Why Do People Buy You? Putting Soul Back into Marketing

A Quick Read: 5-10 minutes 

The Problem that I help you solve in this article:

1. Joy in sales is usually a function of 
   1. The “feel good and right” (joy/soul) factor ie. how good and right you feel about your service or product offerings AND
   2. How well you convey that “feel good and right” experience to others
2. If you are not feeling the joy/soul in your sales (or for that matter, no joy/soul at all in your life), then you may be experiencing a lack of sales as your prospective clients may not be resonating with your incongruent messages.
3. With it being challenging to get people’s attention these days, a lack of joy / soul or lack of connection with your prospective clients may lead to less attention being paid to what you offer them. 
4. Some people have the ‘perfect’ powerpoint or script, but still fail to make sales that feel good and right.
5. Some people do feel joyful, except when they make their sales offer. Thus they fail to make satisfactory sales. 
6. How do you solve this?

The Opportunity I present in this article:

1. A breakthrough in profits
2. A breakthrough in sales 
3. And more importantly (I feel), a breakthrough in your joy for, with and in your business as you make more profits and sales 

What makes a sale feel ‘good and right’?

There are three facets that may be missing from your sales efforts if you are not getting results:

1. DESIGN: A good design for your offers and the flow of stages to get people interested if not intrigued and committed. 
2. YOUR ATTITUDE/BEING: This has less to do with you and more to do with how you are giving allowance for people to have what they want versus focusing on what you want only.  Most people approach this like something is wrong. It is rarely to do with something being wrong; it has more to do with what is missing. 
3. PATIENCE: You may have to wait till your messaging and consistency gets momentum and flow happens. This often takes time. Prematurely making changes to what you offer and how you offer it may result in more confusion in your market and for yourself. 

Design and Attitude are interconnected

A good design can affect your attitude.

Your attitude can affect your design.

Paying attention to both can help you improve your sales. 

Good Design for Soulful Connection 

Remember when you walked into a well designed house?  How did it make you feel?

Did you feel well taken care of?

Think of a well designed hotel service? Did they make you feel at home and welcome? Did you feel like buying more from this hotel? Did you feel like you were served well?

Think of the opposite situation where you experienced something that was not well designed e.g. a messy/confusing service at a restaurant or place of business. 

Was there any intentional design in the service? How much or how little?

I would assert that if you have a well designed flow to your marketing, people will feel a deeper soul connection to you and be more likely to buy from you. 

Some questions to ask yourself:

1. DO YOU HAVE A DESIGN? Is your system just patched together without intentional design OR does the design make sense?  By the way, this question pertains to both your business management overall as well as your sales and marketing. 
2. IS THERE AN END POINT? Clarify where you are ultimately leading people to? What kinds of paid offers are you presenting to them? Do the offers make sense for them? Is it compelling enough for them? Does it ‘hit home’ right away or does it require a lot of explanation?  
3. DOES THE FLOW WORK?  Does the design of the flow you direct people to e.g. invitation to a webinar leading to a discovery session leading to an offer of a service - does that flow make sense to your ideal client?  
4. DO PEOPLE WHO BUY FROM YOU FEEL TAKEN CARE OF?

The Being of Soulful Connection

A soulful connection does not necessarily mean that you are loved or that you are liked. It doesn't even necessarily mean that you are not loved or not liked. 

I assert that people who buy from you do not necessarily do so because they know, like or trust you. I know this is what you hear a lot - that people have to know, like or trust you. I have not found this saying to be very useful. 

How can they really know, like or trust you? They have not really spent too much time with you. 

I have found that people buy from you when they decide to trust themselves about being successful in getting what they want and need - through using your service or product.  It has to do more with them trusting themselves before they decide to buy. 

The essence of  a soulful connection is such that you are able to create an environment where you have so much trust in yourself as well as your service or product that they feel that they can trust themselves to use your service or product to get what they want or need. 

You do not need to prove the system works. You give an honest assessment of the possibilities of what you provide.. but also add the limitations or where things could go wrong.  If you bring this level of attention and refreshing transparency to what they could get from you - they will hear that you have so much trust in the service and product that you are willing to be transparent about the weaknesses of what you provide.  

That transparency and honesty is refreshing and empowering to them.  They know more about what they are getting. The choice is upon them. 

Most people do not buy because they feel like they cannot really rely on themselves to get what they need or want; they have tried a few times and failed perhaps - and this makes them doubt if your solution will work for them. 

It has nothing to do with you or even with your service. 

The decision to buy has to do with how much they can trust themselves that the purchase from you will give them what they want and need. 

If you come from this understanding, you will spend less time trying to convince them and addressing their ‘objections’ and more time allowing them to paint a picture of what they really want in their future.  Many people do not know what they want and even if they are, they are unable to articulate that clearly enough.  So just being able to articulate what they want clearly because you drew it out of them by just listening and asking the key questions, creates a tremendous amount of trust in themselves.   

When I engage with a prospective client, I seldom have to ask for or handle their objections.  I meet them where they are at - and make sure that what I provide for them, gives them exactly what they need starting from where they are at now. 

This ‘meeting people where they are at’ is crucial to learn and master. 

I would like to retire the word “sales” from our vocabulary and replace it with ‘partnership’

When you come from this perspective and context, you never sell people. You create partnership with them. It is a very clear partnership.  You are responsible for making sure that the service or product is delivered.  They are responsible for using the service or product to get what they want. 

When you convince people to buy from you, they see the source of them buying as you or your compelling argument or words.  

When they trust themselves, they see the source of them buying to be their choice; this is very empowering and makes the partnership much easier for you to manage. 

The takeaways from this article: 

1. Get a good design for your sales stages. 
2. To get a good design, clarify your primary offers first. Make sure that the stages add up to delivering the primary offers. 
3. Work on convincing people less and more on finding out what they really need and need it urgently enough to justify paying you money. 

If you would like to discuss how you could learn more about how to implement this in your business and life, please schedule a time here with me: Book Informal Time with Sunil 

 

Have a soulful day!

Sunil Bhaskaran,

Founder of the Global Small Business School