Why questions can transform your marketing & generate MORE clients

Have you ever heard of the seven whys?

It’s a fantastic way to drill down and find the real reason that people buy from you.

It’s used in coaching and consulting to help dig below surface-level issues and find the root cause of an issue or problem.

I use this method with clients, particularly when they are struggling to understand why their sales and inbound leads seem a little… well, sluggish.

We recently had a client in their first year of business who was struggling to develop their sales pipeline. They had a great content business, but they were struggling to engage their target audience and their messaging and social posts were falling on deaf ears.

We spent time digging into their benefits using the seven whys as the structure for the analysis and by the end of the session they had realized their messaging and whole approach to their target market was off. Two weeks later they had two big deals nailed – all from taking a different approach to how they were leveraging their social presence.

I have around 30,000 followers at the time of writing, so I’m hoping I can use this exercise to help you all scale your audience.

If you can do this exercise, you will radically transform how you market your business and its services.

?Master this process and sales and leads will not be a problem for you

Step 1: Write down all of the benefits your products/services provides and then categorize them into four groups

The benefits of your services can usually be categorized into four groups:

1. ?Financial: What is the monetary impact or benefit from your service, direct or indirect. Where is the big money win?
2. Time: How do your services help people with the use of time. Again, direct, or indirect. How do you give people more time or achieve something quicker?
3. Quality: How do you help people do something better? This is all about the way something is done and why that makes a difference.
4. Ego: How do your services make your client/decision-maker feel? How does it change them as a person and how does it change the way they operate?

For every service you offer, they will have benefits (big wins) in these categories. Often, there is one big win that is the decisive factor for your future client. The rest are complimentary benefits. One of your big benefits is the main reason they buy… the rest are simply supporting benefits.

Money is usually a big motivator, but it isn’t always the No.1.

Step 2: Scrutinize the benefits using the 7 Whys

Now we have the benefits listed, I want you to ask yourself seven questions about those individual benefits. You might have a list of answers for each of your benefits. This exercise might throw out things you have never thought of - this is good. The more answers you give the better you’ll be able to understand your future client’s world.

Why does your future client need that benefit?

This is about their current situation vs future situation

Why does your future client believe that to be important long-term?

This is about the long-term goals it can help achieve

Why would your client believe this is an urgent decision to make?

This is about understanding the challenges they have right now which you can resolve/minimise

Why can’t they buy this from you next year?

What could escalate if they put this decision off

Why can’t your future client buy from a competitor?

What makes the difference?

Why would your future client buy despite you being more expensive than your competitor?

What would motivate a client to pay 20% more to work with you?

Why would your future client decide this wasn’t right for them?

This is about understanding the objections and reasons you aren’t a good fit

Step 3: Now you see things more clearly… use the answers to sell and market better.

Once you have done this exercise, it will now help you be more effective in marketing and selling your services.

These answers can be transformed into a variety of tools to help you attract the attention of your target audience.

Those answers can be refined and used to adjust your website copy, social media content, and outreach messages.

The results of doing this exercise will be nothing less than transformative. These questions will force you to stop thinking from your perspective and help you start thinking from the clients.

It will help prevent us from falling into these easy traps trap of:

1. It is easy to design your marketing for yourself.
2. It’s easy to slip into creating content that talks to your competitors rather than clients.
3. It’s easy to send outreach messages which don’t capture any interest.

The major challenge today is simply getting the attention of the right people. If you start to communicate from the client’s perspective, you’ll get more attention.

When I or the team post on LinkedIn on particular topics, we leverage the 7 Whys to get the attention of the right people. I receive messages directly from people asking for my assistance since the content resonates with them.

Why?

People pay attention to what matters to them.

They don't care about our cool new gadget or our new award.

They care about things that are on their list of priorities.

Human beings in work mode operate in a state of mental triage. Constantly handling a multitude of priorities daily, with all of their challenges floating around in a mental to-do list wrapped up with their personal feelings. If our messaging and content resonates with what's on their triage list - we get their attention. When we understand that, we produce better marketing.

It’s easy to lose sight of the real reasons human beings decide to buy services.

It isn’t about logic. It’s about emotion.

Discomfort and dissatisfaction with the status quo isn't just a logical decision.

How does your customer feel about you?

How do they feel about their current reality?

In other words - What's life like in their business without you right now?

For you to sell your services, you have to fill a need.... the more you charge.... the more valuable the need.

No urgency or emotion - no-decision.

"What if my client cannot see their urgent need but we can?"

- That's a question for another article.

I have a whole process for helping my clients expose needs through content.

The marketing and sales process is simple…

Your future clients need to be aware of, relate to and believe in you, your value, and your service.

Read that again. All marketing and sales activity is to achieve the one sentence above!

It all starts with understanding the WHY

Still, have some questions? Let's have a conversation…

https://calendly.com/grahamriley/discovery-call