Are You Doing These 3 Things To Influence The Customer Journey?
I had a friend call it ‘the customer ride.’ It’s that customer journey that we’re all trying to figure out.
Courtesy of LandRover MENA. The Journey To Beijing
It’s something that every sales leader and sales person should pay attention to. It’s the customer journey. That path that your prospect takes on the way through the sales cycle.
We sales-types love to vault over some pretty important elements as we seek to close business. This post is about influence and how you can behave in a manner consistent with how your customer buys. This should be the first step your sales trainer should have you complete, prior to any skills work.
Here are three things you can do to influence it:
- Have an illustration of your process. I like a graphic illustration of the steps you will take to determine if you can help the prospect actually solve their problem. There is likely an Exploratory Phase, a Deeper Analysis Phase, an Economic Phase, a Recommendation Phase and perhaps others. Decide your process as you seek to provide an optimum solution and share it with them. On paper. Not just words over the phone.
- Sequence their emotions. As with any path one takes, there are emotions that take over. One prospect emotion might be “excited” that they found someone who can solve their problem. Another emotion might be “skepticism.” Another “hopefulness.” Another might be “hesitation” to pull the trigger and commit. Whatever those emotions are, draw them out on a whiteboard and begin to understand their thinking. You know this stuff. But you must commit it to paper so that you can then decide the appropriate actions you can take.
- Verbally acknowledge it all. Yes, I want you to say to your prospect, “John, this is the time in the process where I’ve found people start to feel a little overwhelmed with the decision. You aren’t alone.” Or, some such personal acknowledgement that you understand their state of mind.
This is a great exercise for sales leaders at your next sales meeting. Take a break from the “pipeline” conversation and work on something that matters in the cycle.
What did I miss?
Anything you’ve put in your process that takes into consideration how you can influence your buyer? Or what kinds of emotions they experience as they move through it?
I have also found it extremely helpful to have my content- both self generated and marketing generated- organized by each stage of the process. Not only do I recognize and acknowledge the prospect’s mind set, challenges and next steps at each stage of the journey, but I also have the precise tools in my toolbox to provide them with the most value and move them towards the next stage.
This is also how I generate new content- I step back from every sale and as part of my win/loss study I ask, “what tools could have helped me at this stage?” If something is missing, I ask for it, seek it out, or make it myself.
Nice Justin. It’s a huge advantage to be thinking about it the way you are. Congrats! It will serve you well.