Tapping Into The Minds Of Your “Voters” Part 2
July 30th, 2020 // 1:29 pm @ Scott Manning
The first big shift in any business is when you move from selling your product or service to selling the benefits and outcomes for your customers. Most business owners (or sales people) are so in love with their own stuff that’s all they talk about.
That becomes a challenge because most people are not buying the “thing” they are buying what the “thing” does for them, what it provides, what it gives, what results it delivers.
There are of course aficionados for everything; the other people who are also in love with the ‘thing’ but they are the minority. Furthermore, if they loved it as much as you did, they’d be working with you or would have become you.
As an example, most my very smart Doctors love the “clinical” side of dentistry – they like the how to and the science of it. However, most patients don’t actually want any dentistry. In fact, quite the opposite, the goal of most people is to do as little dentistry as possible.
When you focus on selling of the thing you really miss the point.
Instead, our Doctors and their Teams focus on selling the healthy outcomes of the dentistry, the impact when a patient says yes, and the consequence if a patient would say no.
That’s instructive: sell what happens if you do business with us and sell what you will be without doing business with us.
Once again, you see that in politics all the time. It’s not about the “thing” it’s about what the results of who you vote for will be. Not too many people are interested in reading hundreds of pages of policy or researching more than a dozen cabinet appointees. They only care about the outcome: the benefits of your side winning or the consequences if you lose.
This should be made evident in your selling experience and customer educational process.
Then you want to really double down on what I pointed to last week about enthusiasm and get your customers excited about the fact that they are making a great decision. They are winning for themselves by saying yes to becoming your customer.
Now, are you ready for the advanced strategy? The average business stops there. They move beyond selling the thing to selling what the thing does and how it helps but the best companies dig deeper and they move beyond just benefits and consequences to the actual emotional feelings of what becoming your customer is all about.
When I give you money and when I buy what you are selling, how will it make me feel… as a result of the actual real changes and impacts that I will experience.
Again, using my doctors as an example, when someone fixes their sleep apnea they have more energy and they are less tired throughout the day. That’s all wonderful, but don’t stop there. How will that impact your life, what will you now be able to do, how will that make you feel about yourself.
The same goes for a smile, getting rid of a denture, or getting out of pain.
You simply don’t stop; instead extrapolate.
You want to get into the visualization of the emotion behind the decision and take them there before not after they give you their money.
Watch a weight loss commercial and see how many times they use the word “feel” or some expression of emotion. Sure, they say “I lost 5 pounds in two weeks,” but you’ll also hear “I feel amazing!”
The same thing goes for selling martial arts classes or going to Disney or owning an iPhone or buying a new car or buying a house.
Even the seemingly most logical decisions void of any emotion whatsoever, the buyer “feels” smart, practical, peace of mind, etc.
How can you implement this in your business? Where are you failing to elicit emotions throughout your entire process.
More stories, examples, testimonials, but even more so how can you make it vivid by bringing out the feelings of the buyer. You must tap into how they want to feel.
This is very important and it literally transcends your business to a place where price is not the main focus and where customers are working with you not against you to be part of what you are selling.
When you grasp this and then embrace the application of it inside of your business, you will see the buying shift, as I like to say, from a tug of war to everyone wanting the same thing. You don’t want to be in an adversarial relationship with your customer where they want the opposite of what you want. When you change the dynamic and shift the paradigm of your message to be a mutual mission, you are fighting for them not against them.
Now, it gets fun when you take the lessons we’ve gone over and put them all together. If you write out a list of “for” and “against” for your customers based on their mindsets, emotions, and what they want and you apply this to every aspect of your business, product, service, feature, benefit, consequence, and ultimately outcomes, you will have a much greater understanding of how your customer sees you by learning more about how they see themselves and what they really want – thus what they are really buying.
Since we have been talking politics, voters, and your campaigning messages, I want to bring this full circle. When you think about the reds and blues, you can easily make a list of ‘for’ and ‘against’ and then if you extrapolate the ‘benefits’ and ‘consequences’ into the ‘feelings’ behind each of these, you will see how platforms, messages, voter blocks are built and formed. That’s how you rally enthusiasm for winning and why it becomes so very personal.
When you learn how to move those psychological principles and you do this exercise with your business, you will have moved much closer to mastering your ability to influence your own base and you’ll find ways to expand your reach.
I’d love to review your completed activity that you do for your own business. It’d be my pleasure. Have fun with it and get out there and build your campaign but don’t do it with the wrong focus, it can’t be on your business, it needs to be on your customer.
Until next week… work on better understanding your voters and what makes them think, act, and feel.
Category : Blog