No matter how confident we appear to everyone around us, deep within our consciousness fear, skepticism and insecurities are messing with our heads. This is true no matter who you are, or how powerful or every-day you may be. This Unspoken Inner Dialogue is taking place all of the time, even during the sales process. Questions we subconsciously process like:
“Do people hate me?”
“Did I just say THAT? How dumb did that sound????”
“Does he like/love me?”
“Do I look fat/old/ugly?”
If you don’t address your potential purchaser’s comfort level, you’re probably not going to make the sale and you certainly aren’t going to develop a lifelong happy customer. So exactly what questions do buyers process as you are trying to sell them something – and why should you care?
First: “What are you trying to sell me?”
Second: “How much is this going to cost me?”
Until you make your buyer comfortable with what your offer is, he’s not going to pay attention to what you’re saying about your wonderful, amazing, life-changing product or service. And if you’re just trying to finesse your way through the sales process without addressing your buyer’s comfort level, if you should happen to make a sale you can be certain that you will see that customer again – asking for a refund! Or even worse, telling everyone how you cheated him.
You can always sucker someone into giving you money – once.
But a master, a person who knows how to make a quality offer, will wow her customer once and then again and again and again – until both buyer and seller have prospered.
So now you’ve laid out your quality offer. What is the next question in the Unspoken Inner Dialogue you need to address?
Question three: “Why should I believe you?”
No, really – why SHOULD someone believe you? This is critical and goes to the very heart of buyer insecurity. People have to TRUST you and believe they are not dealing with some slick snake-oil salesman who’s out to steal their money and make them feel like a fool. And, believe me, you don’t want a fool for a customer.
So you’ve been up-front about what you’re selling, you’ve been honest about how great it is, and you have been a straight-shooter about the cost. Because you are honest and you care about your customer, he is now willing to trust you.
>So what’s the fourth question you need to answer before your buyer is willing to reach for his credit card?
Tune in to channel WII-FM: “What’s in it for me?” People want to know what benefits they will get from buying your product or service. You buy the Jaguar or the Bentley, but what’s in it for you is the prestige and pleasure you get from owning the car.
You buy the health food but what’s in it for you is a healthier body and better quality of life.
A marketing truth for decades that is still true today: “People make their decisions based on emotion and justify them with logic.” So considering the four questions, the first three address the buyer’s logic and the fourth one goes to their emotions. Address only one or two of these four questions, and you will not make the sale or you will gain a fool for a customer. Either way, you lose.
So what will you do with your sales copy? Right! You will choose your words and your presentation carefully, filtered through your customer’s “Unspoken Inner Dialogue of Insecurity.” The key to your success.