Pain is Not Necessarily a Bad Word!

Many times business professionals look for ideas to get their potential customers to "make a move" and finalize sales. Business owners look to help its sales force by utilizing marketing techniques such as advertising, joining networking groups, and offering sales training classes.

No matter what form of strategy you use to find potential customers and to get them interested in your product or service, we all know we need to find out what "pains" them in their businesses or personal lives. Unfortunately it is the "pain" that motivates people to make a move. It's almost like telling a child not to touch the hot stove, but sometimes they don't believe you until they do touch it and get burned. We can provide preventive information all day long that can help customers, but until they actually experience the pain of the problem is when they are finally ready to make a move.

So now what do you do? How can you get customers to be more proactive in preventative care for their businesses?

For starters, learn more about your target market. Especially in today's economy, no one can afford just anything. People are starting to be more cost conscious and they look for ways to save money instead of spending it. When you learn more about your target market, learn to ask the appropriate questions that focus on their potential "pains". For instance, if you are an IT company looking for customers who can benefit from off-site backup of their databases, then asking questions about what the costs it would take to replenish all of the data if their network were to suddenly crash or their office were to suffer from a natural disaster. Use examples to illustrate the importance of the preventative measures you are asking them to take.

What if you are a staffing company looking for opportunities to find placement for temporary administrative professionals, then you might ask the questions of how much does it cost to supply health insurance, worker's compensation insurance, training, and other start up costs when hiring an individual when you can utilize a staffing company to take those responsibilities for you? What other job responsibilities could they be handling instead of screening potential employees?

In the end, we have to ask questions that people are asking themselves right now in order to save money and raise revenue. So for your business, ask yourself if it is easier to find customers where you can lower their monthly expenses, or are you looking for customers that need to have their revenues increase?

The solutions you provide must be able to provide relief to them in order to get them to move forward with you.

Therefore, business professionals, are you focusing on the "Pain"?