So you’ve invested your time, energy and money in generating more site traffic. You have even managed to convert some of that traffic into leads. The question now is, how do you get them to purchase your product or service? In this video, we explore what motivates people towards purchasing and what you can do to help increase your sales numbers.
There are both emotional and logical reasons behind each purchase someone makes. These are in constant conflict with their dominate reasons to avoid buying. As 21st-century business people, we must understand this internal battle and use what we know to help our buyers make smarter decisions.
We must learn how to ask the right questions to move our leads through the buying process without disrupting their internal balance. If we push too far, they may end up regretting the purchase and attached negative feeling towards our brand. Watch the video to learn more!
Video Transcript
Hey, what’s up everybody, and welcome to Hack My Growth. I’m Ryan Shelley, and today we’re going to be talking more along the lines of sales. How do we convert our internet leads, or inbound leads, into sales? This is one of the hardest questions to answer, and a lot of times really frustrates website owners and marketers because they’re getting a lot of people coming to their site, but they’re not actually getting them to take that step towards conversion, and then another step towards a sale.
So we’re going to talk about the psychology behind why people buy, or why people run. As you can see behind me, we’ve got this whiteboard, and on it we’ve got a fulcrum, and there’s a decision here. People make decisions from an emotional standpoint, way more so than they do from a logical standpoint. Sure, there is logic that plays in, there are certain things that we want to buy for logical reasons, but most of our impulses towards buying really come from a place of emotion.
What happens is, we have a lot of pain, or we have a need. So over here, we’re going to have this giant boulder, right? Inside of this boulder, we’ve got needs, and we’ve also got pain. Now, when we have a need or pain, it kind of pushes down on this part of our brain that starts to say, “Okay, something needs to change because I don’t like this pain. I don’t like feeling what I feel right now, so I’ve got to make a decision.”
There are two different ways that we make decisions: we buy them impulsively to try to fix that need, but that can also have an adverse reaction. So we have a need and we have a pain, but there can also be pain attached to actually buying something. It could be regret. We also feel buyer’s regret, right? Where we bought something, and you go, “Aww, I shouldn’t have bought that.” Or, “That costs too much money, and now I’m in the hole, and what are they going to do about it,” right? So we’ve got to find a balance between meeting a need and having somebody feel regret. Now, a lot of times when we talk sales, people get this image we talk about all the time, right, of a used car salesman pushing, pushing, pushing towards the sale. What ultimately happens when you do that is you amplify regret, so people actually hate the fact that they bought something from you.
Now, in internet marketing and online marketing, sometimes we do this through e-mail. We just blast, and blast, and blast, and blast, to the point where people feel like, “Ugh, I don’t want to deal with it anymore.” Then they start pushing away. And the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change, so they make a decision not to go with you.
What we have to do, skillfully and tactfully, is actually learn how to press in on this part, on the needs, and on the pain, to uncover the real reason that they need to make a change in order for them to make an emotional decision that’s also founded in logic. What that does is that makes the regret go away, because now they’ve made a decision that met a need, but they made it in a way that makes more sense, and they don’t actually regret the decision because they’ve come to a clear realization of what they really need.
And we do that through asking questions. Now, these aren’t questions like, what color do you want? What size are you wearing? These are questions like, what’s the pain? What’s the source of the pain? Why are you feeling that pain? What is the specific need that you’re having, and what is it doing to your life right now?
So recently, I can give you a very, very good example. Recently, I had to purchase a new computer. I was working on the computer one Monday morning, and I dropped a cup of coffee into the keyboard of my Mac, and I was very, very frustrated, as you can understand why. I started to think, “Oh crap, I’m going to have to buy a new computer.” Immediately, I had a lot of pain, but I also started to feel some regret or frustration because I wasn’t sure that I wanted to spend all that money on a new computer. So what I did instead of just going out and buying a new computer, I started to work on the one I had and try to fix it. You know, I flipped it over, cleaned it out, tried to get all the coffee out of it. Over the next couple of days, the computer slowly died.
The good thing is, I spent that time emotionally preparing myself for the fact that I may have to buy a new computer, but I also started to do some research. I actually called up (the company) and said, “Hey, last time I did a custom machine. I’m not sure that I need it this time. Can you help explain this and walk me through the process?” Now, what the Apple sales rep did really, really well was asking me questions. What do you do with your computer on a day-to-day basis? Well, I’m shooting videos. We’re writing blog posts, we’re editing images, we’re doing a lot of creative work. We’re also doing a lot of data analysis. So what he was able to do was have me uncover my real needs here, figure out what they really were, and what my pain point was currently, because the computer I currently own had some issues with it, but I still needed speed.
So what this did is it started to prepare me and lay this foundation based off logic. He just walked me through some questions. What’s the model that you have now? How fast do you need your computer to be? What are some things that you do on a day-to-day basis? What do you like to do for fun on your computer? Do you like to game, or do you like to … And for me, it’s more nerd out and spend time in video editing or Excel spreadsheets. He was able to walk me through the buying process with these very poignant questions. Now, I didn’t buy that day, but what happened was a couple of days later, when my computer finally went pfff, I walked in and I bought the model that he recommended for me, and I felt good about it. The reason I felt good about it is because he asked the right questions and helped uncover the real needs behind needing a good, high-quality machine.
Now, if he would’ve said, “Oh, you need to get the best custom machine, and here’s why it’s better. It’s just better, just trust me, you need to get it. It may be a little bit more money, but it’ll be better.” I’m going to start to really question what his motives are. I’m going to question, “Why are you pushing me so hard on your product when you really haven’t understood what my needs were?” And a lot of times, we do that, but we don’t really realize that we’re doing it. We come to our leads and we say, “Buy now! Click here! Let’s go!” We’re not thinking about their emotions on the other side and what they may be feeling, and maybe the regret that they might be feeling if they’re making a decision. Now, that’s the fastest way to lose a customer base, where you get people to buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, but you don’t actually meet their real needs and their real pain points. Now they have regret from buying our product.
So what’s happened is they made an emotional association between our business and regret.
If we start asking questions and uncover their pain points, not only would it help the sales numbers, we’re actually going to help market to them better because we’re going to understand their needs. We’re actually going to help develop better products that actually meet their requirements. So it’s really important that we base everything we do around asking questions, and asking the right questions that are actually going to expose the needs and the pains. And I know I said actually quite a bit there, but that’s a really important word because a lot of times, we come up with questions that we think they want, not questions that they really want.
This is where buyer persona research and actually spending time, physical time, whether it be on the phone or on a video call with customers, or prospective clients, helps you to understand what their needs and passions are. When you do this, it will lead to increased sales, because you won’t be pushing people towards a sale that they regret, but you’ll be exposing the pain that they have and helping them really explore what they need, and finding the right solution for them. Hope this was helpful, and until next week, happy marketing.
