marketing and sales“Education is a lifelong experience. Experience is a lifelong education. Education plus experience equals expertise.”
– Michael Bugeja
When you start educating your customers and prospects something magical can happen.
You see, many business owners make an assumption that potential customers know who they are, what they do, how they do it, why they are better to deal with than their competitors, and more.
They also wrongly assume customers know and understand everything offered by their business. In most cases, this simply is NOT true.
Many business owners I meet are always complaining that people purchase on price. But by working through this issue for your business, you can make sure you’re properly educating your customers.
You see, if customers are educated and, because of that better understand the benefits your business offers, price and other issues become far, far less important.
Quality and value, experience, and other benefits become more important. You also give the impression that you know what you’re doing, care about the customer, and want them to have the right information on hand, instead of showing arrogance by assuming they know how good you are!
You Have To Sell & ‘Educate’ Your Way To Business Success Or Out Of A Business Problem – You Can’t Just Cut The Price.
[content_container max_width=’600′ align=’center’]Here is an important point: Your customers and prospects won’t understand or appreciate the value of your products or services, and the way you do business or the benefits you provide unless and until you first educate them to fully appreciate them.[/content_container]
Here is an important point: Your customers and prospects won’t understand or appreciate the value of your products or services, and the way you do business or the benefits you provide unless and until you first educate them to fully appreciate them.
Merely offering a product or service at a specific price (even the best price) doesn’t create excitement or a positive response until you tell people what they’re getting, its value compared to other products and services, and why or how you can offer such value.
And that’s because customers buy the differences they perceive about what you offer and the way you offer it.
The Secret of Marketing and Sales Success
In marketing and sales, it is critical that customers fully understand the differences between you and your competitors – specifically, why what you are offering is better than your competitors.
In fact, it is pivotal to tell every potential customer, in a benefit-oriented way, what your business does AND explain the way your business does it, so customers can more easily see those differences. Otherwise they just won’t know why they should buy from you!
The complete range of products and services, expertise, and experience available through your business should be documented in a way that reminds existing clients of the value of your service and lets any potential clients know why your business is the best choice. In fact, the only choice.
By doing this, customers and prospects suddenly begin to understand why buying from you, despite a higher price, is important to them. They begin to understand the value offered by your business. They begin to understand technical aspects of your business or your work that really will make a difference and be of benefit to them in the long run.
They start to believe you offer them more and more protection and less risk of losing their money or making the wrong decision. They begin to feel more and more confident in buying from you and, conversely, less and less interested in buying from your competitors.
In short, it helps them make the right decision – to buy from you!
And that’s simply because educating customers and prospects is a very powerful positioning tool. It really will help them understand the differences between you and your competitors.
You see, statistics show that it is NOT so much price that makes a buying decision, (in fact, only 15% of the market shops on price alone), rather a lack of any other means of differentiating you over your competitors!
When someone visits or calls your business, asks for the price, and gets it without any other benefits or information being give, they then call the next person and the next and have the same experience. Finally, they call someone who gives them a different price. Sure enough, they decide to go with the lowest price. At this point, though, have they been given ANY other reason to buy? Do they have anything OTHER than price to differentiate you from your competitors?
No. Of course not
But things might be different if they were to call someone who asked them some questions, explained a few things, gave them some material to read, clearly showed them the differences—the real benefits—of their products or services (or business itself) and only then gave them a price. That person would be able to make a decision on something other than price, wouldn’t they?
Of course they would
In fact, they’d be far more likely to buy at that point. Your potential customers would finally be happy that someone had taken an interest in them and their needs rather than treating them with ignorance—assuming they know everything they need to know about your business.
Tools that are positioned to educate customers no longer sound like marketing hype. The information is actually valuable and really could help someone new at dealing with your kind of business or at buying whatever your product or service might be.
Better yet, by educating your clients, you’ll come across as the leader in your market, the most professional business to do business with. Potential customers will appreciate the information and feel you really care about delivering a quality product or service.