Customer acquisition tactics for better selling!

The 4 different ways to communicate with buyers

It is an art by itself to get prospects ask for what they want and align them with the product you have. To be successful at this you need to understand your potential customers, to an extent no one else does, including your customers themselves. The complexity of this riddle demands the combined power of Product Management, Marketing and Sales functions to draft a strategy.

It all starts with your understanding

Your understanding of target market does not begin to happen when you are with the prospect, selling your solution. It starts when your Product Manager delves into doing market research and persona lifecycle analysis, trying to decide what the product should do and how. When the problem is clearly understood, that moment you have taken the product halfway to being sale-able. The baton is taken one lap further when the Product Manager sits with sales and marketing functions to position the message accurately through mediums conducive to prospects.

“The Usual-Prospects”

Before drafting the message it is important to understand who you are talking to. There are four kinds of prospects you might probably meet. Your prospects must pass these 4 stages before your solution can be sold.

1. Those who do not yet understand the need for your solution
2. Those who have are aware of the problem but not convinced about the value you offer
3. Those who have started evaluating your product or service with reservations and unknown apprehensions
4. Those who are concerned about the price or thinking if this is the best time to buy

Based on the prospect’s mindset you need to trigger questions that make them move to the next stage of buying process. Now let us drill down further by analyzing each of the above stages and the transition process.

Journey through the minds of your prospects

“I don’t need” to “I sure need it” stage

If you are selling a CRM application you might find businesses working with emails and google contacts to manage the customer data. Though their business is scaling big they are not yet aware of the benefits a CRM would bring to their business. Ask them some questions to validate your understanding about your prospect.

1. Have you started to lose conversations with your prospects?
2. Are your new hires in the organization communicate with leads without any historical context of engagement?
3. Are the above issues costing you a few deals frequently?

If you hear “Yes” to the above questions it is easy to convince them that a different tool could help their business. You can move them to the next stage by showing a couple of numbers on how much they could earn with the tool and how productive their resources can become.

“I know i need it, but why should I consider you?”

Now that the prospect is aware of the problem they have, they are not sure why to trust your solution over others. To make them believe you have the best solution in market, show them how your product is different from others —

Build Trust: Your longevity, existing customers, business partners, team strength

Build Confidence: Ways to reach your support, business process consultation, on-boarding and training

Be little personal: Price comparison, plan comparison, feature comparison, security

You might have collaterals to drive the information as noted above but it will work better when the engagement is driven through questions directed at understanding what makes specific sense to your prospects rather than choking their minds with generic information. Getting them sign-up to your solution is a validation that they have moved to the next stage.

“I can trust you, but I do not know where to start”

Prospects once in this stage would show high vulnerability due to various reasons including non-availability of time, inability to convince other stake holders and team members who will use the product, ongoing business issues and deadlines, confusion around where to start, etc. Getting them out of this stage is crucial in your conversion step.

1. Understand which of the above problem is relevant to the prospect
2. Constantly follow-up and offer your availability for presentations with stakeholders
3. Help them setup your solution and integrate with existing systems, products and processes, so everyone in the team finds ease with the solution
4. Identify if they need more features to integrate our business processes better.
5. Do everything to help them realize a value out of your solution before they are ready to pay

“Now it all boils down to $”

Here is the last step to kickstart a long term relationship with a new business. Even after you have sorted out all the doubts your deal might get delayed due to following reasons:

1. We do not have sufficient budget to pay you in one shot, can we pay you monthly or in batches?
2. Can we ask for more discounts? The product is quite expensive for us.
3. It is too much of a commitment for us and a huge lock-in investment to start with your solution.

Be sure to what extent you are ready to discount your product to close the last leg of negotiations and come out with a signed-deal.

You would have noticed that the whole conversion process is driven by questions you ask to prospects. Yes, it is your questions that sell your product and not mere selling through cold calls and demos.

It is important you ask questions that help people find answers in your product.

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