Why Sales Is Never About Pitching A Product, Or A Service
We live in a time when we have more choice, and variety than ever before.
You can get a product, or service, through multiple vendors, multiple brands, and multiple suppliers.
Every single one of us has to make choices, and decisions about every little thing.
It’s no doubt, one of the reasons why Steve Jobs maintained a standard wardrobe of identical clothing. So that he wouldn’t have to make the choice about what clothes to wear every day, and preserve some of his decision making bandwidth.
We no longer buy things just because of their pure functionality. There was a time when you could go into a store, ask for a blender, and you’d get the one blender they stocked. Now, if you want to blend things, you can get everything from low end £20/£30 blenders upto £500/£600+ blenders. Some will break the moment you put in hard fruits or veg, others are strong enough to blend an iPhone.
As a result of this information overwhelm, we’ve stopped buying based on just criteria. It’s not about the product, or service, or what it can do for us.
Instead, we look for the benefit to us. We want to know how will this be of value to me, in my life. Not what can it do, but instead how will this impact my life?
Suddenly there’s a very different conversation happening in the marketplace. You might know that you want something that does X, Y, Z — but you’re not going to buy based on the functional specifications (very few people are that diligent as to buy the ‘best’ tool for the job, and research every variation out there of potential solutions).
Most people buy based on emotion. And emotion is really really fickle. If you feel happy, and elated, or sad and deflated, you end up deciding you want to buy, or not buy something from someone.
However, more than just what you decide, and how some ‘thing’ makes you feel, you rely upon how you feel, when relying on other people’s opinions, or perspective.
You’re looking for someone with the moral authority to tell you what to do, so that you can go ahead and trust their judgement, and take the need to scrutinise, deliberate, and decide out of the equation.
Amazon does it really well. They let users reviews inform the buying decisions of thousands of buyers every day.
We as a society have started doing it more and more ourselves too. We’ll ask our friends, or our social networks (Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn) what they would advise or recommend.
We look for endorsement and recommendation from someone who we can either trust, or respect, enough to then be able to take their judgement and layer it upon ours, before making our final choices. (I see it happen all the time when people ask about the latest phone or technical gadget).
What this means, is that it’s no longer just about the physical product, or the service being offered. No, instead, it’s about the story that someone tells you about that thing you’re looking for.
Whether anecdotal evidence, or factual proof, we want to hear the stories that bring something alive. We learn through stories. We remember through stories. And most importantly, we engage emotionally thorough stories as well.
Our emotions are rarely ever moved by stoic facts. But instead are brought alive by the compelling narrative that is told compellingly though adverts, and other media.
However, the trust put into an advert, is always less than the trust put into a friendly recommendation.
So how to create a context that encourages recommendation, and endorsement instead of merely becoming the interesting facts and statistics that bore people to death.
This is where the importance of the ‘Why’ comes into play. Simon Sinek shares, in one of the most popular TedX talks of all time, the power of why. He talks about how the emotional attachment is created before people are then brought to a buying decision, which is the natural consequence of people identifying themselves as the protagonists in the story that Apple tell about who they are, and more importantly why they exist.
I recently had the priviledge to be exposed to a mentor/coach who coaches over 1 million students per month in the principles and practices of online marketing. He goes onto to deconstruct further how to go from being a ‘person’ trying to make a sale online, into how to create a system that does all the selling for you.
I don’t expect most people will be able to make that leap and know straight away how to take what is taught, and convert that into an actual system for selling, and so instead, he’s literally built a training environment that helps people learn, by leveraging the systems and processes that he teaches, so that people start generating results, and making a return on the investments into advertising and marketing online. In doing so, he then goes on to equip people with enough belief in themselves, and apprenticed knowledge that people can then focus on developing their own mastery, with the eventual goal being to become completely independent of the need for any training wheels, and be able to sell or promote anything online, by packaging it up, and creating a compelling narrative around it, that draws people in.
However, as my mentor doesn’t intend to share his knowledge with just anyone, he’s only interested in imparting it to people who are committed to succeeding. You see selling online, is just like any other skill. At first it can be difficult. It will take effort. You might fail, before you see any real successes. And more importantly you need to be able to fuel yourself with your own determination and motivation, before you can expect to achieve any meaningful level of success.
If you want to check out how he packages up making sales online, and the training system he’s put together to help people self-finance themselves to a point of being able to keep growing, learning, and developing their skills (after all the money for advertising online needs to come from somewhere right?) you can watch this webinar* that he recently ran live. It was never meant to be available for a replay, but after holding the live webinar, I think the quality of the training was such, that it just seemed unfair not to let others learn from it, so it’s still up for a day or two (as of writing 13th July 2016).
I’ve signed up as a student myself, and like all good students, I got inspired to practice what I learnt, and try teaching some of the principles I learnt by sharing it with others. What do you think?
Does the principle, and approach make sense?
Do you creating compelling stories, and narratives fuelled with a powerful why around your products and services?
Or are you busy trying to sell nuts and bolts to people looking for nails and hammers?
Also — I’d love to hear if you have any interesting ways in which you’ve packaged up your products/services in a story, or narrative that triggers emotions? Or if you focus on the features and specifications to make the sale for you?
Look forward to reading your comments below.
*Disclaimer — I am a student affiliated with the training that I’ve suggested, and if after watching the webinar you decide to buy anything, or enrol as a member of the community, I will receive a commission, and additional incomes from any other products or services that you buy. (In return for which, I’ll be happy to help/coach/support you should you choose to want to learn how to make sales online in an automated manner).
This entry was posted on Monday, July 11th, 2016 at 10:43 pm and is filed under Being an Expert. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
Originally published here: http://theimaffiliate.com/why-sales-is-never-about-pitching-a-product-or-a-service
