3 Ways to Give Your Buyers an Awesome Connecting Experience

This is part three in a 3-part series for sellers who want to make a shift so buyers will respond to them more openly, eagerly and quickly.

In last week's post, we laid out the "most significant shift in economic history" and how it impacts sellers. It all comes down to our buyers' demands that we allow them to "be participants in creating what they want."

Which brings us here, to the natural follow up question: HOW can we give them those experiences where they participate in creating what they want? How do we give them what Michael Dart described in the Wall Street Journal as "such an awesome connecting experience that they will go out of their way to come to you"?

It's all about the experience these days. As buyers, we can relate. More and more restaurants and retailers aim to create experiences that connect us to their brands and their products. Think about what happens at Sephora, Bass Pro Shops, Build-a-Bear and American Girl stores. Think about your choices to frequent theme restaurants where the unique experience (instead of the food) brings you back. 

No matter what you sell, you can replicate what these companies are doing. The common denominator is how they get buyers participating in creating what they want. The experience is what distinguishes one restaurant from another, one retailer from all its competitors.

Let's break down the components of an experience. If you aim to do these three things, you will deliver an awesome connecting experience.

Create Value

Your product delivers value. Your company adds value with product or service enhancements. But only you, the seller, can create value for your buyer. Created value is unique, relevant and timely for each individual buyer. It isn't generic. Check out this definition of Value Creation from the MIT Sloan Management Review:

Value creation is defined by the experience of a specific consumer, at a specific point in time at a specific location, in the context of a specific event... The experience space is conceptually distinct from that of the product space. In the experience space, the individual consumer is central, and an event triggers a co-creation experience... The involvement of the individual influences that experience. The personal meaning derived from a co-creation experience is what determines the value to the individual."  

Creating value requires dialing in to the specifics and making every meeting, every conversation and every transaction a meaningful experience.

As a buyer, you recognize and respond when a seller is creating value that is personally meaningful to you. Your reaction is an emotional one, a heightened desire to engage with and even buy from that seller in that moment.  

Dr. David Lewis, Director of MindLab International, describes that moment as euphoric. He says "Shopping experiences trigger brain activity that creates euphoric moments. These euphoric moments can be triggered by experiencing something unexpected."

What's unexpected? Simply the novelty of giving your buyer an opportunity to participate in creating what they want. That, in and of itself, is created value.

Co-Create Insights

Another way to get your buyers participating in creating what they want is to involve them in brainstorming about solutions.

In the past, pre-pitch conversations have focused on getting buyers to tell us about their problems and their goals. We have been diagnosing what they need and then delivering a proposal to provide a solution.

More recent research on sales techniques has emphasized the need to bring insights to your buyers. So, along with our needs assessments, we've been offering insights in the form of market research, competitive analysis and fresh ideas.

We bring these insights to our buyers and hope they will appreciate the work we've done to gather information. We make one-sided presentations, sometimes dodging questions or comments that stretch beyond our understanding of the insights we've introduced. After all, it's risky business to cross over into our buyer's area of expertise.

That's why this shift is good news. Your buyers don't want you to bring them prefabbed insights. They appreciate a starting point, an insight that opens dialogue. But they don't need or want you to swoop in with a fully formed insight, idea and solution.

Instead, your buyers want to participate in creating what they want. A part of that process is the dialogue that extends what they already know and reveals some alternatives or extensions. Co-creating insights is collaborative and engaging. It's where your buyers begin to sell themselves on the ideas they are jointly forming with you.    

Generate Demand

When you create value and co-create insights, you will be generating demand.

By now, you've heard that today's empowered buyers prefer to avoid sellers. They work themselves through their own buying process without consulting sellers. They would (if they could) complete sales transactions online sans sellers. This is why it's so hard to get a call returned, why cold calling is more like a complete freeze out, and why it takes longer to open and close most sales.

More of the same cold calling won't get you anything but frustrated. Making more and more cold calls that are ineffective won't move the needle.

Getting people to call you and to refer others to you is so much easier. You can generate more leads and make more calls... OR you can generate demand and become the ONE seller that buyers actually want to talk to.

Differentiating yourself from the competition by offering an experience where buyers participate in creating what they want is all it takes. It's what has worked for countless retailers and restaurants. It's what all the research points toward. It's what you, yourself, respond to as a buyer.

The 3-in-1 Solution

Stay with me here... there's a shortcut. Making all three of these shifts is easier than you may think. You can accomplish all three -- creating value, co-creating insights and generating demand -- simply by asking quality questions.

Quality questions make your buyers think. Quality questions challenge your buyers in ways that make them reflect and reconsider their own perceptions. Quality questions engage buyers in a meaningful and stimulating 2-way dialogue.

Quality questions are not the same as the hackneyed needs assessment questions most sellers are still using. Those banal questions bore buyers and affirm their beliefs that meeting with sellers is a waste of time.

Quality questions put you in the driver's seat, leading your buyer into an awesome connecting experience. Quality questions advance the sale as you inspire your buyers and enlist them in the vision for change you've co-created.

Quality questions help you deliver exactly what your buyers want in their shopping experience. They differentiate you from other sellers, and they position you as something more than the stereotypical seller a buyer tries to dodge.

Quality questions, experts recognize, enable you to provide what your buyers are looking for. Here's how experts describe the links between these shifts and asking quality questions:

Value Creation - "One well-crafted and thoughtful question that penetrates through to the heart of your dream client’s business issues, challenges, problems, or opportunities is more powerful in both creating value and creating influence than any statement you might make." - Anthony Iannarino, international speaker, author of The Sales Blog

Co-Creation of Insights - "Insights and questioning now go hand-in-hand...Sharing insights as a part of questioning raises the level of the dialogue... While you are formulating client insights, your clients are arriving at their own insights.. But they won't likely be moved by your insight or buy into your recommendation if they don't feel ownership..." - Linda Richardson, Wharton Professor, author of Changing the Sales Conversation.

Demand Generation - "'One size fits all' is an idea that great demand creators have discarded—because it doesn't work. Instead, they 'de-average' complex markets, recognizing that the 'average customer' is a myth, and that different customers (and even the same customers at different times) have widely varying hassle maps... The only way to understand your customers current hassles is by asking questions." - Adrian Slywotzy, "Demand Creating: What People Love Before They Know They Want It."

In next week's post, we'll finish this 4-part series with more information about how you can make this shift and use quality questions to stop selling and start leading your buyers.   

About the Author: Deb Calvert has worked as a Corporate Director in a Fortune 500 company and as a consultant, coach and trainer to nearly 400 businesses of all sizes. She helps leaders and sellers connect with others in more meaningful and lasting ways. Her company, People First Productivity Solutions, builds organizational strength by putting people first. Deb is a Certified Master Facilitator with The Leadership Challenge?, a certified executive coach, and one of 2015's Top 50 Sales Influencers. Her book, DISCOVER Questions Get You Connected?, is a bestseller that helps sellers becomes leaders.