Your customer is rarely ready now. They may be ready in time if you remain relevant; however, this takes work and care. Work is in the way you communicate and deliver what is valuable with your prospective buyer. Care comes in the way you own the problems your buyer has. It has much less to do with your desire to sell and everything to do with what is important to your customer. There is an old saying, “A carpenter doesn’t buy a drill. They are buying a quarter-inch hole.” That is results-thinking not features and benefits.

Assume that most people you first engage with are not ready to buy. You are out of phase with where they are at today more often than not. There is a setup which has to be addressed to prepare them to buy. This setup fosters trust and increases your value proposition. It is made up of the following:

1. Promotion: The marketplace is a super-highway of choices. There are too many good choices out there, and it is hard to distinguish what is valuable and what is not. Value is continually changing based on what is needed by the buyer. If it is not needed, then there has to be promotion to increase desire. Promotion largely focuses on the quarter-inch hole and driving home the message that you are the best way to make the hole.

2. Profiling: You get the wrong messages all the time. When you are marketed with cat food as a dog lover or junk food as a Whole Foods shopper, the seller missed big. They are selling on hope. They are hoping you are the one they are looking for. There are too many available and appropriate systems to make connecting the right message at the right time with the right person happen. If you invest in these systems and make them work, you are connecting. If you are ok with luck and knowing that 95% of your mailers, emails and impressions won’t work, then keep following the masses and keep wasting your bullets. You may not get a second chance to make a true connection.

3. Pain: This is where sellers make the biggest mistake. They have bad manners and start selling. Who cares what you have to offer if you don’t understand my pain? Did you bother to ask, and have you articulated? You must describe the pain concretely and specifically. This is both for the benefit of the buyer and the seller. The buyer feels you know their situation. You need to know their situation to be of value and service. Amplify the pain and spend 90% of your energy understanding and communicating this to the buyer. It makes selling a formality.

4. Proof: If you are telling the world how great you are, your credibility is low. If someone else is saying it, then you are positioned with a stranger perfectly, especially if it is the same pain story. Package the medium to share the story. Make the story the same as each of your prospective customers. It will go a much longer way investing in the stories made alive than puffing up your image.

Your prospective customer wants to buy. The question is whether it is from you or someone else who establishes trust by dating them and helping them become ready. Too many businesses misstep by how they approach and court the buyer. With so many choices, not doing your homework and setting up a one-to-one buying process only helps to strengthen your competitors’ appeal. Help your customer pick you by making them ready. It is all about buying. Leave the selling to the other guys.

We all hate waiting. We have become a nation of snobs as we have increased demands on our time and attention. If I have to get through a complex directory to reach you, guess what? I move on to your competitor who is easier to reach, and I get to solve my problem now.

Responsiveness differentiates today. In our increasingly tight economy, how about looking at how you are doing business and annihilate every barrier for your customer in their touch-points with your company. Make it about them. Get transparent. Post a direct number or put one-touch live help on your site. Strip your processes of all the fat.

A periodical I read recently storied the failings of multiple service businesses and why their loyal customers would switch even after doing business with them for a while. The answer came down to one specific issue – responsiveness. The firm hired to survey these companies wanted to get more granular and asked a second question, “Did your service firm have to necessarily solve your problem quickly?” The answer overwhelmingly was, “No.” The true issue was that they just wanted to hear from them that they took responsibility and they cared.

Of course, you have 200 emails every day screaming at you. You have a list of things to get done and can only work serially. Without the right systems and processes, you will not win the responsiveness game. If you don’t care about it, then the customer voted right in the first place by not picking you. They want you to care. That means you think through their processes and make it extremely easy and convenient to do business with you.

Winning when there are multiple options demands attention to convenience. Attention to convenience requires thorough thinking and leadership. You may be stuck in ruts because you have done business a certain way a long time. There’s no excuse with what is available today to avoid upgrading your business and approach. Get in the convenience game. If you are serious, click here and I will show you what I mean and just how much of an impact it can mean to growth in your business and freedom in your life.

Many businesses and workers are facing times of uncertainty. The business climate today is a testing ground for ideas. We all ask ourselves the key question which triggers any forward movement or holds us back from opportunities. We ask ourselves, “What if…?” Your thoughts will reveal whether you do business as a cynic or a winner.

You might be asking yourself questions that are focused on problems:

• What if I can’t find another job?

• What if I am not good enough?

• What if my luck in this business I found runs out fast?

• What if my idea fails?

• What if I keep losing customers?

It’s easy to think like a cynic. It’s the lazy way to exist. It takes zero creativity. If you believe business will be done the same way as it always has been, then your strategy to doing business relies heavily on hope, which is a poor strategy. The world around you changes fast. The rules keep changing. Your challenge today is far different than what the old economy required.

We need less good boys and girls and more creative trailblazers. You have all the tools and resources you need to be successful. But you must ask the right, “What if?” questions. Take note of the ideas that abound.

Here are the thinking patterns of the winners I enjoy collaborating with in business:

• What if we can make it easier and simpler?

• What if I invested in my business further?

• What if we could find a new market for what we can do?

• What if younger people have the answers?

• What if we could stop making chaos an excuse for not executing?

Playing to win requires a fully engaged mind. The exhilaration of creating and problem solving is risky, but rewarding. Asking the right set of “What if” questions and implementing new ideas will put you in the middle of the game of prosperity and opportunity. Align your thinking, yourself,and your company to this habit of creativity and problem solving.

Here’s a parting question, “What if you became a better knowledge worker?” Would this be more valuable for your customers, and in turn, help grow your business? An intentional response to that question may change your reality quickly. Go to zeroinbox.com to take a next step.

I just bought a new phone. I used it yesterday to locate a Starbucks as I was driving along Interstate 35 just outside Dallas. In seconds, there it was: photo, map, phone number, exact location and how to get there, LIVE!

I wanted a Vet for a very sick pet at home. I went to Google, searched “mobile vet” and then quickly scanned five veterinarians that appeared on my search. I chose one whose website made me feel warmth and where there was a nice attractive photo of the vet herself. Also included were several testimonials recommending the veterinarian and a button to make it easy to do business. I was well pleased, she was as projected on her site.

I ordered a book the other day, Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki. I opened my Kindle, clicked on “Shop in Kindle Store”, clicked on “Books,” and searched “Kawasaki.” Wham-o, there it was. I clicked “purchase book” and in 15 seconds I had my book.

I connected this week with an old roommate in college, Tim Murphrey who is a very successful business executive in California. He sent me a Facebook invite, I accepted. The last two days we have exchanged memories that go way back to 1984!

I had a few “live chats” today on my computer. I chatted with my business partner who was in South Texas, that led to a chat with a few team members in Austin, and I chatted with a few customers in New York, Dallas, and Virginia. The chats were live, recorded, and each lasted a few minutes, but all were of utmost value to a productive day.

Life today is fast and it is live. I am a consumer just like you. I am annoyed if I have to work hard to find what I want and whom I want. I don’t want to work hard to do business. I want to be entertained and I want to be wowed. I want to find solutions to my problem without having to click on several tabs in a nav bar on a website. I want to do business without having to talk if I prefer not to. I want to do business at 3:00 AM if I want to. I want my order now, not in a few hours.

Sobering isn’t it? Life is live — and so is business! Innovate, automate, move fast, and get out of the way.

I want to buy from you if you make it easy and fun. If you don’t think through less steps and more pleasure for me as a buyer, your competitor who does will win me. There are plenty of competitors. There are few who truly compete in good design and delivery. If you do the heavy lifting and make it easy for me to do business with you, then I may not quit during the process. I want easy and fast when all other factors are relatively equal.

Here are a list of things I want when I buy:

• Less buttons
• Less clicks
• Make it visual; don’t make me read
• Don’t make me have to learn; motivate me instead
• Easy steps
• Predictable steps
• One next step; not three vague options
• A remarkable reason to pick you
• Think about me, not you; I don’t care about how great you are. I want my life to get better.
• Pleasure
• Automation
• Communications – personal and timely

Do you have this in your business? If not, count the days to extinction. You become increasingly irrelevant. It may be because you have a blind spot. You can only think about how to get what you want and fake caring about what I want.

It may be because you do not have talent or imagination. The answer is easy. Get out of the way and hire talent and imagination. Boring and being right will not win today.

Build a business that would make me say it is art. The art is in how you do business and court me as your customer. Don’t make me work and don’t make me do the work you are supposed to have thought through in your rush to get my money. Earn my money through well thought-through design, automation, imagination and a great experience. Then you have my attention. Then we might become friends and do business.

Do you realize that eight out of 10 products in the United States are destined to fail? In consumer products alone, 52 percent of all new brands, and 75 percent of individual products fail! In his book, Buy-ology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, branding expert Martin Lindstrom shares how customers think and why they buy or don’t buy the products they do. In 2003, Martin became convinced that something was fundamentally wrong with the way companies reached out to customers. His assessment was that companies didn’t seem to understand consumers. They weren’t sure how to communicate in a way so that their products gripped the customers’ minds and hearts.

In Martin’s study of buying behavior he uncovered people’s truest motivations when it came to buying. An example he shared was a study by four Princeton University psychologists who were researching how people processed choices when it came to short-term immediate gratification versus delayed rewards.

The psychologists asked a group of random students to choose between a pair of Amazon.com gift vouchers. If they picked the first, a $15 gift certificate, they would get it at once. If they were willing to wait two weeks they would get more bang for their buck and receive a $20 gift certificate.

Brain scans on the students who participated in this study revealed considerable brain activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that generates emotion. The possibility of getting the $15 gift certificate NOW caused an unusual flurry of stimulation in the area of the brain most responsible for emotions as well as the formation of memory. The conclusion from this study was, the more the students were emotionally excited about something, the greater the chances of their opting for the immediate reward; if less immediately gratifying, the alternative was the choice.

The rational minds knew the $20 choice was logically a better deal, but guess what? THEIR EMOTIONS WON OUT!

So what does this mean if you have a product or service that you are selling? Here’s what it means, emotions are the way in which our brains encode things of value, and a brand that engages us emotionally think Apple, Harley-Davidson will win every single time! Is your product or service offering boring or does it evoke emotion because of your passion in helping the customer with their problem? Your answer will likely determine your results.

We used to have a hard time building things material or virtual.  Thus, engineers, software developers, webmasters and IT people held the keys to the kingdom, and rightly so.  Building things is not as hard today.  What is difficult is clean, relevant and results-driven design.  The key question is not whether you have a website.  It is, “Does it makes you money or not?” Websites are boring.  Making money is fun.  Boring websites are simply digital brochures. Money-making sites create a buying process that help a prospective customer make a decision for your service and products.

The old school mentality revolved around projecting an image of grandeur and success. Unfortunately, such flare merely enhanced skepticism among buyers, including yourself. You want substance not salesmanship. For the seller, this takes a thought-out methodology where they must connect their selling approach to a buyer’s process. A seller must understand why people buy rather than tell people how great their company, product or brand is. We don’t care about such showmanship. We are inundated with choice, and it all feels complex.

In the training, systems and speaking we deliver via www.winningfans.com , we hone in on a moving target – your customer. They are buying very differently today, and they want leadership, not sales. Tools will not solve this problem.  Having the latest social networking site, user forum, blog or website will only be a gimmick that does not connect.  Leadership is extremely vital to make it all work.  Here is how leadership with the right tools looks:

• Timing Is Everything:  If you are selling before a person is ready to buy, you lose.  You must deliver the right messaging at the right time.  A day late does not work.  A day too soon does not either.  As a buyer of many services, you move through awareness, assessment and decision making.  Leaders move with you.  Pure salespeople and sales companies are thinking about themselves and their need – making money – and often miss the customer.  Make your message, whether verbal or digital, on time and where the buyer is at.
• Credibility:  Show proof through success.  We hear too many claims and not enough warrants from politicians and marketers.  Help your buyer see your solution – make a difference in someone else’s life and business concretely.  Help them see it in their own life and business.
• Be Easy:  Every click I take on your site, every message I get to direct me, and every meeting I have should point to one concrete next step and thereafter.  Make it easy.  Our attention is short and our expectations are high.  We are an A.D.D. nation.  We move from task to task and conversation to conversation.  Get me to one focused next step and make it intuitive and easy.  Anything complex jeopardizes the buying chain link.  Make it hard, and I quit.  Make it easy, and think through every step, and I will meet you at the end goal – the sale.
• Care:  It’s not hard to find businesses and workers that don’t care.  They think about how hard their day is or what they have to do and forget the customer.  It’s not about you. It’s about them.  It always has been; however, there was not a large cost.  Today, we have enough choice to move to a competitor and not do business with lousy services.  That is, unless the service is a monopoly like the government.  Outside of this, bureaucracy is coming under assault.  Leadership pushes the culture of a team to continually create a world class experience for the customer.  Ignore this and become increasingly irrelevant.

Everything is available to be successful today in building a fan base.  Put the right person in as the designer and leader and you will see a different results.  It’s not a matter if you have better tools than me.  It is whether you have clearer vision, more talent, and passion.  When I have these, I win.  Keep focused on the leadership.  That is the fuel for making any tools work.

There was a telling comment made a few years ago by famed NBA basketball star, Allen Iverson. He revealed his perspective about practice, “We’re talking about practice man, we’re not even talking about the game, when it actually matters, we’re talking about practice.”

At that time, Iverson was the MVP of the National Basketball Association. He erred with his comments. He did not see the connection between excellence developed through repetition and showtime. Read more