Convincing key decision INFLUENCERS
This article was inspired by something we saw Social Media Marketing World (SMMW) cleverly implementing. SMMW attracts a large array of people from all over the world and a large proportion of the people we met there were actually employees.
The SMMW organisers realised that actually to get these employees to come to the event, it is going to be the employees that have to ‘sell’ to the boss, rather than their website and marketing materials. There’s a risk here: the employees clearly aren’t as equipped to sell the event to the boss as the SMMW organisers would be.
So what did they do?
Cleverly the team at SMMW put together a ‘convince your boss’ package that included a .pdf download and a pre-written email template for the employees to use to convince the boss to buy a ticket. How clever! We asked a handful of employees at the event if they used this and they said it worked a treat!
How does that apply to you?
Well think for a second…in most transactions we do in our businesses there are a decision makers, but there are also key decision INFLUENCERS. These may be other employees in the company, or if you are working with sole traders/consumers, key influencers could be:
– Parents (if you are targeting younger people)
– Friends (if you are targeting groups of people)
– Partners/Husbands/Wives
Especially if you are selling high ticket products, a customer is more than likely going to run the decision past somebody before dropping £1000+.
So…are you prepared to convince the key influencers and are you equipping your customers enough to ‘sell’ your product/service on your behalf?
Remember the Key Influencers may have different needs, questions and concerns to your customers, so you need to be addresses all those.
ACTION: Think about your customers, who do you think influences their decision to buy?
ACTION: Write down all the questions you may think these key influencers may have.
ACTION: Potentially make some kind of document that convinces the key influencers why it is a good idea for the customer to buy, and make this available to your customer to use. This is especially useful for high ticket or luxury products.