If you’re looking to convert a prospect into a client, move someone into believing your idea or just move them along to the next step, here are five ways to help you with this process:
Step 1: Understand why you want other people to believe in your idea.
Understanding your own position, why you believe in it, and why you believe other people should believe in you as well certainly goes a long way in understanding all different aspects of the situation so that you can identify any objections that come up, and then overcome those objections. You have to be very clear for yourself why it is that you believe what you believe, and why you want other people to believe the same way.
Step 2: Understand where that person is right now in terms of their belief system or where they are in their products or the buying cycle.
Are they replacing a product? Are they buying something new that they may not know they have a need for yet? Understanding kind where that person is in the buying cycle will help you address them at the appropriate place, versus just going through a script on why they need to buy the product.
Maybe they don’t even understand they have a problem yet. You’ll need to identify where they are in that spectrum of buying, so that you can meet them exactly where they are and you’re not overselling first and underselling at the beginning. I see this quite a lot, actually, where people don’t understand where that prospect is in the buying cycle, so they start where they always start, and that might be the wrong point. Make sure you understand exactly where that prospect is in the buying cycle and in their head.
Step 3: Understand the position of your prospect.
Position means, in their head. Where is your product positions in their head? Do they have a favorable impression of your product? Have they heard bad things specifically about your product? Also think about, in the broader range, is there an industry problem that you need to address first where people might have been burned in the past and you need to address those situations? You definitely need to understand exactly where that prospect is in terms of their feelings towards your idea, your product, or whatever it is that you’re trying to sell them.
Step 4: Understanding their need intimately, even better than the prospect understands their need for the idea that will change their life, or the idea for your product which will change their business.
Understanding why they have that need in the first place will go a long way in trying to convince them to actually buy your product.
Step 5: Don’t expect their position to change overnight.
Certainly you need to ask for the sale, but they may need more information. Typically if you’ve done your job and you’ve done all these steps up to this point, then most likely they will say yes and actually buy your product. But understand, especially when you’re selling an idea to people, they will not budge their position right away. They will actually take a little bit of time and nurturing, which is what we’ve been talking about in terms of that pipeline and keeping in contact with people.
It’ll take that nurturing to get them to budge a little bit further. Certainly with your consistency and your persistence you will move them along until they say, “No, I’m not interested.” You need to hear the word “No” before you completely discard them. If they keep saying, “Well, I’m kind of interested” you want to keep drilling them down until they either make a decision of using your product, changing to your idea, coming over to your position, whatever it happens to be, or saying “No, I’m not interested, stop bugging me.”
These five tips that are going to make selling your idea, product, your whatever it happens to be, a lot easier.
