Audio Lesson Two: WHY
Have your audience narrowed, defined and documented? let’s continue.
Now that you’ve completed the first section of your simplified, one-page marketing plan, we’re ready to move on to the next step to creating a system that allows you to sell more by doing less. If you haven’t completed Audio Lesson One, or the corresponding section in the worksheet, turn back now.
LET’S TALK ABOUT “WHY”
When we say “why,” we’re borrowing from Simon Sinek’s wildly popular Ted Talk, “The Golden Circle", also known as “The Power of Why.” If you’ve never seen that, it’s probably worth a watch, so I’ll post that video here in the lesson notes for you to come back to later.
What he’s getting at, and what all good marketing is about, is orienting your messaging—not around your own qualifications, product benefits and bona fides—but rather your audience’s sense of “why,” which lives at the center of Sinek’s Golden Circle.
The Why is the motivation that inspires action. Whether it’s joining a cause, taking an action, following a movement, or making a purchasing decision, it is all powered by Why motivators.
Not yours. Theirs.
REMEMBER THAT WINDOW? LET’S PEEER THROUGH IT SOME MORE.
Which ties directly back to Audio Lesson One. Because, if you can’t clearly articulate the audience, you can’t possibly understand the purchasing motivators (and de-motivators) of your ideal customer.
Remember, they don’t care about you. They care about their own interests. How your product or service aligns with those interests remains to be discovered.
And you can’t just promise it. You have to prove it.
Remember at the end of Audio Lesson One, when I asked you to think about a few more questions to ask of your narrowly defined market niche?
What problems, pains, aspirations or desires is this audience looking to address, and how does my product or service address them?
We’re getting to that.
But first. Let’s review what the most powerful buying motivators are together.
PAIN TODAY, NOT PLEASURE TOMORROW.
According to the experts at Sandler Sales Training, there are basically four primary buying motivators:
Pleasure Today
Pleasure Tomorrow
Pain Today
Pain Tomorrow
Any guess as to which is the most powerful and motivating?
Let’s quickly review each.
Pain Tomorrow is what people in the insurance business are often selling to: Pay for this product today so that, if something painful should occur in the future, you will be protected from it. Or consider the warranty that they’re always trying to tack onto the end of a product sale. “Would you like the three-year extended warranty for another $99?” That’s a tough sell. Pay you now for something I hope to never need and don’t even want to think about, like a flooded basement, or my iPhone getting flushed down the toilet? Tough sell. And a hesitant buy. Pain Tomorrow is probably the least motivating of the four purchasing motivators.
Pleasure Tomorrow is another tough sell. Ever had to convince a young professional, just out of college, to start saving for retirement? “Take money out of the paycheck they’re giving you today, don’t spend it on beer and video games; invest it, so that some day, you may have a comfortable life and happier existence, some 50 years into the future?” That’s another tough sell. Trust me. That’s what folks like estate planners and investment advisors are selling into. And it’s another tough buy…at least for a large segment of the population.
Pleasure Today is a motivation to buy an ice cream cone. Or to go the movies. Or to go out to dinner. Or buy an instant download on your phone. Motivation by the desire to get some immediate gratification can be a powerful driver of action, if you’re in the right line of business. But if you’re like most professional service providers, you are not in the business of instant gratification. If you are in the type of industry that delivers instant gratification like the examples above, congratulations! This is your Why quadrant. For all others, you probably belong in the fourth Why quadrant…
Pain Today. Sandler Sales trainers will convince you that this is, by far, the most powerful of the four primary buying motivators, because the customer needs to get rid of the pain quickly, and has reached the point of being willing to pay for pain relief. You just need to convince this prospect that you are right source of pain relief.
Which is why Audio Lesson One was such a critical step in the process of doing less while selling more in order to successfully market your business and close more sales. When you come upon a prospective client or customer, acutely positioned in the Pain Now buying motivation, you want to make sure they’ve eliminated the competition and are focusing solely on you and your ability to make the pain go away.
That starts by first demonstrating that you know where it hurts.
And your competitors out there claiming to be all things to all people (you know, the people who said “It could be anyone” when I asked them who their target market was?) won’t be able to believably pull that off. Not the way you will, when you position yourself narrowly and distinctly for a niche audience.
HERE’S THE HOMEWORK
Before we begin the next section of the worksheet, can I ask you to go back and watch the Ted Talk embedded here on the lesson notes? I really think it will provide some important context for why we’re going to talk about Why…and how.
Once you’ve watched that video, remember that there are two key segments to this talk. Most people remember the first, but forget the second. And the second part might be the more important of the two.
In the first part, Simon makes a compelling case for the Power of Why, using his Golden Circle metaphor. But in the second, Sinek actually gets a little nerdy by citing The Law of the Diffusion of Innovation. Sounds like a science class, but it’s actually a marketing lesson. In that part, pay attention to how to apply the Why in a way that aligns with the natural lifecycle of product or service adoption by the market. It doesn’t matter what your product or service is, or who you market is. This law applies universally.
It’s also why we’re aligning our six-lesson audio course in the very order in which we are. Here’s step two:
In the space provided in the worksheet (or use a separate sheet if you need to), try to articulate your ideal client’s Why. (Remember, for your purposes, we’re going to orient our thinking around the Pain Today buying motivator.)
What problems are they looking to solve?
What are their frustrations?
What are the challenges they grapple with everyday?
What solutions do they wish existed, but never knew were out there?
How are they trying to make this pain go away currently, and why isn’t it working?
Here’s the best part…an additional trick that can make this methodology foolproof. Don’t know the answers to the above? Ask them!
Take a client to lunch. Hop on a quick phone call with 5-10 customers. Send a brief survey, if you have to (my least favorite approach).
Ask them questions like,
“Do you remember what was bugging you when you finally went out looking for a service like mine?”
“What were you hoping to find?”
“What are you still looking for to solve similar issues you might have?”
This will ground your hypotheses in actual science! Don’t guess—discover!
Once you have great notes, sufficient input from real-life test subjects, document that all in the Why section of the worksheet.
We’re going to need it.
If and when you think it’s ready for primetime, you’re ready for Audio Lesson Three: WHAT. I’ll walk you through this in the next installment, but start thinking along these lines: Now that we know with confidence who we’re talking about when it comes to defining your audience, and what their Pain Today buying motivators are, start to consider:
What do I have to offer to genuinely make this pain go away…today?
See you next time.