Here’s the most frequent conversation I have with business owners:
“My product / service is superior to what my competition offers, but my business isn’t growing – and I can’t understand why people are buying from them and not buying from me. It must be my marketing. Is that true?”
And my answer to this is…
“It could be. But more than likely, your marketing alone is not the main issue. If you are like most in business, the problem is more about Kool-Aid!”
Imagine the looks I get from this statement. Let me explain.
Drinking the Kool-Aid.
Some of you may remember the story of the 1978 mass suicide in Jonestown, when cult leader, Jim Jones convince hundreds of people to drink a grape kool-aid and poison concoction to simultaneously kill themselves. Since then, the urban phrase, “drinking the Kool-Aid” has meant “…to blindly embrace some ideology or argument without much reasoning or critical examination.” These people just accepted and acted on what he was saying without thinking about it.
As business owners, executives and marketing professionals, this is similar to what we expect from our customers. We know what makes our product or service great, and we assume all others will just trust us and drink the Kool-Aid as well. That is, they don’t have to be educated and convinced why our product or service is a better fit for them. Instead, we believe they just have to be told that it is and they will buy it.
And THAT is the biggest mistake most people make in marketing. Assuming people don’t have a decision to make. The question is, if you are honest with yourself, are you making this mistake in your business? If so, you need to read the rest of this post.
Buyers vs. Sellers
Buying is a process and selling is a process, but each are certainly not the SAME process.
I worked years ago in marketing for an engineering firm. We often had to provide the President with weekly sales pipeline reports across the organization. Part of that work for me was to get each person in business development to estimate a percent chance we would close each piece of business.
When you ask this question of someone in sales or business development to estimate the chance of closing a piece of business, what answers do you think you would get? Well actually, they were all over the board.
Some would say, “I have talked to the owner on the phone and given them an in-person presentation. So I would say 75%.” Others would say, “You know, they called us for a quote. So I would say 50-50.”
The trouble with both of these examples is that neither truly address where the buyer is in the process. It’s where the seller thinks he/she is in the sales process.
Same thing happens with marketing. Someone signs up for your newsletter or downloads a client case study and you turn them over to sales, assuming they are in “buying-mode.” In reality this may not be the case.
When a seller or marketer understands the value proposition, (that is, the trait, characteristic or real reason your ideal client will buy from you) nine times out of ten, they assume the prospects understands it also (or quickly will get it if you just tell them).
And most often this is not the case.
To fix this problem, you have to be in the buyer’s shoes. You have to truly understand and work in the BUYER’S process – not the SELLER’S or MARKETER’S process.
The Buyer’s Journey
Did you realize that all buyers go through the SAME series of steps when they are evaluating a product or service to buy? It’s true.
One of the most enlightening things I share with my private clients is this secret. And I want to share it with you as well.
I created a quick, little course (definitely rough around the edges) to walk you through what I call The Buyer’s Journey. This is a little of our “Secret Sauce” if you will. When you finish this course, I promise, It will completely change the way you are marketing and selling to your prospects.
Although I typically only share this during a private client strategic marketing session with those that pay $5,000 for a plan, or during my day-long seminars, I want to share this with you because of the HUGE impact I think it will have on your business.
And, I don’t want cost to be a hindrance. But I don’t want it to be free so you don’t go through the course. Let’s face it, everything that’s free is less important to us.
So I was going to charge $97 for this course.
But instead, I thought I would change the game and mark it down to $9 with this coupon code:
JOURNEY2016
Don’t wait to snatch this up before it goes away. Click the link below and change your business forever.
