Create Thirst

Ever wonder why you don't land more sales? You have customers come in or call, only to have them glide right on out of your place of business or end the phone call without making a purchase. And this after you gave them your BEST PRESENTATION EVER!  What is wrong with those people? Did they not really need what you were offering? Were they just window shopping? Or was it you? Did you only show them features instead of relating those features to benefits? (I may explain more about this in a future post). Did they just not like you? What went wrong?

The answer is often to be found in an old adage that I think needs to be extended to a more profitable conclusion. We have all heard it said, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink", right?
Well, it is true - as far as it goes. But let's solve the problem by completing the process. Let's solve the "can't make him drink" dilemma.

The end of the adage really should go a little farther. You can't make that horse drink... UNLESS - what?
Unless you make him thirsty! If you find that your "horse" isn't buying in to your sales proposition, it often means that you haven't made him thirsty enough. He doesn't want what you are offering because he doesn't really feel the need.

Spend some time learning what it is that your customer really wants. Why are they visiting your store? Why are they calling you? Why did they agree to meet with you? What were they expecting when they heard what you had to say? Did you find out what their needs were or did you just direct them to the part of the shop where that category of product was? Did you take the time to do the research to determine what their needs were or did you just shoot for a general fit that works for most people? Did you show them any needs they had that they weren't even aware of?

If you sell advertising, do you first find out who your customer wants to reach, how visible or invisible they are to those customers, and then propose a sensible plan to remedy their invisibility? If you sell office equipment, did you listen to all their complaints about their current equipment and then match them to the best solution, or were you just trying to unload a particular item because you had a surplus inventory to get rid of? If you are an auto mechanic, did you find out from your potential customer what some of their beefs are with auto repair shops? Do you try to avoid those problems? Do you take steps to make your service better than the run of the mill shop? What about your advertising message? Do your ads address a specific need and also fulfill that need? Do they include a "call to action" to prompt a response, or do they just contain a laundry list of "this is what I do"?

One of the much-neglected ways to close a sale is to make sure you have first made the customer thirsty enough to buy from you by showing them that they really really need - can't go on without - what you are able to provide. Run that horse around the track a few times, have him lick a salt block, have him go without water for a while, and believe me, he will drink.

So take that concept and find the way to fit it to your product or service. Then watch the sales climb.

The Power of Sight

To which of the five senses does your product or service appeal? If you are a restaurant owner, your main appeal is to the sense of taste, obviously, but the sense of sight is also influenced. You know how important it is to give food the proper presentation. A photographer's product appeals to the sense of sight. So do the services of a caterer, interior designer, landscaper, car salesman, swimming pool contractor, formal wear sales or rental business, fashion designer, etc.

In fact, most businesses sell products or services that in some way benefit from their appeal to the sense of sight. Even a dentist's work is often done to make a person's smile more attractive, or to encourage a better self image or to increase the patient's self confidence.

So why, oh why, don't more of you understand the importance of creating visual ads? I am speaking of ads placed in phone books, newspapers, flyers, on bulletin boards, etc. Far too often, when given the choice between placing a simple in-column ad containing nothing but verbiage, and placing an attractive color display ad, businesses opt for the cheaper ad. This is usually based on nothing more than the desire to save money.

But wait a minute. What sense does it make to neglect the opportunity to showcase your product in every possible way? Why, if you are a photographer for instance, would you think that it is more effective or more professional to place an ad with just words into a medium that gives you the opportunity to showcase your talent? Put yourself in the shoes of the consumer. Given the choice between doing business with a company running a "cheap" looking ad and a company that has an attractive full color ad, which do you think is going to draw more attention and, therefore, more business? This is common sense, people. Given the same appropriate information in both ads, human nature itself dictates that the ad with the greater visual appeal will work better.

When it comes to any print medium, always aim for the most professional visual presentation you can. Your ad is the first and possibly only opportunity you have to impress a potential customer with the quality of your business. You will want to catch the customer's eye, look professional, parade your color logo, influence people to take you seriously and eventually do business with you. Skimping on your image-building by skimping on your ads will not help.

Is Word-of-Mouth Enough?

I often hear small business people say "All my business is word-of-mouth". There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, every business has word-of-mouth advertising. If you don't, you won't have a business for long. I mean positive word-of-mouth, of course. Negative word-of-mouth is often easier to come by and works against your business. It is a natural human response to more readily share a bad experience than it is to share a good one. We expect things to go well, so we don't mention it when they do; it is when things go wrong and our expectations are not met that we tend to get vocal about it.

Positive word-of-mouth is more likely to happen the higher our experience goes above meeting our normal expectations. If you have a good meal at a restaurant, you may or may not tell someone else about it. But if the meal was especially tasty, with service that went above and beyond, and if the atmosphere was great and the price seemed very reasonable, you are far more likely to mention it and to give the place a rave review.

Let's get back to the positive word-of-mouth that we have for our business. As I said, every business starts with word-of-mouth advertising. Word-of-mouth is one of the best sources for getting new business, but it has some weaknesses. You need to be aware of these, because any business depending solely upon it is destined to grow too slowly.

Consider your market area. Is it just your immediate neighborhood, your whole city, your county? Is there a radius of X miles from which you want to pull customers? Regardless of the area, word-of-mouth is a small sliver of your potential market pie. The larger your target market area, the thinner the sliver is.

Also, just because someone mentions you or recommends you, there is no guarantee that the person referred will do business with you. You may be one of several word-of-mouth referrals and one of the other referrals may end up getting the job or the sale. The person receiving the referral may not act on the referral for any number of reasons. Maybe they weren't ready to make a purchase themselves. Maybe they found someone else who was cheaper, closer, had more experience, or was better looking. No matter what the reason, not every referral will end up doing business with you.

And what about all those other people in your market area who never hear the word-of-mouth about you, yet could and would do business with you if they only knew? Do you think everyone in the area already knows you? The larger the area you are focused on, the less likely it is that "everyone" knows you. Do you want to see whether "everyone" really knows you? Have someone call ten or twenty random people out of the phone book and just ask whether or not they have heard of you. You will be surprised just how limited your reputation is.

Often it is true that the longer you have been in business, the more likely it is that somewhere, sometime, someone has a less than stellar opinion of you. You can bend over backwards to rectify a bad situation, and there will be some people that just will not be appeased. This takes us back to the negative effects of word-of-mouth advertising.

I may return to this subject later, but I wanted to give you a little food for thought on this subject. Word-of-mouth is essential to building your business, but you need to go beyond this fundamental step if you want to really kick your business into high gear and get growing.

Here to Help You

Hi, and welcome to my blog. If you are a businessperson who is struggling with your advertising program or if you are just starting out, this blog will help you build a more efficient advertising machine.  I have been in advertising since 1999 and have helped hundreds - probably thousands - of businesses of all types. I can surely help you.

In fact, I have written a book, to be published at some time in the near future, that is packed with information, tips and guidelines to benefit small businesses. I wrote the book and developed this blog because I came to the realization that almost every business I have dealt with over the years seemed to have one thing in common: no matter how long they had been in business, no matter how large or small they were, no matter how successful they had been, no one had ever actually taught them how to advertise.

Businesses learn how to do just about everything else - developing their job skills, bookkeeping, human resources, even marketing (which is related to, but not the same as advertising) - but no one has taken the time to sit down and, in some organized fashion, explain how advertising should be done, how the parts fit together, and how to make it all work as efficiently as possible. Every dollar spent on advertising should bring some sort of a return. If you feel like your advertising dollars are going down a deep dark hole, leaving you with nothing to show for it, stay tuned for tips and insights to help you.