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7 Resistance Crushing Questions Every Business Must Answer

June 29, 2011

You have started seeing progress with your new business.  But you are still not satisfied with your progress.  Read the following post by John Jantsch, from Ducttape Marketing.  He specializes in work with small business owners.  Enjoy and prosper.

 

The Marketing Hourglass

You’ve created buzz and awareness about your business, you’ve gained permission to educate and you’ve even started to build trust through your content and SEO work – prospects are coming to know, like and trust you – you’ve achieved the equivalent of marketing nirvana, right?

Well, not exactly. In fact, you’re also making your case in logical terms, you’ve offered up a perfectly competitive product or solution, one that everyone should buy, only to meet with one of the most powerful forces in nature – resistance.

I’m no science wiz, but I’ve always loved the idea of resistance in physics as a metaphor for the kind of resistance many business owners encounter when trying to spark a sale. Resistance is the ability of a substance to prevent or resist the flow of electrical current.

Many times we can present a solution and price that seems like the obvious and logical choice, but can’t seem to make the sale. What we sometimes fail to factor, however, is that while a product may have a logical price of, say, $10, the buyer’s emotional price – “I don’t trust myself to implement this solution, I don’t know enough to believe this is the answer, the cost of potential disruption is too high” – has effectively raised the perceived cost beyond recognition – and that’s the resistance you must address.

You must bake resistance crushing tactics, products, services and processes into your overall mix and marketing approach.

Below are seven questions that every business owner must answer, as part of what I call The Marketing Hourglass^TM, in order to lower or overcome resistance for their products and services and create competitively sustainable momentum.

• What are your free or trial offerings? – Although you may have created the perfect solution there are times when people need a little taste before committing to the entire purchase. It’s essential that you find ways for people sample your products or expertise. You can do this by creating starter offerings that are free or low cost, packaging information products that make your solutions accessible, or presenting educational workshops that teach while putting your approach on display in a non-sales environment.
• What is your guarantee? – This one frightens some people, because they fear the repercussions of every customer demanding a refund. Of course, if that’s even remotely possible then you’ve got bigger problems than marketing. The fact is most businesses offer or honor an implied guarantee – if a customer feels they didn’t get what was promised we often resolve this by offering a refund. So, why not lower the implied risk of doing business with you by finding a way to offer a compelling guarantee up front. Tell the world you’re so confident in the results you can bring that you’ll assume all of the risk in the transaction.
• Read the rest of the article on John’s blog:  http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2011/06/20/7-resistance-crushing-questions-every-business-must-answer/

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Al Hanzal,
View more posts by Al Hanzal

Filed under: Business Planning

Tags: small business, small business administration