How To Make Prospect Crack

Now this is not an episode of “Breaking Bad” and however disappointing this may be I’m not going to teach you how to make crack cocaine.

However, I am going to explain something much more useful (and legal) that will get prospects fiending to buy from you.

Be careful though, similar to making crack, if you get any of the steps or ingredients wrong, the final product can come out dangerously flawed, leading to catastrophic consequences.

To illustrate, let me tell you a story…

I remember vividly, about a year ago one of my first clients came to me in a state of rage.

“You’ve given me a bunch of leads and they’re all time wasters, I’ve not even closed a sIngle one!”

Whenever she would call up these leads they would always say something like “I need time to think about it,” and never get back to her.

Total time wasters…

…right?

Well I wasn’t quite sure, so I stepped into the role of a detective… “Ok I understand what you are saying… What do you say to these leads before they blow you off?”

“I talk about what we do, the services we offer and what makes us better than the competitors”

“Anything else?”

“Errrrrrm… no.”

BOOM!

Her fatal mistake became completely obvious to me.

She didn’t sell the need.

Everything can be perfect, the lead can have the money, be ready to pay but if they don’t NEED what you’re offering they simply won’t bother.

Don’t jump to conclusions, this is not justification to become that annoying salesperson and bombard your leads with high pressure sales tactics.

“Oh we’re super busy and if you don’t buy now someone else will take the opportunity!”

This is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face.

There’s an ancient idea that encompasses the nuanced nature of selling the need and it is called…

Maslow’s Pyramid.

Now Maslow did not actually have a pyramid, he wasn’t Egyptian and he didn’t live in 4000 BC.

He said that people have a hierarchy, sort of like a pyramid that they use to choose when to do things.

That hierarchy (or pyramid) placed things that were most necessary at top. For example, if someone is dying of thirst they’ll get a glass of water before they do the laundry.

The one fatal flaw most people make is putting their product or service too high or too low on this pyramid.

Like the client I worked with, she put her business way too low on the pyramid and therefore no one NEEDED to buy.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have the annoying salesman hounding you over the phone acting like their new insurance policy is as important as water.

Bringing this back to my client, I understood she was mad and wouldn’t necessarily want to hear about pyramids.

So, I gave her the test that I personally use to make sure I always sell the right amount of need…

…The Test Of Two Sixes.

The first six.

This has nothing to do with math. We made calculators for a reason. The first six is what you should be thinking about when closing any client…

“What makes it better to buy from me now than to buy from me in six months.”

Sometimes this can be really easy, if you're a doctor and your patient has appendicitis, they won’t be here in six months and that’s their need.

But sometimes your client won’t die if they don’t buy from you now.

So what should you do then?

The best option has always and will always be - talk about what’s in it for them.

In marketing we call this the What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) Test .

Where you place yourself into the shoes of your prospect and ask “what’s in it for me?”.

The greatest way to answer this question is to talk about how your product or service would actually benefit them.

Don’t get me wrong there’s always going to be a time and a place for limited time offers and telling your prospects to “buy now before someone else takes their place”.

BUT like most things in life it’s better to be genuine. Potential clients can sniff out made up offers and senses of urgency like nothing else.

Remember, you never want to come across as that annoying salesman.

This brings me on to the second part of the test…

The Second Six.

Imagine a prospect bought from you six months ago, and now they are reflecting on their purchase, deciding if it was a good decision. 

If you’ve oversold your product or service they’re going to look back and think “I never got what I was promised”.

A regretful client is not a returning client.

However on the flip side, if you set yourself up so that you could deliver on every promise, if not do more than promised that customer will be begging to buy from you again like a crack addict fiending for their next fix.

The test of six was all my client needed to start converting her leads, eventually I heard less and less about time wasters and we grew a great friendship.

The key to being able to convert leads has always and will always be selling the need. People buy what they need far before what they want.

P.S. If you’re hitting a bottleneck at any point in your advertising or sales process, get in touch and we will be happy to take a look at your marketing for you.