How To Convert More Prospects

The best sale is a no-brainer, when what you are offering perfectly fits what your ideal customer needs.

How many times have you come across a product or service which at first sight didn't seem right for you? 
And how often have you shrugged and kept your money in your pocket?

The truth is that most businesses talk about what they do as if potential customers understand the product or service as deeply as they do.

More often than not they don't understand it enough to put their hands in their pockets, and this is why it is vital to do some market research to understand what potential customers need from a product like yours, why would they buy from your category? Why would they buy from you?

The most important thing is to consider the benefits that buying you will bring them rather than the features of your product or service. What will buying from you do for them?

Will it bring peace of mind? 
Allow them to focus on what they do best? 
Take a way a common pain point? 
Get their boss off their back?
Impress their boss and get them a promotion?
Maybe just make their job easier?

These are all benefits, and even in the most technical B2B markets people buy benefits first and cross-check the features second.

So how to get that understanding?

Depending upon time and budget, there are four things you can do here:

1. Across your team, across any functions or personnel who have any contact with your customers, consider how you think your customers and detractors see you. Don't be precious, allow the truth to flow. This will give you a great starting point. If you want an outline of how to structure this see my Quick & Dirty Research Session article here.
2. Ask your existing and lapsed customers. Create an interview script and/or an online survey to find out precisely why they buy you, what they see as your strengths and weaknesses, who they consider your competition and what they think you need to be seen as to be bought by more people. Ultimately you want to unlock and compare how they see you and what drives their purchase decisions, and work to close the gap if any.
3. Employ a panel survey company to run a survey with a statistically significant sample of people on their database who meet your ideal customer profile. More than just how you are seen by people who know you, this will give you invaluable insights into how you are seen, and if you are seen, by the entire targetable market typically with over 90% accuracy across the market from the sample set. It will pretty much tell you precisely what you need to be in order to be bought by more people, as told to you by people who buy o will buy what you sell.
4. See how your competition are presenting themselves, what problems they are claiming to solve and more to the point what they aren't saying or being that you, enabled by your research, can lay claim to be. 

A good marketer can take this and make sure that your brand proposition hits all the right notes, and that your messaging and communications shows you to be the ideal choice for your ideal customers.