I’ve just watched a great video that has one simple but very compelling message. People will buy from you when they like you, trust you and want to listen to you. Now, Tom Hopkins is a sales trainer, but this is a universal message. It doesn’t matter what you are selling or how you sell it. It’s a fundamental truth.
If you watch the featured video you will see what I mean. Tom asks what is the customer’s biggest fear. They are afraid of you because they are afraid of being sold. You need to come across as an expert advisor; someone they like and trust. I know the truth of this from my own experience. I always back away from salesman who clearly want to sell me something I don’t want. And even if I do want it, I’m turned off by being sold. I can’t help it. It just repels me.
But does that tell you why customers buy? It tells you why they don’t buy, but not why they want to buy what you sell. So, if you have a product and sales website, or perhaps a web store, do you know why your customers buy from you? In Scott Harris’s article on why customers buy, he says successful website owners find out what people want then build a solution. Obvious? You would be surprised at how many webmasters and wannabe web entrepreneurs build a product then attempt to find customers to buy it. That’s backward thinking.
Once you know what people want, and if you don’t know you must ask them, you are able to accomplish three things. You can build a product or service to meet your customer’s true needs. You can describe it and sell it in a way that resonates with them. And you can identify the best channel or medium to use. Surveys are a great way to find out what they want. Open a google adwords account, choose some keywords, write an advert and direct them to a survey page. You can build a survey page easily with survey monkey. And they will analyse the results for you too.
Knowing why your customers buy is not just desirable, it’s mandatory.
