In marketing we talk about “conversions” and “leads”. In sales we talk about “leads” and “opportunities”. These seem like abstract terms for the people we are really trying to persuade - our buyers.
Underlying our terminology is a disconnect between marketing and sales and the buyer. When I was a product marketing manager at Sun Microsystems, I took a course on building a market-focused organization. The premise behind this course was to completely understand a day in the life of our buyer. Once we understood our buyer, we could better relate what we had to offer to the buyer’s needs, wants, and language. This work was probably the precursor to today’s buyer personas.
I don’t see many marketing and sales teams that are equipped with profiles of their buyer personas. I haven’t found many organizations that understand their buyers. It is no wonder we have trouble achieving high conversion rates and high percentages of closed opportunities. In fact, it is often despite ourselves that we win deals.
It is easy for our sales and marketing efforts to focus on our company and our product. After all, that is what we are selling. But the result for the buyer is like a conversation with a self-absorbed person. Every discourse turns away from the buyer. The buyer has to work hard to focus the seller on their needs, their interests, their concerns, and their process. We see this played out in a myriad of different ways. Buyers are asked to talk with a sales person before they are ready. Buyers are frustrated because they can’t get the information they need. Buyers are hijacked into a sales process that doesn’t look anything like their buying process. The result is a relationship that does not inspire buying confidence.
The truth is that selling is all about the buyer. To effectively sell, we must know our buyer intimately. We must satisfy the buyer’s needs as the prospect works through their buying process. Our interactions must build buyer confidence and create positive emotions. And we must do this step by step, need by need, question by question, concern by concern. This is the essence of persuasive momentum.
Persuasive momentum is the increasing tendency of a buyer to remain engaged with you as you support them through the stages of their buying process.
Without persuasive momentum, you will not be able to close a sale. What prospect will buy from you if they lack confidence in your ability to meet their needs? Persuasive momentum builds buyer confidence. Persuasive momentum builds buyer readiness.
We all inherently know what persuasive momentum looks like. We have experienced it in our own lives in our own purchases. We say that “the planets aligned” to make our purchase happen. Everything came together and fit perfectly. The timing was right. We wanted to buy this product from this company. Yet, how often do we feel this way about a purchase? Probably not often enough.
The reason we don’t feel persuasive momentum in many of our own purchases (or create it for our buyers) is that it doesn’t happen by chance.
Persuasive momentum is designed. And it is designed around our buyer, not around us. I’ll be talking more about this topic in upcoming blog entries.
Join me, April 15th at 6:30 pm at the Silicon Valley Business Meetup in Cupertino, CA where I will be leading a discussion on persuasive momentum. Please register to attend in advance.
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