How to Offer The Right Products and Services to The Right Prospect
Successful sales are the intersection of offering the right product or service to the right person at the right time and in the right place. This is also known as the four P’s of marketing, the age-old wisdom that forces us to break out of the one-size-fits-all mindset and tailor our services to real needs.
Arguably, one of the most challenging parts of navigating toward this intersection is deciding how to match up your interested prospects with the right product or service you offer. You’ve already gained their interest; now, it’s time to nurture your leads and determine the best fit for what you do. For entrepreneurs who are just starting to fine-tune their products or own a number of products, this can be an essential exercise in deciding how to market yourself and whether you need to refine your product to address your prospects’ expectations.
Without this crucial matchmaking step, you risk converting a lead into a paying customer that isn’t going to be satisfied with a purchase that doesn’t fit their needs and expectations. And, as we all know, dissatisfied customers aren’t return customers.
Here’s a framework you can use to get inside your prospects’ heads and position your product or service in the best possible light:
Discover Real Pain Points
Products solve problems. Savvy entrepreneurs are much like engineers in that they look at every opportunity from a problem-solving approach. They work to identify inefficiencies and gaps in the marketplace, then discover whether those gaps need to be addressed.
However, there is a fine art to this, one that not all entrepreneurs learn to master. The key is to find pain points that people would actually pay money to solve. You don’t want to waste time and resources fabricating problems that don’t truly need to be fixed.
Instead, focus on real pain points that impact the way your prospect lives or works. See how it affects their ability to make money, grow their business, save time, enjoy life, learn something new, or access the things they need.
Most pain points can be broken down into four distinct categories:
● Financial – They want to save money, ideally without changing the outcome of the solutions they’re already using.
● Support – They need more resources to do things.
● Productivity – They want to do things more efficiently and spend less time on them without sacrificing the quality of work.
● Process – They want to improve the way they do things.
When you can start to think of your customers’ needs in this way, you stand a better chance of positioning the right product in the right light for successful selling.
For example, if you find out that most of your customers’ pain points are money related, then you may be able to offer a less expensive version of something they’re using or demonstrate a higher ROI with your product that can help offset costs.
Know Their History
As you’re exploring your prospects’ pain points, you’re probably already thinking of the solutions you offer that could help them. But before you start making recommendations, dig a little deeper to uncover things they’ve tried in the past:
● What led them to trying that solution?
● Did it work?
● What did they like or dislike about it?
● How much did they spend on it?
● How long did they use it?
● What made them decide it wasn’t a great option for them?
These are important things to know because the answers give you a clearer path forward. For starters, it uncovers some of the deeper problems they’re experiencing so you can start positioning your own products. It also helps you avoid offering something similar to what the prospect has already tried and couldn’t make work for them.
Clarify Their Motivations
There’s a reason why your prospect is seeking a solution to a problem. Maybe it’s because they’re reaching a critical deadline and can’t delay a decision any longer. Or maybe it’s because they’re growing rapidly (or want to grow rapidly) and believe that something you offer can help them. Whatever the case, you, the entrepreneur, need to understand what is forcing them to pull the trigger on a product.
This is essential because if they have a specific timeline in mind, they need assurances that your product will align with that timeline.
For example, let’s say you offer a 30-day online course on hiring and onboarding that can help a new startup systematize these processes. But your prospect desperately needs to start hiring today. They can’t wait 30 days to finish a whole course before they start hiring, so this might not be a good fit for them at the moment. Instead, you might direct them to a shorter crash course or a one-hour webinar that gives them the basics to start hiring. You can always pitch the longer course to them later.
How a Marketing Quiz Can Help with Sales Matchmaking
Sales is very much like matchmaking: you review certain criteria and work to find the best fit for the individual. The path you take to get to those results may look different for each prospect you speak with. And if you’re taking these paths in the form of one-on-one conversations, it can also be a time-consuming journey.
A marketing quiz can help to remove some of this guesswork and streamline the path to an ideal match. The goal of any quiz is to use specific criteria to lead the quiz taker to the most relevant answer. It’s tailor-made to the individual and can help to guide salespeople and prospects alike toward the best-fit solution.
This helps entrepreneurs avoid throwing too many solutions to their prospects and get laser-focused on the product that makes the most sense for the present need. What’s more, you can also use the results of your marketing quizzes to gauge future interest in a product, find your most popular offerings, and prioritize your efforts accordingly.
To learn more about how to create a marketing quiz for successful sales matchmaking, DM me on Instagram at @kevinng.co
Kevin is a marketing quiz strategist who is passionate about helping entrepreneurs strategize quizzes so they can convert leads into paying customers easier than making a cup of coffee. If you’re ready to get more leads for your business, you can interact with him on his IG account @kevinng.co
