Profiting Before The End of The Year
December 6th, 2018 // 1:17 pm @ Scott Manning
This time of year most people slow down, coast to the end, I say no way. Why waste the time of the year when wallets loosen up, people ask themselves what they can do to help others, and they genuinely are in a different state of mind and spirit of buying.
Granted not everybody has a business, product or service conducive to the Holiday Season, still it is the time of year when premium priced luxuries come out to play and affluent buyers make big decisions. Everything is relative…you can encourage and influence your ideal target market however you choose.
Usually I write a message now towards the end of the year about what to do to maximize your profits, such as position for raising prices, offer renewal options, introduce new services or upgrades or membership of some sort.
Or I write about ways to prepare yourself for your best year ever, like cleaning the slate, reorganizing your opportunities, taking honest assessment of the past 11 months and begin now in making sure your January gets you off on the right track for achieving your goals and objectives.
Today, this week, a slightly different approach as I will share with you 4 distinctly different methods of communicating with your buyers, basically the psychology of how you should be approaching your market. This, advance stuff, dynamically profitable for those who choose to act and deploy these strategies and messages.
To dive right in, first we have what I call “Appreciation and gratitude, the art of reciprocity marketing” this is really quite simple, embrace the spirit of the season where everyone is more generous and everyone is happier and everything celebrates something. This is when you put a Christmas wrapper around something and people buy it because it’s called the Holiday Special.
It is also marketing that is positioned as appreciation for your customers and because of this we want you to have ABC and/or this is a great way to get people to self select into a sales process designed specifically for people who buy because it’s the Holiday Shopping Season.
Next, and one of my favorite ways to sell is the “Life is short, where has time gone” buyer psyche, this is not always just an older middle age crowd this is also the busy professional, the people who get caught up in their life and/or have fewer holidays left than they have already lived and because of this the message has to do with “why wait” mentality, if it’s something you want, might as well do it now and have more time to enjoy it.
As example, you’ve always wanted to take your family on that vacation, surprise them with it this year, make this year the best because hey, we just never know when it’s our last and that moneys not worth anything when you just hang on to it anyway.
Any thing can be sold with this approach and it’s a great attention getter for unconverted leads as well.
Next up, the psychology of the best and most premium buyer…generally speaking the people who have the money you want are those who are doing things for everyone else all year round, the end of the year comes and they take at least a few days to indulge…they will buy just about anything that they have an interest in and spend 2-10x or more on something because it’s the end of the year.
This is what I call the “I deserve the best gift myself, because I can” buyer. You want to get them to raise their hands out of your list and push them by challenging them “what have you done for yourself lately” this also works great for couples…and is a perfect set up for spouse encouraging spouse close.
Finally we come to the people who you would just rather avoid…the “Ba humbug, what’s it matter, chip on the shoulder” person who for the most part they don’t go out much anyway and they couldn’t care less about the Holidays. Here is the trick to these people because you will encounter them.
They usually have had some family tragedy or live alone or it is very possible they just have a loser-mentality who feel sorry for themselves. There is only one of those 3 that you can’t help. So often times you simply need to meet them where they are at and have the conversation in a way that makes their buying from you a chance to see the world differently, to get back to good old days, to do something “in honor of” someone else.
So, there you have it. Of course this is not an extensive list of every single type of person that exist but these are the 4 big categories you can put people into. You should also note that the first three, the very best ones, will overlap and they will feel all of these things and depending on how you approach them, sell them, and what you are offering them determines which will be the reason they buy.
The most affluent people, your premium priced buyers will be an “appreciative, value life and time, do it now, because we can” buyer.
These are conversations that sell…anything…during the Holidays when you think people are only buying retail gifts, you would be wrong, they buy anything that is positioned in a way that makes it fit.
Here’s how I’d like you to think for the next couple days, not Happy Holiday Shopping… for you it should be HAPPY HOLIDAY SELLING!!
Category : Blog