The following article was written by my friend and fellow Book Yourself Solid Certified Coach Sue Painter. I think Sue really has captured the essence of the word "community" in "community bank" here! Thanks Sue!
Jeff Simpkins, Book Yourself Solid Certified Coach
Community Bank Consulting, Inc.
www.CommunityBankConsulting.com
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• Deliver world class customer service by choosing and using the right technology
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By guest author Sue Painter. Sue
Painter is the President and Founder of The Confident Marketer.
If you still believe that customers
do deals with you because you are logically their best option, you are stuck in
an old and inaccurate marketing model.
The idea that rational thought is the prime motivator of consumer
behavior was proven wrong in the mid 1990’s.
People buy on emotion, not logic.
This is actually a great advantage to small businesses. Why?
For the most part, smaller businesses can easily do a much better job of
knowing their customers and the emotional triggers their customers have at any
given time. And once those emotions are
known, smaller businesses can usually be more nimble and flexible in designing
offerings to meet their customer needs.
There are two parts to an offer you
make to a potential customer. One part
is what the offer will do for that customer, how it will transform the
customer. The second part is the
delivery mechanism, or how the offer works.
Transformational selling means that a business focuses their advertising
copy on what the transaction does for the customer. This may sound like nothing new, but in fact
I often see advertising copy, especially in financial institutions, that focus
on numbers and logic. Focusing on the
deal itself (how the numbers will work) means that you are focusing on the
delivery mechanism. You are stuck with
an outdated, ineffective sales model that won’t work for you as well as
transformational selling.
Here’s an example – let’s say that a
young couple wants to add a large outdoor patio and fire pit to their
home. A hardscape expert has designed a
perfect outdoor area for their yard, and the budget is $15,000. The couple is willing to take on debt to get
what they want, so they are shopping for money.
You would like to do the deal.
What can you do to make that happen?
·
Have an active customer and community
relationship management system in place.
If you’re good, you will work this in two ways. If the young couple is already in a business
relationship with you, you will have achieved top of mind awareness that is so
entrenched that they won’t even think of looking elsewhere, and you will also
know that the couple has wanted this new patio area for a while. If the couple isn’t an existing customer,
your community outreach program will be strong enough to encourage their
looking at you even though you are not their current financial
institution. And again, if you really
know the people in your community, you will have heard that the couple wants a
new patio for their home. Either way,
your relationship building strategies have worked in that they’ve given you a
shot at doing this deal.
·
Craft your offer based on transformational
selling. This means that your
advertising copy and sales conversation focuses heavily on what a new patio
area will do for the couple. You use
emotional triggers rather than logic, and you focus first and foremost on what
the patio means to the couple. The
delivery mechanism is secondary. Focus
on how the patio area transforms the couple’s home, what the outcome of adding
to their home will give them, the feelings that will come into play. Perhaps the couple wants the area to
entertain. Perhaps they want it because
they envision children playing out there in the near future. Your job is to know the emotional triggers
and address them in copy and conversation.
Help the couple to voice the vision that is in their mind, the unspoken
emotions. What will it cost them if they
decide not to build the patio area? Show
the couple that you get and care about what this will do for them, how it will
transform them.
·
Make sure that your transformational sales
conversations are genuine – meaning that you are genuinely interested in this
couple and want an ongoing relationship with them, whether they do business
with you this time or not.
Transformational selling requires true and ongoing customer
relationship. Otherwise, it will sound
insincere and manipulative and will most certainly drive the couple away.
·
Only after having the transformational
conversation do you turn your attention to the delivery mechanism. Your delivery mechanism (amount of loan,
interest rate, length of term) has to be competitive, but it does not have to
be the very cheapest deal around.
Remember that transformational selling is based on relationship. Customers who feel understood will decide
based on relationship as well as the bottom line. If you have done your job well, your customer
will do the deal and tell their friends, “We paid just a little more but we felt
understood and know we will be taken care of if any problems come up.” That word of mouth will help you in subtle
but powerful ways with other potential customers, too.
You can use transformational selling
to build collaboration and great word-of-mouth as well as media. A great customer relationship system will
continue to strengthen the bond with this couple long after the deal is
done. What if, for instance, you
followed the patio’s progress and when it neared completion you showed up with
a new plant, a cooler on wheels, or a bottle of wine? Want even more play? Get a relationship going with the hardscape
installer, and the two of you go in together to sponsor the first patio party
for the couple. Got a photographer as a
bank customer? Call him into the mix,
too. Not only will the couple never
forget their first party (giving you great word-of-mouth for years to come) but
you have given the photographer a little business, built stronger relationship
with the installer who might recommend you to others needing money for similar
projects, and you can easily get local press – a picture in the paper with a
mention of the three businesses who made this couple so happy.
Transformational selling is a win
all the way around. It is heartfelt as
well as good business strategy, and it helps build and keep customer
relationships strong. Add it into your
sales strategies and watch what it does for your bottom line.
© Sue Painter
Sue Painter is the President and
Founder of The Confident Marketer (www.confidentmarketer.com). She often speaks to business and community
groups about marketing and sales topics.
She is a certified Book Yourself Solid coach. She can be reached at [email protected]. Click here to see her detailed bigoraphy.
