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Trust by Your Customer Begins with Your Understanding
By John Aberle | Prospecting
By John Aberle | Prospecting
Soft sell sales and soft sell marketing look to understand the problems
There’s another cliché in sales and marketing that says, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” And for me, caring becomes immensely easier when I understand something about what my prospect is dealing with. It makes them human, not numbers, people with problems I can relate to.
This is why I stress the importance of defining your ideal customer. Sure, doing so narrows down the list of prospects from billions worldwide to a manageable size. But just having names doesn’t open many doors these days. Any outside sales person knows how successful he’s going to be knocking on doors without an appointment to ask, “Would you like to buy my product?” Even Brownies and Girl Scouts get rejected these days if that’s their sole sale pitch.
Knowing your ideal customer means you can study why they bought from you or your company. What were the problems they needed a solution for that you provided?
Their challenges give you a meaningful opening with prospects, such as, “Ms. Jones, 40% of our customers came to us to help them resolve a problem with excessive failure rates on the milling of …. Are your production people dealing with that issue too?”
Success in soft sell marketing and soft sell sales requires developing relationships. Crucial to doing this is the prospect coming to know, like, and trust you. This happens naturally when you show you care by understanding their challenges and problems then showing up to work with them on developing a solution that’s best for them. Caring can’t be faked for long in a complex sale.
So before you go prospecting that list of companies matching your ideal customer profile, be sure you understand their problems. That’s your second step needed to help customers buy.
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