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As b2b marketers, our role in life is to distill product and service strengths and turn these into a compelling sales offer to present to market. In short, we work out how to tell prospective customers and clients what we’ve got in our shop window, what it’s going to do for them and what we are looking for in return – the spondoolies!!!
Sounds simple, and sometimes it is. But too often us marketing types can get so excited by the thrill of the promotional chase and caught up in how much we believe our prospect should want what we’re dangling in front of them, that we’re surprised when they don’t respond to our campaigns. And this also often applies to those product focused folk within our businesses who believe their latest development is really the centre of the client’s universe – ‘how very dare they not respond... it must be the marketing that went wrong!’
When you’re putting your product or service out there and asking for a sale from a potential customer or client, it goes without saying that your offer must be attractive. It’s the prospect’s job to say yes or no based on the appeal, relevancy and timeliness of what you are offering. Of course, you could always try to sell people something they don’t want. But for one, you risk gaining a zero response; for two you could create more problems than sales, in the form of complaints and returns; and for three, you may see customers running for the hills never to buy from you again.
When your customers and clients are truly better off for buying what you offer, they’re a million times more likely to spread the word about how great your business , product or service is.
As we all know, it’s hard, nay impossible, to build a b2b brand on products that are all seductive promise but that don’t really deliver anything of real value, or indeed anything that the market really needs. Sometimes we can get ahead of ourselves, developing a product too far ahead of the curve. Sometimes we can miss the boat, too late to have any real market impact in launching a product or service which has already reached market maturity.
It’s also much easier to sell something people want than it is to sell something they need. We’re grudgingly pushed toward certain behaviours by our needs, but we’re pulled more wildly by our emotional wants. Put simply, ice cream tastes good in summer. Hot chocolate tastes good in winter. So make sure your offer lines up with what your prospect is looking for today, not tomorrow or yesterday. You’ll make selling much, much easier.
Keeping the food analogy alive (not that I am on a diet and craving chocolate), even the tastiest plate of food doesn’t look all that good after a couple of hours sat on your table. In other words, as marketers we need to work out the best time to clear the table and put fresh food out. The same applies to sales offers. If you keep your offers fresh by limiting them in time, or by incentivising an early response, you make them appear infinitely more attractive.
New and fresh is always more desirable than stale and boring. Also try adding a new ingredient occasionally, in the form of more value, or an additional bonus for the same money. And make sure you’re not constantly talking about all of the “healthy, good for you” aspects of your offer and that you’re instead emphasizing the yummy factor first and foremost. After all, we all like the odd emotional indulgence don’t we?
