We as humans are constantly driven to avoid pain and as part of that drive we strive to “be” more. Western society has conditioned us to believe the more we “have”, the more we will be. So to that end, we constantly operate in accumulation mode. We love to buy stuff and businesses love to sell us stuff. At the heart of our desire to buy is this simple statement.
“If you believe there’s a BENEFIT in a SOLUTION, and you VALUE that benefit enough, and TRUST the SELLER you’re going to buy it.”
Think about the statement from your perspective, is it right for you, well it’s certainly right for me. So from a selling point of view, if we reverse engineer this and align it from a selling perspective we find the following:
- Sellers should provide a SOLUTION that addresses customer problems or wants
- Sellers should ensure they communicate a VALUED BENEFIT taken from the customers perspective, with regards to a SOLUTION
- Demonstrate you are a TRUSTWORTHY SELLER and able to deliver on your promise
So let’s look at each in a little more detail.
1.Sellers should provide a SOLUTION that addresses customer problems or wants
“SOLUTION” refers to the product or service you are wanting to sell. It should provide a solution to a problem or want that your prospective customer has, if it doesn’t do this than it serves no use.
You can either create a SOLUTION to a problem or want that you personally have, or that you know other people have. Do some further research to establish how wide spread the problem or want is before investing lots of time in developing your SOLUTION.
Alternatively you can create a product or service and see if it provides a SOLUTION to a problem or want afterwards, although this does happen, I wouldn’t recommend it.
2.Sellers should ensure they communicate a VALUED BENEFIT taken from the customers perspective, with regards to a SOLUTION
So when you have a SOLUTION to a known problem or want, the next thing you need to do is market the VALUED BENEFITS of that SOLUTION to prospective customers. Write down all the reasons you think your customer would benefit from using the SOLUTION in order of importance starting with the most important aspects to least important. Now it’s important to be empathetic with your customers situation and point of view, otherwise you won’t get this right. It’s not what you think your customers “should” want or what you “think” is a problem, it’s what “is” a problem, it’s what “is” a want.
I would also list the objections your customers are likely to have and try to put a positive spin on these, because you will inevitably have to address them at some point in the buying process. You might have to work from a best “guess basis” to start but do as much research as possible going forward. The more you know your customers’ the better you can address their actual situations.
3.Demonstrate you are a TRUSTWORTHY SELLER and able to deliver on your promise
If you can’t provide some way of proving you are a TRUSTWORTHY SELLER you are going to have an uphill struggle on your hands, particularly if you’re selling remotely as with a website store.
Genuine reviews and testimonials are a good way of establishing trust, social media presence and positive interaction is another. Having a physical location helps people to know you are a genuine business, rather than a rogue scammer. If you’re new to business, give a sample of your product to people in exchange for some honest reviews and testimonials, just to get you started. Without trust people aren’t going to risk their cash with you.
This is a short post and covers the very basics of selling, but I believe all businesses should be working from a solid base, so it’s an article that needs to be written, because I see so many websites not paying attention to these basic principles.