In a nutshell, your customers are likely going to purchase from you for one of three reasons. Each of those three goals has unique strategies that you can implement to help boost your sales.
1. Converting the Customer to Your Product
When trying to convert customers to your product, it’s natural to focus on hot-button topics such as price or quality. While those are important aspects of any buying decision that your customers make, they might not be the motivators that push them to make that purchase. Instead, you need to understand the pain points that are driving their current situation and create a sales presentation that addresses those.
2. Your Customer is Upgrading to a Better Product
Convincing a customer to upgrade to a better product can be more difficult than converting them from your competition. First, you need to understand what’s motivating your customer. Then you need to demonstrate how an upgrade helps them achieve success. For example, convincing a contractor to spring for the upgrade hinges on a comparable cut in labor costs. Perhaps an upgrade equates to a faster installation or the ability for less skilled workers to successfully work with the product.
3. You’re Introducing the Customer to a New Product
A completely new product — as opposed to the latest reincarnation of an existing product — requires being able to identify early adopters of trends and focus your efforts on selling to them. In order to do so, relate your product to something that the customer is already familiar with, explain what it does, how it’s different and why the customer should use it.
It’s important to properly monitor your customers’ experience with using a new product. You want to recognize and acknowledge any issues and move quickly to address them. Understand that in order to become a success, a new product needs sufficient time to become accepted.
Before rolling out your next marketing and sales strategy, identify your goals in doing so. That’s the first step in developing a plan that targets the right customer using a focused approach that delivers a meaningful message.
