Why Customers Don’t Buy… The Big 3
March 5th, 2015 // 12:25 pm @ Scott Manning
You know, it’s a common thing, we just accept what people say and we move on. We let opportunity slide by at the slightest obstacle or challenge. This is no different when you are interacting with your customers, patients, or clients in some way.
Whether it’s just trying to get them to comply, move forward, give feedback, referral, or and especially buy-in and invest with their money.
A continuation of our work together the past few weeks is now directly dealing with the money, the transaction or exchange of dollars for services or products or treatments.
Reality states, no matter how great of a job you have done up to this point, attracting customers, marketing, wowing them on your website or phone answering, or in your storefront or office, your events or seminars, or conversations whether it’s you or your team or video presentations, all of that is worthless if you aren’t closing the deal and getting the money.
It’s really that simple.
Entrepreneurs go out of business, companies go bankrupt, people live in frustrated states of despair because they never master the consummation of the customer, client, or patient.
I have solutions for you, of course, that’s why I am here.
First, you have to agree and commit to your judgment of success, your scoreboard of victory is gauged by the willingness of the people you serve voting with their dollars. Giving you money for what you do. That is the only measure of success.
They can compliment you all they want, they can write reviews, and give testimonials, they can request information, go through your experience, even come back again and again, but, if they don’t buy into what your business is about and get out their checkbook, wad of cash, or credit card you got nothing.
So, how do you make this happen?
I say there are 3 things you must understand about your customers as fact in order to help them to follow-through with their purchases.
The 3 reasons why they do not buy are:
1. They do not feel understood, listened to, or otherwise believe you have their best interest at heart…of course they know it is about money, you aren’t offering to do it for free, whatever it is that you do, still they want to feel proud to be a customer, they want to be made to feel that buying itself is a sense of accomplishment and an act of valor and confidence in themselves.
If you do not do a good enough job of helping them connect their purchase to their own satisfaction they will resist and go somewhere else, a place or a person that makes them feel better about their investment.
Most people don’t invest enough time in their sales process to gain the emotional confidence of their customer, I explained how to close the gap on this over the past 2 weeks.
2. Your customers do not feel compelled to buy now, today, in this moment…this is very very big – it’s huge actually and it is so easy to fix, I mean literally it’s VERY easy to change this. In fact I have 3 strategies that I use most frequently when building into a sales experience to offset the “why by now” or “I’ll wait” issue.
Quickly, the three strategies are;
A – Looking into the crystal ball of the future, showing the consequences or rewards of making a decision today. This is about making them feel they are worth it, now is better than later.
B – Bluntly stating to them that nothing is going to change, only get worse, because it has taken them this long to get here and you feel it is your responsibility to be their catalyst to move forward and be proactive, this is where you step up as a leader, you have been given their permission by the nature of being an advisor to them and you know best. If not now, when? They will always be in limbo. They know this they just don’t want to admit it and will ignore it unless you call their attention to it.
C – You can do the old comparison of cost vs time savings vs delay, what happens if they wait, the fee goes up, the trouble goes up, the time to enjoy and benefit goes down…the reality is not moving forward will only result in it being more expensive later on and you will lose life/time in the process. This appeals to their logic.
So, A is emotional. C is logical. B is a combination of the two.
3. The 3rd reason why people don’t buy is because they want to be TOLD what to do. They do not want a slouch, they don’t want someone who gives up on them so easily. They have been conditioned to avoid buying anything. They always blame it on price or say “I have to think about it” because you let them. They do not know what else to do, I will say this again, it is habitual. You understand, they do it by default.
Customers, Patients, Clients expect LEADERSHIP in fact, isn’t that what they are paying for in the first place. Your expertise and experience your guidance is why they are even considering being your customer in the first place.
Give them what they want.
If you let everyone say they want to wait or they can’t afford it heavens you would have no customers. Stop accepting the fact that you take no proactive measures to be in control and using the excuse of letting your customers decide or blaming it on money or anything else.
It’s simply not true.
No person engages with a business without the intention of buying – NEVER.
Now they may want “information” first, but they don’t want information on something they are not interested in…do you see what I’m saying.
We do not accept responsibility for our customers buying decisions and that’s just wrong – it’s like saying you don’t accept responsibility for your child’s actions.
My point is, do not accept these 3 reasons as the constitution, they are made up things in the customer’s mind that you have complete control over.
If you think about all the reasons people do not buy or accept what you offer, you can offset them with very specific language, conversation, proof, information, a sales experience process that will help be their guide in their decision making.
Above all else, please, begin with the end in mind to borrow from Covey, you must believe in the outcome and their intentions, you have to play the game to win and know that is what the Customer wants otherwise they would have never shown up in the first place.
Now. Take this and do something with it. Train your sales people, give them scripts to offset these, tools to use, and enhance your website, sales package, phone dialogue, face to face presentation – more engagement, more involvement, more control, layout the path and the customer will follow.
You see, sometimes you are more in the way of the customer than they are…think about it. Make it easy to buy and help them say yes.
Scott
Category : Blog
