Attracting new leads and sales is the lifeblood of any business.
Yes, customer retention is critical, make your clients happy.
But without new sales, you can’t achieve your dreams of doing great tours and focusing only on the parts of the business you like doing.
It is vital to set up a process that will bring new ideal clients to your business. And automating it as much as possible.
I would like to share a piece of advice that will hopefully save you months or years of frustration because things are not working out as you hoped they would.
Buying is about emotion
Meet Joe. Joe went to the restaurant with his girlfriend and is choosing what to eat. He chose a steak and a salad.
Why?
Maybe he envisioned the pleasure of the delicious taste and the soft bite that melts under your tongue. (Thinking of himself as “A person enjoying life”)
Or
Maybe he thought about how he will feel after choosing the steak and a salad instead of French fries and a burger. (Thinking of himself as “A person taking care of himself”)
Different emotions, different Joe.
The “second Joe” is more health-oriented, “first Joe” is more about pleasure.
But how you get the first Joe to your restaurant differs from how you would get the second Joe.
I will give you another example that will make things even clearer soon
People searching for any other services do it in the same way.
They have emotional needs they need to take care of.
The principle is the same.
Emotions are always present.
Think about what is the emotional need of people seeking your help
Is your messaging in tune with this emotional need?
Let’s say we are selling cooking tours. We sold a couple tours but we are not happy with how the sales are going.
It is easy to find at least 3 different motivations why people want to buy the tour.
People want to learn how to cook to feel independent
The title that could work for this emotional state is:
Take control of your life and your health
Learn how to cook delicious meals by yourself
Maybe the best customers buy because they want to feel more respected and confident in their home
Here, a better title would be
Make them notice you
“Create a meal that will make your guests beg for more,”
Or they want to express their creativity in the kitchen. They want to feel creative again.
A title that could work in this case is:
Express yourself in the kitchen
Online cooking course that will release your inner gourmet Chef
You can only choose one title! The customer has to tell you what the right title is.
It’s all about your audience.
About your customer.
Each of the titles would be ok in a setting but could also totally flop if the audience is not correct.
This goes to the core component of picking your niche
If you chose a title, not in sync with your ideal client, you are losing sales.
You cannot create anything with everyone in mind.
Even Facebook started with only Harvard students in mind.
“Expand from success rather than contract from failure”
So how to discover your customer’s buying intention?
If you have existing clients, go to the source. Interview them.
The famous 5 WHY’S
You can use the “5 why” method developed by the founder of Toyota. To get to the root of the problem, you have to dig deep. So you have to ask “why” to each answer 5 times in a row.
Why #1
Ask them why they bought. In our cooking class example, they might say:
“I wanted to learn for a long time and now it looked the right time to do it,”
Why # 2
Ask them to expand on their words: “You said the time looked right now? Why is that, what was happening in your life?”
Maybe they will answer:
” My kids went to the summer camp and my husband was working a lot so I had more free time. I also wanted to impress my husband with a nice dinner just for the 2 of us. He is always raving about his grandmother’s cooking”
Why # 3,4,5
Things will become trickier and trickier. The answers will become deeper and the debate more personal. Focus and try to find and dig into the most important parts of the answer. Here, we want to go deeper into why does she want to impress her husband with the cooking. Many possibilities then come out.
Ask the “why” as many times as you can.
You can read more about the 5 why method here.
I will create a blog post about customer interviews soon.
Sign up here and I will let you know you when.
