What exactly are you selling?

What exactly is your client or customer buying?

The obvious answer, of course is, “your product or service”.

And that is true,

until you actually have to persuade someone to buy,

until “sell” involves something more than the physical exchange of money or value.

Then it becomes fairly obvious that there is something more involved.

Let me say, right now, that what you are selling is a story.

A story is

the story of a change,

the change that your customer or buyer goes through when they use your product or service.

And that is the story you have to sell.

And while that change will have physical aspects and outcomes that might involve things like health, wealth, relationships; ultimately the result your client or customer wants is the emotion, the feeling.  They want to feel free, valued, better than, at peace; all sorts of things.  And they may not articulate that, but the want will be there.  

There is a saying that people buy based on emotion and justify based on logic.

And that is why stories are so valuable.  They can tap into the subconscious level of emotions.  We are wired for story and stories are inherently built on emotion.  

So your client story is vital in your marketing.  

Where are you telling your client story – that story of change?

Being the Marketing Chairman of an international organisation has forced me to research ways to market on its behalf.

I found a suggestion to use coffee shops to promote our organisation. 

But it is so true that we are bombarded with visual advertising every day and every-where to such an extent that its effectiveness is reduced to just about zero.

But capture people while they are relaxed and open to suggestion and you have a chance of getting their attention with your publicity.

So use the menu holders in the local coffee shop to get that attention.

OK … so then I needed to find the confidence to approach the owner of a coffee shop to ask if we could use his menu holders.

And that’s where the gratitude to that organisation came in because it gave me the confidence to go into the shop and ask.

He gave me permission and we now have a new member of the local club from that publicity.