has other uses as well.
Discover a small business marketing strategy
that works to help prospects take the action you want,
buy more from you. Visit >>
www.marketingforsuccessstore.com/5Pmanual.html
I was talking with my client Andrea a couple of
weeks ago and the conversation strayed from marketing. She mentioned
that her computer was so slow that she spent a lot of time waiting
for it to load and process information instead of getting her work
done.
As one of the younger and newer new employees, she
wasn’t comfortable going to her boss and telling her that she
wanted a new computer. What could she do?
My advice to Andrea was not to ask for what she
wanted. Instead I told her to help her boss understand why she needed
it.
To help your prospects – or your boss – let
go of the status quo, do what I showed Andrea how to do. Lead
the conversation so that they have ownership of the ideas and conclusions.
Ask a series of questions that focus their attention where you want
it to be and help them make the decision you want them to make.
Obviously, you’ll tailor your questions to
the person and the situation. I suggested to Andrea that she ask her
boss about:
1. Revenue Objectives
2. The Impact of Sticking with the Status Quo
3. Defining What’s Needed to Reach these Goals
A week after we discussed this approach, Andrea
called to tell me the result of her conversation with her boss. She’d
gone in hoping to get a new computer and ended up with a better computer
and a raise!
Whether you’re marketing yourself or your
business, there are simple strategies for achieving your goals. You
could keep marketing the way you have been and getting the same results,
or you could discover what actually works.
Take a look at your marketing:
1. What are your revenue objectives?
2. Wouldn’t you like to give yourself a raise?
3. What will be the impact of sticking with your
current small business marketing strategy?
4. What do you need and want to reach your business
goals?
Getting your prospects or your boss to change
their mind can be as easy as melting an ice cube in a glass of water. Instead
of fighting prospects’ frozen thinking why not find out how
to melt their resistance and increase your sales.
Ready to unfreeze your sales? Discover the
simple strategies that work to grow your business. Use
this URL >>
www.marketingforsuccessstore.com/5Pmanual.html |