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Fear is the most powerful motivator in the animal kingdom and make no mistake your prospective clients are in a decision-making jungle when selecting among the many providers in your market. Your ability to overcome buyer resistance will have an immediate and positive impact on your website sales.

Before we dive into a discussion of a few tools to overcome buyer’s remorse let me say that you must first be confident in the quality of your service and the way you deliver that service to have the confidence to put these tactics into motion. Consider the following as you build or revamp your website copy:

1. Guarantee:  Offer a no questions asked money back guarantee or a make-right deal for your customers.
2. Free trial:  Let prospective customers try your service before they buy.
   Bite sized chunks:  Similar to the free trial offer you provide prospects with a free piece of your offering. For example if you run a paid employment site offer prospective employers 5 free resume searches.
3. 24 hour customer service: Knowing that there will always be someone a phone call, email or forum post away from solving their post purchase problem goes a long way toward comforting the resistant buyer.
4. Referrals:  People look to others to help them make decisions, so get ahead of the process by building a referral system that proactively introduces your company to the friends of your clients and business partners.

Fear of wasting money on a bad decision overrides the interest generated by your stated benefits.  To bring prospective customers around you must be prepared to overcome their resistance.

How do you overcome the resistance?

As the social media elite wax on about the best ways to attract 20K followers on Twitter; in all of their singing they fail to realize that most of us haven’t even gotten our arms around adding email newsletters to our business marketing Kung Fu. Let me be the first to tell you that a good number of the gurus who built huge followings did so years ago when Twitter and Facebook were in their infancy and there was little noise in the channel.  That time is gone and many of the strategies that worked for them are almost sure not to work for you, so what about the rest of us; how do we make Twitter work?

From building relationships with powerful, “Oprah-like” local influencers to getting the attention of Google, there are many reasons to tap online social networks but I will share one strategy I use that is simple and almost guaranteed to get your phone to ring.  Are you sitting down? Okay, email your Twitter tweets to the next hot prospect you encounter, that’s it!

Okay, there’s a bit more too it than that but the technique is really simple. Let’s get ‘er done:

1. Commit to posting three or so knock out, helpful bits of information to Twitter each day. Resist the urge to post any sort of advertisement or sales pitch. You can automate the process using tools like Tweet Later.
2. Setup your first sales meeting:  Over here I use a 2 presentation approach consisting of a needs assessment presentation and a solutions presentation.  This is a powerful 2 step process that if done right positions you as the “must have provider”.
3. Bite-sized Chunks:  Email your prospective client one Tweet from step one above each day in between your needs assessment and solutions presentations.
4. Prepare your business for a rush of new customers or clients.

Now that really is it!

Why this SYSTEM works

We can assume your prospect is interested in your product or service, afterall you were able to set up the meeting, right?  The question in your prospect’s mind that the Tweet-a-day process answers is, why this person should purchase YOUR solution vs. moseying down to the shop a few doors away. Assuming your short tweets are “light bulb” bits of information gold that your prospect can instantly put to work (at no cost) you will build in your prospect’s mind a powerful sense of trust and liking. Who was it that said, “People do business with those they like and trust…”?

How do you engage vs attract followers?

Have you ever wondered what sales materials successful business owners and sales professionals take with them on sales calls?  As a multimedia professional, my sales kit includes some pretty unique and I must admit, cool items; so I thought to share the contents with you.

From the image above you can see that a branded pocket folder binds the majority of my kit.  Inside the binder I have a sales letter that briefly introduces the company.  Also in the kit are several sales one-sheet documents; one that recaps our awards and lists our more prominent press mentions. The second one-sheet is a tips document outlining several creative uses for whatever service I happen to be discussing that day (self managed websites, promotional videos, seminar videos, etc.).  The final kitted item is a business card sized CD-ROM containing a company promotional video and brochure copy detailing our mix of multimedia services.  As long as CD-ROMs have been around this little one always manages to produce a “wow” from prospects.

My final sales tool consists of an iPOD device containing a mix of promotional and client videos.  I have actually replaced the iPOD by featuring the same videos on my BlackBerry 8830 smartphone.  This little baby gets my prospects very excited, especially the phone; as most people never thought to use such a common device as a sales tool. 

Well, I have shown you my lucky charms.  What’s in your wallet?  Share with us your most commonly used sales tools, as well as thoughts on what works and what doesn’t (click to comment).

While waiting to see the premiere of Iron Man and struggling painfully through movie trailers for the Hulk 2 and Don’t Mess with the Zohan, I was inspired to compose this post (don’t ask why). I took out my trusty BlackBerry 8830 and began to write. Not being a natural salesperson, early in my entrepreneurial journey I had a visceral fear of hearing the word no.  Like me, I am sure some of you might also take rejection personally. Even if you are a great salesperson my experience still might be of use, so read on.

Rejection was so hard to handle in part because I did not have what I call a “minimum” strategy; simply put, an understanding of what I would like to get, at a minimum, out of each sales interaction.  Back then I would simply walk away if a prospect did not immediately bite.  A few years wiser now, my minimum strategy includes asking the people I pitch if I can add them to the distribution list for our email newsletter and let me tell you the practice has worked exceptionally well.

For the recipient our newsletter delivers immediately usable customer acquisition techniques and for us each monthly touch strengthens our position as business problem solvers.  Remember the rule of 8:16 states that it takes at least 8 contacts over a 16 month period before a prospect becomes a real customer.  Our newsletter guarantees 12 touches in 12 months.

I was literally turned down flat by the first 10 companies I approached but within a year of sending our monthly instructive newsletter; we ended up doing business with 8 of these firms in large part because the newsletter kept us top of mind as problem solvers and the publication showcased much of our best work.  It did not hurt that many of our prospects saw their competitor’s projects starting to appear in our client showcase listings.  Man do I smile now when someone tries to shoo me off. 

What is your minimum strategy (click to leave a comment)?