You might think your clients are a complex, demanding bunch with all manner of mysterious motivations. But at their heart, they all want exactly the same thing: A Great Result. .
If you can guarantee a great result and establish that your clients will value that result, they’ll happily justify the price to themselves – whatever it may be.
But this won’t happen on its own. It’s up to YOU to show your clients the VALUE of the results you deliver.
So when you speak to a potential client, it’s important to uncover exactly what they’re looking for by asking these three questions:
- What’s the end result you’re looking for?
- How will you feel when you’ve attained this result?
- What will achieving this result mean to you?
Here’s my own personal story that shows how this process works.
A few years ago, I went to see a chiropractor. I’d been suffering with a back problem for many, many years and, frankly, I’d had enough.
Chiropractor: “What’s the end result you’re looking for?”
Me: It was simple. I wanted to be pain free.
Chiropractor: “How will you know that you’ve got your result? What will it look like? How will you feel?”
Me: Again, I knew the answer clearly. I wanted my full mobility back, to be free of pain, and able to do all the things I enjoyed, without having to worry.
Chiropractor: “What will having this result mean to you?” (Note: this is the BIG question)
Me: When I took time to fully consider this answer, I had so much hope in me. Being pain-free with my mobility restored would mean everything to me!
That’s why the third question is so key.
Buying decisions are based on emotion. If you can make your clients emotionally engaged with the result, you’re much more likely to gain their business time-and-time again.
Think about that last outfit you bought. Did you buy it because otherwise you’d be, well, naked? No. You bought it because of how it made you feel when you put it on.
That’s buying on emotion.
Of course, there were practical reasons too, but they weren’t your primary motivation for selecting that one particular outfit from all the zillions of outfits available out there.
One last tip: get familiar with the sorts of answers that might come up in relation to your own services. You want to be able to spot if clients are dodging the question with vague, fluffy answers, because they won’t be emotionally engaged. Without that engagement, you don’t have loyalty. You’re just another cost that, next time, might get spent somewhere else instead.
Postscript:
It took three months for my chiropractor to sort out my back, at a cost of over £3,000, but to this day (nine years later), I’m still pain-free with full mobility. I would have gladly paid twice what I did for the result I got. And you can imagine how many people I’ve since referred to my chiropractor Dr. Mark Sonnenberg!