You know your new product is a game changer. But you can’t seem to get traction. How do you convince dyed in the wool prospects to give you a hearing?
Transcript
Are the benefits of your product or service obvious or is it a more abstract concept that requires explanation and needs your prospects to use their imagination as to why it’s important for them?
If it’s the former that makes for a relatively easy sale. The benefits are obvious and can be easily demonstrated.
But what if the concept is more abstract? How will your market grasp why it’s useful?
Your success will come down to how effectively you can educate and sell the concept outlining the benefits your market will get.
And the best way to accomplish this is to relate the new concepts back to something that is already known and accepted and build upon it.
A great example is the computer you already have in your pocket, the smart phone.
Most of us carry one. But until 20 years ago, almost no consumers knew they even existed, let alone why they’d be useful.
But we understood the concept of a phone using a fixed landline. Then cordless innovation where we could walk around the house and have private conversations from our parents. Easy to understand and readily adopted.
Then came the first true mobiles. Clunky affairs that weighed a ton, but got smaller and smaller over time.
Leading eventually to the smart phone, first invented in 1992 by IBM, but which really only took off when Steve Jobs brought out and marketed the iPhone.
Steve Jobs showed us what our future communication could be like. How we’d look cool, connect and communicate and entertain ourselves using a simple to use technology that anyone could master.
Jobs used a known concept, the phone and built upon it.
And it’s no different in your market. You need to build a scaffolding for your concept and the benefits you bring by relating it back to something your market already knows, understands and accepts.
One of our clients for example is an expert on smart manufacturing. As a concept smart manufacturing is a framework to significantly increase production efficiency while reducing costs.
In essence it integrates, controls and monitors every aspect of a production line in real time removing inherent human error which can take a production line’s efficiency from an average 34% to world’s best practice of around 85%.
So how then do you convince dyed in the wool manufacturers who are used to doing everything manually they should spend often considerable sums money on the new technology?
First realise that most people like to live in their comfort zones and are resistant to change. We’ve always done it this way, it works, so why should we change and adopt something new?
So like the iPhone, build the scaffolding. Relate the smart factory concept back to what they’re currently doing. Take each step and show how the automation and better control directly replaces the manual processes, increasing efficiency leading to more finished product in a given time with less waste and machine downtime which directly leads to more profit.
In short, paint a brighter future in their minds. How they will gain, both personally and in their business.
Now we have a number of other videos and written articles on strategy, marketing and selling which go into this in more depth you’ll find them at revealedresources.com. And they’ll help you grow your business so please be sure to check them out.
And while you’re there, why don’t you download our free guide on how to attract high value clients into your business.
Finally, if you’d like help creating marketing and sales systems which attract, convert and retain good quality clients, on a predictable bases give me a hoy at revealedresources.com.
Until next time, this is Rashid Kotwal.
