Posts Tagged customer-relationship

I decided to touch back to this topic of removing prospect’s fears, for it’s an important topic to cover since a lot of network marketers are dealing with prospects that may have fear that’s keeping them from making a decision. Without customers, a business won’t stay around long, and so learning how to get new customers and keeping those customers around should be a top priority for anyone in network marketing or in business in general.

Do you want to know one of the most effectively ways that a prospect can become more confident in what you have to offer? The answer is, testimonials.  Yes that’s right. Testimonials are highly effective for getting prospects to do what you want them to do most, which is buy your product or join your business.

Why are testimonials so important? Because they tell prospects that other people have tried the product, was satisfied that the product helped solved their problems, and shows how confident other people are in the product you’re offering. People do not want to be the only one using a product. They need proof that other people are using what you’re selling and are happy with the results they’re receiving. Prospects want others to relate to their struggles and problems. To hear from other customers how satisfied they were using your products or services reduces or eliminates the fear, and makes the prospect more comfortable and willing to buy from you.

Remember this, a customer’s testimonial is a thousand times more powerful than what you have to say. A prospect may not always listen to you, but they will always listen to a happy customer. So when you have a customer, make sure to continuously keep your relationship with them well established. When you have happy customers, they’ll market your offerings for you. That’s also when you can call them and ask them for a testimonial, which they’ll be more than happy to give you.

Once you have a good set of testimonials, include them in your marketing materials, including emails and post cards. If you have a blog, have a testimonials section that has all the testimonials you’ve obtained. You can have a short testimonial on your business cards, only if you can fit one in.  You can even have a testimonials document that you can give to prospects of some of the best testimonials you have. With testimonials the possibilities are very well open.

Remember, prospects are much more likely to listen to happy customers than you. They’ll be more confident to buy by hearing from other people that has been satisfied with your products or services that’s not a part of your business. Think back of that time when you said you weren’t ever going to buy something, but then ended up doing so because a friend tried it and told you how great it was. Then when you bought it you was just as satisfied, if not more.

Your prospects have done it all before. They’ve bout all the books they could that promised them that they could make sales in the next two hours. They’ve paid thousands of dollars worth in attending seminars and found no valuable information from the speakers They’ve even tried products similar to what you’re selling that didn’t help them lost the weight they wanted, remove the dryness in their hair, or helped them to increase their stamina.

Prospects do have goals, or have dreams of where they want to be. I’m sure everyone dreams sometimes during the day, and for sure at night. But oftentimes, people don’t get to the end result that they want. In business, many people have dealt with that, and so do people in health and wellness, the beauty industry, and sports. People fail often, but with enduring the failure comes success.

When people fail, they hold a grudge on that experience, and will say they would never do such and such again. These types of prospects are cautious, and can be very difficult to deal with, for you can say all the right things to them but they still don’t want to listen to you. That flashback of their last failure pops up in their minds again, and holds them back from making a purchase. You can often times discover when a prospect is cautious when they express doubt through talking about a bad experience with a similar product they used midway through a conversation.

First off, what you should do when talking with a cautious prospect, is being a mentor. You’re trying to sell them your product, but first you must find out more about them. You can ask people what other products or services have they used, and they’ll tell you. Ask them then what results did they receive, and they’ll tell you that as well.

For example, when I worked at Apple, for the prospects I talked to that were new to Macintosh computers, I would ask them “Many of our visitors are PC users and are new to Mac. What has you switching from a PC to a Mac?” Prospects would always at that point express their displeasure of PC computers, saying that they crash often, are very non-user friendly, or would experience viruses. They would express their painful experiences with PCs, and I as an mentor for them would listen and build rapport to show them I understand their pains and that I’m there to help.

So you first be that mentor for them, you ask questions, and listen to their past failures or past pains. Then what you do is build rapport to show that you understand their pain. Justify their failures and then encourage them. Never should you criticize your prospects, even if it was their fault or if they were wrong. That’s a sure fire way to lose a sale and to decrease your reputation.

What you then do is show your prospects the many factors that are out of their control that contribute to their failures. In my case with Apple visitors their PCs did have the tendency to slow down, crash, or automatically install programs they never wanted in the first place. Some products are not user friendly, are difficult to use or understand, are low quality and break easily, have side effects that do more harm than good, or were just the wrong product for the consumer thanks to an unethical salesperson. By showing them the many factors, you’re telling prospects it’s not their fault, that you care, and that despite those shortcomings, they should not quit on their goals and dreams.

By this time the prospect is comfortable with you and realizes that you’re an expert that’s there to help them, and will listen to what you have to offer.  Tell them the benefits of buying from you and working with you. Tell you how they will succeed from using your products or working with you, and how you and your products differentiate from what they’ve used before. So if the last product they purchased was very difficult to use, tell them how easy it is to use your products, and the results they will get based on what they’re looking for. If there is a need you can help solve, it makes perfect sense to take advantage of that.

In my last blog post, I mentioned about how fear plays a role in a prospect’s purchasing decisions. I mentioned how fear holds them back and how trust should be earned in order to get a prospect to consider buying from you. In this blog post I’ll go a bit deeper in depth on a few way the fear can be removed or reduced in order to get to the last step, which is closing the sale.

To be very specific, prospects do not like to be sold to. They don’t want to talk to another sales person. They want to talk to a human being that understands their pain and can offer a solution to their pain. In order to open the door to where the prospect will want to communicate with you, you need to build rapport. What is building rapport anyways? Well building rapport is talking to your prospects in a warmly manner that makes them feel important, comfortable, appreciated, and more willing to talk to you.

You first build rapport with the prospect by a warm greeting like, “Hi Jane. This is Bob of _________. How are you doing today my friend?” This opens the door to the prospect to answer it in a warmly manner as well. Most of the time, they will ask how you’re doing as well, and say “I’m doing great, thanks for asking.”

As you’re talking to your prospect, you build rapport by saying warmly responses to their answers to your questions or responses to your statements. So when a prospect says that they’re trying to increase their profits without spending so much money, say something like “That’s a great plan. I understand what you’re saying indeed.” Then to add to that statement you can add, “I definitely want to help you achieve that goal.”

What are you accomplishing when you’re building rapport? Three things you are doing when you build rapport with prospects are you’re building their trust, you’re making them comfortable in talking to you, and you’re helping them to remove the fear. The real test comes when the prospect trusts you enough to tell you what’s bothering them, what they’re afraid of, and the reason they’re having a hard time making a decision. When you continue building rapport during this phase of the conversation, you’re showing the prospect that you care, that they are not alone, and that you’re here to help them.

When a prospect says they’re not ready to buy now, respond by saying something like, “I understand where you’re coming from. This is a big purchase for you and I want to help you make the right decision. What’s holding you back from buying today?” This is when the prospect will tell you the reason they aren’t willing to buy now, for at this point they are comfortable with telling you why. There’s many reasons from money, time, fear of what others might think, asking their spouse, buyer’s remorse, etc. If you had been listening to the prospect from the beginning, at times they may give you hints or tell you of their fears or doubts. It’s your job then to build rapport, and have a response that will eliminate that fear and doubt that will make them more eager to buy. If not, and the prospect is telling you when you had asked them for the sale, then build rapport, ask specific questions to find the problem, and offer a respond to eliminate that problem, and most importantly, the fear.

There are distributors in MLM home based businesses today that are probably urging to get a very good prospect that will buy from them. Some distributors may put all their effort and time into a few prospects that they believe will either purchase their products or sign up for their primary opportunity. Things may go good at first when trying to connect with them, but then out of no where either your prospects stopped returning your calls, or flat out told you that they don’t think what you’re trying to sell them will work.

Why is that? What makes a prospect interested at first in what you have to offer, and then all of a sudden they vanish never to return? What makes prospects all of a sudden tell you no when they had been leading you on as if they were ready to buy or sign up to your MLM business? These are questions anyone in network marketing is probably asking himself or herself. I can tell you that there can be many reasons for a prospect to change shift, more than I can explain in one article. In this post I want cover the topic of fear, which is one of the biggest reasons prospects change their minds.

I’ll tell you off the bat, fear is a poison that controls people today. With the massive layoffs that occurred within the last couple of years, people fear of losing their jobs. With the swine flu that occurred last year, people fear of catching it and dying. When someone purchases a product from a company that doesn’t work, they fear of buying from that same company again, let alone a product. So what if they were part of a MLM company that went out of business? You guessed it.

Your job as a network marketer is to help the prospects remove their fears. The thing you have to understand when doing that, is that some people have their fears hidden. They have them masked underneath because they don’t want other people to know about them, for they believe they will look weak if others did know. Most people don’t trust others with telling them what they fear. So if you haven’t built a relationship with them, they won’t trust you either.

To remove the fear from your prospects, you have to ask questions. Lots of questions if need be. First you need to build rapport and make them feel welcomed and happy that they’re talking to you. Get them comfortable by talking about everyday stuff first. Use a bit of humor to make them laugh or smile. Then afterwards, ask questions of their needs. Sometimes they will give you signals of their pains or past experiences. When you do that, you open doors to remove the pain and fear they’re having.

People want help from those willing to understand where they’re coming from. Take note that it takes time before a prospect will buy from you. It can take months before someone purchases from you or signs up for your business. During the whole duration you should be trying to build a relationship with them. Be a good listener and take notes of what your prospects say to you, and keep them on file so you can go where you left off. That way, your prospects will appreciate that you learning about them.