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 Ask any highly successful sales or
marketing professional and they'll tell you that the more
you understand the mindset of your prospective client, the
more effective you'll be in crafting sales and marketing
messages that resonate positively.
One key component of your client's mindset is their
readiness to buy.
While we may not have a great amount of control over this,
it's important that we understand the client's buying
mindset. It can take four different forms.
The first is what's called the Building Mindset. The
client views their current situation as one in which there
is opportunity for growth. When a client is in a building
mindset they are ready to buy goods or services that can
help them achieve the results they want. Prospects in this
mindset tend to be most interested in hearing about
specific features and benefits and are less concerned
(although not oblivious) to how your product compares to
the competition. The focus is on how specifically your
services can help them achieve their particular goal.
The more you can focus on the specifics the more effective
your proposal will be to a buyer in this buying mode.
Conversely, there are times when your client is in Pain.
Again, the client is in the mode of needing to buy goods
and services, but they will buy from the person who can
eliminate the pain the quickest. Speedy removal of the
pain is the primary objective of the client. Given a
choice between building and pain, you can rest assured
that alleviating pain will always take precedent over
building.
Not being aware of whether your prospect is in a building
or pain mindset is often a common problem. Although you
may assume that the client is in one mindset you need to
be prepared to quickly shift gears if it becomes apparent
that your initial assumption is incorrect.
The advantages of having clients in either a pain or
building mindset is that you know they're going to be open
to buying services that will help them grow their
businesses or alleviate the pain. The most challenging
buying mode is what we call Happy State. That's when the
needs of the customer are pretty well served by the
products or services he's currently using. When the client
is in this happy state there are a couple of things we can
try to reinvigorate the need to buy.
The first is to let them know about trouble or pain that
may be headed their way. In order to be credible, the more
you can discuss specific examples of the problems others
are facing in their industry, the more attention you're
going to get. Naturally, in order for this strategy to be
effective you've got to be completely up to speed on
what's going on in their industry. You've got to be
reading what your customers are reading, attending the
professional association meetings, and learning about the
issues that that are of most importance to them.
While giving your clients insights
about the future is one strategy to move them off the
happy mindset, an alternative strategy is to readjust
their thinking about their business performance. This is
particularly effective when you know that your client's
competitors are achieving greater levels of success than
your client is.
"Yes Ms. Client what you're achieving is good,
however I must tell you that Your Chief Competitor just
reported earnings that are 15% greater. We've done some
investigating about how they achieved those results and I
think we could help you do the same or better."
Either of these strategies gives you a fighting chance of
getting your client out of the happy state and into a
position where they are interested in learning more about
your products or services. Think about it from your own
company's perspective. Even if you were satisfied and
content, if I was to come to you with information about
why your competitors were more successful, wouldn't you
want to know how they're getting those results?
When a client is in the happy mindset it's generally
easier to sell growth than it is pain avoidance.
Unfortunately, we are usually short sighted and hope that
bad events won't hit us directly. It's far more fun and
sexy to grow a business than it is to focus on problems.
It's one of those terrible ironies that it's very
difficult to sell pain unless the person is actually
experiencing it. However, if you have an appreciation for
both mindsets you can quickly switch gears and position
your presentation in a way that is most likely to be
received favorably.
The fourth mindset is Fantasy Land, and unfortunately
there isn't too much you can do when your client is in
this mindset, except wait. In the fantasy land mode the
client thinks they are doing wonderfully, when in fact
their results are terrible. Reality just hasn't hit them
yet. They're living in a dream world. Although there is
nothing you can do short-term to change their mind, the
good news is that sooner or later reality will hit and
then the prospect will most likely fall into the pain
mode.
From a strategic standpoint you want to know the buying
mode of your clients since this will give you clues for
your speeches, articles and other follow-up activities.
For example, one of the challenges people face when they
prepare a presentation or begin to write an article is
that they don't know what to speak or write about. A
helpful idea is to focus on the business issues your
clients are facing and the kinds of results they're
looking for.
In other words, discuss the buying mode that they're in.
If you follow this strategy it is likely that your article
or speech will have a broad industry appeal, since if
something pains one company, there's a high probability
that others are also impacted.
This is yet another advantage of making sure you
understand the buying mindset of your prospective clients.
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