MyNextClient

You’ve heard it many times: create fear, uncertainty, and doubt in your client’s mind to uncover unspoken needs and to elicit a sense of urgency for a decision.

“You know, Mr. Client, customers who haven’t bought our latest storage compression appliance have found their storage costs increase 20 times the current baseline.”

or,

“If you don’t sign this agreement for this limited partnership today, one of our many other investors looking at the same investment may take your spot.”

It may be seductive to attempt such tactics, and they may have worked in past, but clients today are more sophisticated and are generally put-off by such approaches.  Clients wish to be respected and want to build long term relationships with their business partners.  They want to trust and be trusted. They neither wish to be sold nor to buy—they don’t want to be “closed’; rather they want to enter into a joint decision to move the business to the next level together with their solution provider.

Eliciting fear, uncertainty, or doubt may work sometimes; it may get you a meeting or an opportunity to present or demonstrate; it may even get you a signature on a contract.  But it will ultimately destroy the relationship.  Why?  Because the relationship, whether it is an agreement to move to the next step in the sales cycle or to an order, is based on fear, uncertainty, and doubt!

Your objective should be instead to build and enhance the relationship, unless you are selling carrot peelers on a corner of Times Square.  Even then, buyers want to trust that the seller is pitching something of real value and is ultimately considerate of the buyer’s desire for quality, reliability, and good value-to-price.

Instead of fear, try trust.  Even if you must walk away from the sale because some element in the deal requires follow-through or because there just wasn’t a fit for your product or service, continuously building trust will earn you the right to come back when the dynamics of the deal are more conducive to closure. And if you don’t have to walk away, closing a deal with your client in the spirit of trust fosters confidence, reduced buyer’s remorse, and repeat sales.  Further, it allows deeper, more fruitful conversations when new needs are discussed post-sale.

Instead of uncertainty, try assurance.  Work hard to earn your client’s confidence in you and in your product or service. Rather than saying “Disastrous things will befall you if you don’t buy my product”, say “My product may help achieve your goal of better budget allocation in the out years and may help release funds for your other projects,” and then go one step further “and I will be here to support its profitable implementation for you.”  The difference is nuanced, but the tone is more appealing. In any case, it is the way businessmen and women think and buy.

Instead of doubt, try confidence.  Clients don’t want to buy your product out of doubt about the consequences of not buying it.  They want to invest in your product or service in order to achieve their own business goals, whether these are cost reduction, cost avoidance, greater efficiency, better service for their internal or external customers, and so on.  By understanding these motives, you will position your product or service as a solution and yourself and your company as a value-adding business partner.

Trust, assurance, certainty ... TAC, yes ... FUD, no!