We live in a world that for many has become technology advantaged in business and life. Imagine, for a moment, just how communication, science, art, medicine, automation, supply chain and products have all been reinvented.
Even consumers' behaviors have been unearthed and changed beyond recognition. Consumers have become more assertive, demanding, highly skeptical, and more cynical, less trusting and with less loyalty to brands and companies.
With all the reinventing and shifting in a diversity of industries and cultures we find however, little has changed in the process of how marketers and sales proceed to understanding why consumers' buy and how they think. Most marketing methods and selling techniques probe for surface understanding and not the core emotions and feelings of consumers' behaviors.
Marketing and sales people rely on worn-out familiar campaigns and techniques that simply obtain less than marginal results and then place blame on their products, services or the economy. This become more apparent with sales and marketing people in hot industries where demand exceeds supply - sales skyrocket with little effort or skill on the part of sales and marketing. Then, when supply exceeds demand and there are too many sellers chasing too few consumers' -- the blame sets in and the excuse making erupts, causing products and services to fail or drop dramatically below projections.
Change doesn't come easy when you're entrenched in deeply rooted behaviors of which takes much courage to change. Change means thinking differently about how one does things, which sometimes goes against all that you were brought up to believe in. People who hold stubbornly to their view and can't envision a different world will fight to maintain their current one.
To maintain a competitive edge in your business will require stepping outside your comfort zone and the traditional methods of conducting yourself in business. The world has become a melting pot of various nationalities and cultures creating the backbone of our economy. Regardless, if you have a world vision of your business or not, the effects of you succeeding are influenced by your understanding of how consumers' think and how they buy.
Consumers' ask for one thing and do another. They make illogical leaps of judgment and come to unreasonable conclusions based on their experience, memory and unconscious thoughts. The truth is most customers form opinions about you before you ever get a chance to deliver your service or product. That opinion is formed mostly unconsciously.
Customers' are your only business and requires you to reach beyond product features, benefits, quality and reliable delivery methods. Sales and marketing people service their consumers in a more efficient manner when they understand how consumers feel, think and experience you and your products and services.
The interaction between the confidence of your marketing message and the confidence of a salesperson in his/her product or service sets the stage for how, when and why the consumer will or will not purchase goods and services. When a salesperson conveys confidence in his/her company, product and service, it delivers subtle nonverbal cues to the consumer. That confidence, if perceived by the consumer, as authenticity on the part of the salesperson, adds great persuasive power to the decision making of the consumer.
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence and scientific brain research showing that human emotions and the unconscious plays a major role in consumer selection of products and services. As our multi cultural society matures; it becomes evident that those companies and individual who what to advantage themselves in sales and marketing must understand the perception and mind of other cultural groups. That will require a better understanding of your conscious and unconscious mind - how memory, experience, and associated emotions exert a force on the thinking and buying behaviors of consumers.
According to Gerald Zaltman, Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School -- says that 95 percent of consumers' thinking occurs in their unconscious minds. Much thinking surfaces through metaphors and consumers' memories, which are much more malleable than previously thought -- which is why "confidence" adds great persuasive power. Artificial confidence does not work, but authentic confidence will decisively engender a winning edge every time when a salesperson truly believes in his/her products and services.
Fostering a shift in sales and marketing will require a deeper understanding of how pervasive the unconscious mind of the consumer works. Breaking into new ground requires breaking out of traditional thinking about features and benefits selling. You need to enter into the mental activity of unconscious thoughts, feelings, memories, intentions, metaphors and just how they direct consumers' attention, influence perception and manipulate their decisions and actions.
6 key strategic solutions for sales and marketing.
1. Metaphor making in the mind of the consumer is a powerful fundamental that helps them make sense of information received. When eliciting information from a potential client. I asked him what success felt like. His metaphor was; "Success feels like the power of driving a Porsche down the highway at top speed." Tying his metaphor to several service benefits closed the sale securely. Understanding and having collected a large range of metaphors consumers' use to think about you, your services and products enable you to sculpt a more effecting communication strategy and increase the potential of a purchase.
2. Improve your mental outlook about you, your products and services. "You Are The Message." Eliminate negative clues by preparing yourself with the confidence of a winner. Use friendly language and genuine enthusiasm; reflecting energy, trust and openness will open up the consumer when probing for their thinking and core metaphors. Assertive and outgoing personalities, regardless of ethnic background, will outpace those people whose characteristics display shy and timid behaviors.
3. Design your office, retail store layout, waiting rooms, ads and brochures that reflect the Metaphors of your market. Example of how one Doctors office focused on outpatients care as being more nurturing and responsive. Patients view rooms with chairs lined up in rows as boring, frustrating and long waits. The office was rearranged to promote friendliness and privacy and was supplied with several TV's and a computer. The results were a decline in waiting time complaints and patients felt they were receiving a better quality of care, referral rates increased more that 18 percent and patient cancellations decreased by 23 percent.
4. Build into your oral and written marketing/sales communications stories using metaphors gathered from your market.
5. Probing the mind of your customer/client requires you uncovering the metaphors they use when thinking about purchasing your products and services. Once you have uncovered their metaphors you can identify some or most of the important and hidden drivers of your customer/client buying behaviors.
6. Develop an organizational climate and a workplace attitude that strengthens sales and marketing creativity. This requires breaking into more boxes and not applying the metaphor that suggests you step out of the box. Breaking into more boxes enables you to gather gleaning new knowledge and will help pry you loose of conventional thinking. How you think is more important and will produce more productive and innovational ideas than what you think.
Don L. Price: Coaching Minds to Succeed -- Author, Sales/Marketing & Positive Change Solution Provider, International Speaker & Mental Fitness Coach http://www.donlprice.com
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