How to Win Customers and Influence Buying in the Festive Season

A customer-centric approach can be easily summed up by quoting Harry A. Overstreet, a psychologist cited in Dale Carnegie’s book, “The best piece of advice which can be given to would-be persuaders, [is to] first arouse in the other person an eager want.”

What better time than the festive season for brands to persuade eager buyers to purchase their products or services? To capitalise on the uptick in spending during the holidays, it is crucial to note the factors that influence buying behaviour at this time.

Through the internet, customers have more knowledge and control over the buying process than ever before. With online reviews and direct access to any information they need on a given product or service, a good brand story or narrative is no longer enough to persuade prospective buyers. The market is competitive – and frankly, even a quality product or lucrative discount might not be enough to drive a sale.

On the sales side, truly learning how buying behaviour shifts during the festive season is a very important tool. The key is to understand buyer motives, pain points, and preferences - and then communicate that understanding effectively to them. Every touch-point with the brand is now a chance to create a customer-centric experience that fosters trust and long-term brand loyalty. Smart organisations are already making innovative changes to guarantee an extraordinary client experience.

A great example of this is the American outdoor clothing company, Patagonia. The brand is well known for their focus on environmentally-friendly practices and products. Patagonia understood the power of the customer and aligned their offering to buyer needs. For one, they recognized the need for customers to feel good about what they buy. By rejecting fast fashion, using recycled materials, and committing to sustainable practices across their supply chain, they created products that customers can feel proud to purchase. Secondly, they recognized that with the advent of greenwashing, merely promoting sustainability is not enough to convince the well-informed customers of today. Buyers need to feel trust in order to believe in a brand's claim. Patagonia focuses greatly on transparency in order to build trust. This includes initiatives like publicly disclosing their Supplier Code of Conduct, sharing the list of their production mills and factories, and willingly answering questions around their supply chain and challenges. This approach has helped Patagonia create a strong customer base and brand name, consequently benefiting their bottom line.

It’s clear that an effective, long-term solution to generating desire among customers is fostering a genuine connection with them. Acknowledging customer needs goes a long way in convincing them that the product or service aligns with their priorities and therefore, is the best fit for them.

The answers to the following questions are a good starting point in understanding the motivations of potential customers:

● Why should any customer buy this product or service?

● What problem is this product or service solving?

● What added value is said product or service adding to the customer?

● What may come across as undesirable or a bottleneck in the customer experience?

● How can one address this hurdle and provide the best customer experience?

A powerful yet fundamental sales system emphasises the importance of rapport, listening, and inquiry in the sales process - as well as engaging customers in the way they want to be engaged. Modern sales processes would be rendered useless if not empowered with the timeless and powerful human relation principles. A customer centric approach reverse- engineers the ideal customer journey and builds the sales process around the customer. It is worth noting that 82% of business buyers desire the same experience they would get when making a personal purchase, according to a recent Salesforce report. These are not just mere philosophies. Over the past 15 years, Amazon has had a 41% Year-Over-Year annual revenue growth using a formula that includes personal buying experiences that are:

1. On-demand

2. Easily accessible

3. Frictionless

If this is what customers expect when buying for themselves, that’s the experience they want when making purchases for a business as well. From emotional journeys to financial decisions, the following factors can help a brand bring a customer-focused approach to their sales process:

1. Mapping the Complete Customer Journey

It’s crucial to map the end-to-end journey of both the user and the decision maker, as both are key stakeholders. In a sense, it is similar to how festive purchases are often not for oneself but for gifting to someone else. Even though the product is the same, the perceived benefit is different for the buyer and the recipient. In a business context, the end user would usually focus on factors such as product features, functionality, ease of adoption, etc. On the other hand the decision-maker will be more concerned with factors like cost and ROI. To make a convincing pitch, sales should acknowledge both customer journeys. By finding the answers to the above mentioned questions, sales will be empowered with the information needed to do this. Festivals in India evoke an emotional response and the purchaser generally focuses more on value-based ROI than a financial one. This makes the sales process both easy and tricky.

Mapping both the journeys will help one to:

· Understand which stakeholder to involve when

· Know the appropriate channel and messaging to adopt when communicating to each stakeholder

2. Maintaining Personalized and Consistent Communication with Customers:

Consistency is a fundamental shared by all of the best brands in the world. Customers interact with the brand and message through what they read, see, and hear. Creating season-specific content and communicating with the same spirit across all platforms highlights the brands dedication towards the offering and reinforces the customer experience it seeks to build.

With a surge in online shopping during the post-pandemic era, brands need to ensure that every piece of communication is authentic. This includes being consistent with brand values, as well as being mindful of consumer sentiment. Be it Diwali or Christmas, customers remember experiences, and that is what will make them return to a brand.

Dale Carnegie offers a wonderful solution in the book Sell, which includes a Sales Toolkit and Magic Formula Worksheet aimed at helping businesses create powerful, persuasive messaging to connect with customers.

Happy Selling!