How to be More Effective and Authentic in Marketing and Sales

How to be More Effective and Authentic in Marketing and Sales

As a small business coach, I have seen plenty of business plans, or moreover, marketing plans go awry when marketing messages and sales conversations fail to nurture prospects effectively. If we don’t market well, we won’t attract the right opportunities, and if we don’t sell credibly, then we’re unlikely to convert those into clients in the best possible way. Doing this is just inefficient, and who likes that? Definitely not me?

How can we market with greater effectiveness to ensure we are attracting the right leads? Following on from them being a lead and now a prospect, how do we sell even more authentically making it a fun and enjoyable experience for all involved?

The best way is to nurture your prospects through the sales funnel, ensuring that you address their emotional and logical needs. If the emotional and rational nuances of sales and marketing is new to you, then stay on board this blog journey, and I’ll show you how to use it!

Why is this important?

Understanding and applying knowledge of how we make purchasing decisions will, I guarantee, help to grow your business. It will help you to connect more deeply and have better relationships with your customers. What does that create? Happier, more satisfied and more aligned customers! More referrals! More revenue! All of that means, a better overall business!

What is it?

Humans are inherently bad at making decisions. Most humans think that when they seek a product or service, it’s a logical match. “It has to have X features, and it needs to do Y and when I see that it also does  Z then I know it’s right for me.”

If your product and service, and thus your sales conversation happens to match entirely to your customer’s logical desires, you’d expect that you would have a sale. If we take this, you’d think if you’re thirsty, then a cup of tap water (depending on where you get it from) will do the job. Why then do you reach for the Pump, Evian, or San Pellegrino?

Most of the time, we make decisions, not just based on the criteria of X, Y and Z, but there is a deeper, emotional connection to why we make a purchase decision, most of the time we can’t articulate it, but we feel it.

Our emotional brain is at work.

As sales-people, if we fail to understand and address the needs of the logical and emotional sides of the brain, then it’s more than likely that our prospect won’t enjoy the sales conversation and we will lose the sale.

What’s the emotional brain?

When the product fills the logical need, we make the final purchase decision when there is congruence with how people want to  FEEL when consuming it.

For example – A holiday isn’t just a plane trip and a hotel and a cocktail by the pool (the features). It solves the problem of burnout; it gives relaxation, adventure and variety. If you’re a travel agent, why would they go with you? You would hope you offer security and trustworthiness (all emotional ties to what a holiday gives you).

Let’s take a real-world example of Coke. Coke never promotes itself as a sugary, fizzy drink. It sells you the experience that you’ll have with Coke. Their marketing depicts having fun, enjoying the outdoors, being happy and being surrounded by family and friends. So they are selling a sugary drink based on your emotions, and they’ve been doing so with great effect for decades.

How can I use this knowledge to improve my sales and marketing?

It’s not enough to only promote the features of your product or service. Your ability to know and communicate the emotional reason that people seek your product or service is as equally important. How? Know the deep problem that your product or service solves. Think of emotional cues that people have expressed as a result of engaging with your product or service. Does it reduce overwhelm, does it increase connection? Does it provide growth? Does it give you more time, increase energy? Does it give you a feeling of being supported?

In your marketing, you will want to capture the emotional problem that you solve in your content, and then ensure that when you’re having a sales conversation, you’re then picking up on these problems in an authentic way.

How do you do that? Focus on open-ended questions that guides your prospect to explore the emotional reasons for making the purchase decision. Pick up on the cues aligned with the emotional problems you solve. Here are some questions to incorporate:

  • “What would be the purpose of buying this product / service?”
  • “What will that give you?”
  • “How will you know you’ve achieved it?”
  • “How are things going to be different when you’ve achieved that purpose of X?”
  • “How is it impacting your organisation/customers/staff?”
  • “What’s the impact on you?”
  • “How is this important to you?”
  • And one of the best questions you can ask… “Tell me more…” or “Go on…”

Your customer WANTS an emotional investment in their purchase. Ensuring that the product not only solves their logical problem but also connects with their human emotional needs reduces their dissonance between where they are and where they want to be.

Can you get it wrong?

Yes, you can get it wrong. Have you ever left a sales discussion all pumped and excited then things doesn’t stack up and you back out? If you spend all your time in the emotional quadrant of the sales chat, your prospect is likely to have “the feels”, but you’ll probably find a “post-purchase horror” retraction of the agreement and they will back out. It’s so important that the sale chat equally caters to your prospect’s emotional and logical needs.

Knowing how to use the emotional and logical brain is potent stuff, and when applied will ensure, no buyers remorse, better customer relations and happier customers.

A final word on follow up

I’ve found that I’ve had several recent sales discussions where I’ve been left hanging. I’m someone that needs to digest. I like to think and ponder. I might not seem like a hot prospect, but I’ll purchase over time if it continues to make sense as I digest. The number of people whom I have had sales conversations with, who never touch base with me following on is incredible! In fact, I have said to some of those same people “I get the feeling that you don’t want to work with me… is that the case?” which, in most cases, they were shocked that I felt this way.

Don’t neglect your prospects! If you’ve had the sales chat, there was a match, and your product / service genuinely provides a solution to your prospect’s problems, keep in touch in a genuine, authentic way. They might be like me and be testing how passionate you are about solving their problem!

What to do next:

If you would like to know more about this approach to sales and marketing or would like to know more about how I’ve helped business owners grow their businesses so they can go home happy please feel free to get in touch!

Read this next: Mixed messages, 100% responsibility, and why Shannyn isn’t perfect.

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