Are you selling your product or are you fixing your customer’s issue?

Adriano Meirinho
Aug 23, 2017 · 3 min read

Why are so reluctant to help our audience before they become our customers? See how you can sell using strategies that start before the purchase.

You decide to go downtown in order to buy compartments which will help you organize your house. You walk through the street and you hear the speakers of department stores desperately yelling: “Bed linen with a 50% discount only today!”, “Spring-Summer collection with garments from R$19,90!”, “Mobile cases of all sizes for R$20,00!”.

After walking for a while amidst raucous noises without actually finding what you need, you arrive home and decide to check the prices on online stores. You access a cookware store and right away a pop-up showing a discount appears on your screen. On the side, a push inviting you to subscribe the newsletter. You check some products, you even add a set to the shopping cart, but then you decide not to buy anything.

The following day, as you check your social media platforms, all pages point out to the website you’ve accessed in sidebar ads. Your email inbox already has two messages from that store prompting you to finish the purchase you have added to the cart, offering special terms of payment. The sentences amount to numbers, urgency promotion. They are invasive, abundant, uninteresting. Does it work? I’d say yes, but does it work in the long term? Reducing margins to extreme works for whom?

Did it sound familiar?

Pushing your products on customers is not the equivalent of selling. Using strategies based on discounts, promotions, making the purchase easier may even be beneficial in specific moments, but where can one find the real reasons why the customer wants your product?

Just because a ship has a 60% discount that doesn’t mean everyone will want to buy it right away. Who are the people who need a ship? Where are they? Why do they need it for? What sort of situations generate this need? The price is only the final trigger.

Does your product fixes the customer’s issue? Have your actions been geared towards sales only or have they tried to understand the audience first, focusing on clear and satisfying solutions? When it comes to B2B sales, I realize that some actions can only be perceived in the long run, but there are always ways to start helping and presenting results from micro to macro.

Some actions that can be taken before the moment of closing the contract are: understanding the customer’s purchasing process, finding the audience’s ideal profiles, presenting your solutions instead of just talking, finding someone who is influential and has decision power inside the company, being attentive to customer service, packaging, delivery quality. All this should be part of your sales process.

Helping your customers, even when there is not a commercial relationship between you, will only show how trustworthy and committed your company is. What resources, news, references, advice or other valuable targets would you share with them in order to be remembered?

You may even teach your audience to fish, but let it be clear that you are the only one who will always have the reel, the line and the right bait to catch the best fish.

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Marketing, E-business and Entrepreneurship

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