Want to sell better? Go out and buy something. These two sentences hide, perhaps, the greatest truth and challenge in business and here’s why: Our brain processes the acts of selling and buying as two distinctly disparate activities. When we buy a product at a counter we use a different set of analytical skills to examine the product than when we jump over the counter and start to sell that product and at the exact moment of our jump we forget how we saw that product as a consumer.
Buying and Selling Activities and the Brain
The buying-selling activities generate a bizarre form of amnesia in our brains, which becomes even more pronounced in online buying-selling activities. We literally lose our sense of how we buy online and therefore cannot understand how clients and consumers will view our products and services and this can be the critical weakness that makes our online marketing and selling so much less effective, in fact, not effective at all.
Online Buying and Selling
The critical key in online marketing and selling is understanding that the experience is all consumer-based and one-sided. There is no give and take, but a visual experience of content and images - on the part of the visitor to your site - that is devoid of the human interaction and conversation you can have in a brick and mortar business..
What We See when we BUY and Sell
When we buy we see a complete product. When we sell that product we see and feel the toil, thought, love and lots of expensive 'moving parts' of the product creation and this clash of misconception is the point where we can fail miserably in our businesses from a selling point of view.
Solve the Problem and Sell Better
How do we solve this problem? How do we prevent or at least lessen the buying-selling amnesia in our brains? Here are my five solutions:
1. Talk to providers of your product/service (or have your friends/family do this) and really LISTEN to how they sell (what they say and how they say it) and try to examine what works and what doesn’t.
2. Go shopping – online and off. Look at products and services similar to your own and STUDY how they are presented.
3. Buy the product – look at the product from a consumer’s point of view. For service providers, ask a friend or family member to do this for you.
4. Talk to consumers, clients, potential clients and ask them how they see your product or service. What emotional words resonate with them, draws them in and gets them to buy your product or service.
5. Take a hard look at your product or service. Divorce yourself from your maternal/paternal feelings for it. Can you really market/sell this product to others or are your blood, sweat and tears for your “baby” clouding your better business judgement? This is a difficult point, but it can help you understand where - many times - the difficulty in marketing and selling your product or service comes from.
Start thinking like a consumer and seeing your product through their eyes. It'll be an eye-opener!
Do you want to open yourself to a more successful business? Are you lost in the social media jungle? Let me help you re-energize your business and rediscover your passion in your profession. We’ll work together to improve your online exposure and find the perfect target markets for your business.
Contact me today to schedule a free introductory meeting. Yochi Eisner | 052-3413249
