So you know who your ideal customer is and you’re talking their language. You’ve asked questions to uncover their need and now you’ve offered your solution.
Or have you? It seems like you did everything right, but the customer walked away.
How does this happen? Sometimes when you get so fixated on making the sale and you’re excited about the customer saying all the right things, you miss the point that you’re both focusing on the wrong need. There can sometimes be a much more powerful need that gets overlooked. If this true motivator doesn’t get addressed, the solution will never be compelling enough.
Consider this example:
A young family goes to buy a new car. The dad wants a sporty look and a sleek design. The mum loves having all the mod cons.
They arrive at the car yard and tell the salesperson what they’re looking for. The salesperson shows them a sleek, sporty looking model with a sunroof, bluetooth, sat nav, adaptive cruise control, parking sensors, automatic adjustable seats and touch free tailgate operation.
The couple is excited. They love it. It is exactly what the dad wants. It has all the features that the mum wants plus extras. They talk it over and decide it’s a little bit over their budget. They decide to keep looking.
The salesperson did a good job, but failed to uncover what matters more to the couple than style and features; the safety of their children. If the salesperson had asked more questions, he would’ve found this out and been able to provide the right solution — the car having extra airbags and the highest safety rating available. If he’d been able to focus in on this solution, he probably would’ve got the sale.
Today’s challenge is to take more time asking questions and to pay more attention to clarifying how important the need is to customer. One technique is to ask a clarifying question such as “on a scale of one to ten, how important is it for you to solve xyz need today?” If you’re not getting an eight or above, you’re probably not focusing in on providing the most important solution.
In this case, keep asking more questions and try to uncover what else might be hiding underneath. the types of questions you can ask are:
- Can you tell me more about xyz problem?
- Is there anything else you need to help solve xyz problem?
- Is xyz problem the only consideration or is there anything else we should be considering to help find the best solution for you?