Bridging the Gap: Meet Your Customers Where They Are, Not Where You Are

One of the things that has frustrated me the most over the years in sales and marketing is seeing sales managers that sacrifice empathy for impatience. The reality is that not every sales person has the experience to follow a methodology that backtracks deals and creates a structured timeline, so sometimes shaking the tree at the end of a fiscal quarter is unavoidable. However, I’ve rarely seen a positive outcome when revenue shuckers ask their prospects or customers to come to where they are and worship at the idol of “now” without a real factual reason. It is always far better to be fast, be early, learn their timeline and show that you care enough to remember when and if what you are offering suits their needs.

I recently had a consultant agency craft a structure of messaging for a pilot B2B marketing program that I wanted to try. Their work created value propositions pivoting around limited time, hoops, and “get this before it runs out,” which essentially made messaging that was transparent and with no real pragmatic reason for the reconstruction of the laws of time and space. The result was replies from prospects full of vitriol. Not because they are mean— but because it is natural as entrepreneurs to get angered when you sense that you are being considered:

• Dumb
• A target for insincerity
• Easy

The good news is I am nothing if not stubborn and agile. Within hours I ripped that all out and used the spine of the program which was worthwhile but replaced the insincere messaging with a sense of stewardship. It is not about what you are selling unless you already have superb brand awareness and saturation. Pretend the universe is indifferent and you are insignificant (which is different than not being worthwhile). Prove you are worth noticing by creating brand awareness via asking questions and listening. It is about showing a sincere interest in learning their pain and then discovering if you have the right solution for them. If you can afford to get to them early, it behooves you to think in terms of earning the next steps especially during discovery. One thing that I find works well:

• Earn the first meeting with an outreach offer for help.
• Use the first meeting to offer your ear to learn about their challenges, and use that time to earn a chance to show them you will not offer a solution immediately but instead:
• Re-approach them after you’ve carefully studied and qualified if you have a solution that would apply. If so, earn the next meeting by showing carefully thought out due diligence in describing how your solution can effectively apply to the challenge you’ve uncovered.
• Explain that you really do not want to risk them misunderstanding the solution and you’d like to walk them through it in your next meeting.
• Earn that opportunity to really judge, visually, whether this would suffice as a cure to their ailment and what potential objections could be (budget, time, etc). Doing this visually, where you can empathetically discuss the plan and garner immediate visual feedback is critical so that you can find out what you have to do in order to earn the next steps needed for gaining that business. An eye movement or wince says more to you than any email will.

More often than not, my prospects will wonder what is taking so long to get to the catch. The $$$. Admittedly in my prospecting travels I do get asked frequently, “But what do YOU want? Why are you meeting with me? How will you make money off of me?” I’ll be honest and describe the three products I offer that give me revenue, but add an afterword of, “Only if you see that any of these services would be beneficial. The truth is, my job first and foremost is to learn more about you before I even offer you any of those services because I don’t want to risk your time or business with a prescription that may not apply. So that’s why I’m here. I want to learn more about your challenges and see if there’s anything that I know without a doubt that I can fix first.”

Side note: if I was more diligent in forcing those who sell to me to meet me where I’m at, mentally, I would also save myself further headaches down the road when we both realize we were too hasty for a transaction which superseded proper discovery.

The reality is that every entrepreneur realizes they need to make revenue on a schedule. It can be very hard, especially if you are starting a venture, to get ahead of the due date. However my experience, especially in years since the outbreak of the pandemic, has been that consumers and business prospects alike share more of a grounded eye for what it is to be talked to as a human being rather than a commodity.

I’ve seen the language of selling change dramatically in the last four years, but even before that time I still would always wince a bit when I would hear a sales manager regard a prospect or customer as anything less than a unique person with a challenge to solve. I would hear Patrick McGoohan shout, “I am not a number,” in my head.

You can separate yourself dramatically from the inexperienced if your marketing has a tone that displays that the person you are introducing yourself to is NOT a number.

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My name is Eric Peterson and I am The Awesome Team. Between 25 years of media and content creation, holistic metric-based ad engineering, and peerless funnel design, I am an awesome team in one middle-aged singular man. I offer three services:

• I can create a sales or marketing funnel that may be able to solve your challenges.
• I can teach you or your team how to do this.
• Or I can even audit your current marketing to very affordably show you, mathematically, if there’s a greener pasture that you may not be aware of.

No matter what, I only take on the projects that I know I can bring at least 20% more revenue to within 90 days or less or I work for free. That is my guarantee. If you want to meet so we can discover whether or not I have the right solution for you, please do connect with me.

Cheers,

Eric