Are you doing enough to answer prospects questions?
Purchasing professional services is a leap of faith. Questions fill buyers’ heads:
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- Will you deliver on what you say you will?
- Do you really understand my needs?
- Are you attentive and responsive?
- Do I want to work with you?
Before a client becomes a client all they know about you is your marketing and sales process. And most marketing and sales do little to address those key concerns. You can help prospects feel more confident in taking the leap of faith to buy your services by providing offers and experiences in your marketing.
Offers and experiences allow prospects to get a taste of what it’s like to work with you. No, I’m not talking about a day of free consulting or discounting your fees. (Those are two tactics some firms use to get their foot in the door that I would advise against, but that’s a subject for a different post).
I am talking about value-based offers that give prospects a sense of how you approach projects and how you’d help them. These offers build an incredible amount of trust and credibility and reduce the perceived risk in your buyer’s mind—two things essential to winning the sale.
Develop Offers and Experiences
There are many ways to build an experience for your prospects. Here are just a few ideas:
- Run events: What better way for prospects to experience your way of thinking than to let them see it for themselves at an in-person event. If your prospect base is spread across the country or world, consider conducting a webinar.
- Create assessments / entry-level services: When prospects work with you on a small engagement, they get a taste of what it is like to work with you. Often these services come in the form of an assessment, discovery, or strategy session. The key is to create a service offering that gives the prospect a short-term return. Example: “In these assessments we often uncover areas where you could be saving tens, if not thousands of dollars each month.” Then, of course, the deliverable on the assessment should show where the prospect can improve and how you are best suited to help them do so.
- Develop educational offers: Use white papers, ebooks, videos, webinars, newsletters, articles, etc. to educate your prospects on the way you approach problems and how you’ve helped others in similar situations. These offers go beyond a service description and allow the prospect to experience your way of thinking.
- Share stories and case studies: Stories are a very valuable sales tool. Stories are memorable, and they generally resonate much more strongly with prospects. Think about it: you can describe your service by giving an example of how you’ve helped an actual client or you can outline how you approach helping your clients—which is more memorable?
Offers and experiences help narrow the leap of faith a prospect takes when deciding to buy from you. Based on their experience with you in the marketing and sales process, their many questions disappear. They already know:
- You can and will deliver on what you say you will.
- You truly understand their needs.
- You are attentive and responsive.
- You are the one they want to work with.
What are you doing to help answer prospects’ questions about you?
