Are You Assuming Too Much About Your Business?

Do you know what your clients’ top wants, needs, motivations, and fears are? Can you clearly explain why clients buy from you rather than your competitors? For most people, the answer is “no”. Instead, we often make assumptions about the people we do business with.

• We assume we know the best way to market and advertise to prospects - that’s what everyone else does, so it must work, right?
• We assume clients are happy with our services - they’d tell us if they weren’t right?
• We assume clients understand the value of the services we provide - after all, we’ve gone out of our way to serve them several times, right?

Sadly, our prospects and clients don’t think the way we do. As Chip and Dan Heath wrote in their book, Made To Stick, we are burdened with the Curse of Knowledge. Simply put, we already know the value we bring to the table and why our services are so much better than others - but we fail to adequately explain those key principles in a way that our clients can easily understand. We find it difficult to remember what life was like back when we were beginners trying to learn all this information at once.

What can you do to overcome this Curse of Knowledge to better understand and serve your prospects and clients?

• Become fascinated with your prospects and clients. It’s far too easy to brush off prospects and clients because we’re too busy to talk with them or we don’t want to waste our time chasing leads that will never convert to clients. Yet each interaction we have with prospects and clients is a chance for market research. It’s a chance to listen and better understand one more person out there - what are their needs? What do they ask for? What needs aren’t being met? Where are they most confused? What do they fear the most? For each person you talk with, there are many more out there who share similar concerns.
• Listen. Ethical salesmanship is about listening to clients’ needs rather than pitching, hyping, or manipulating them into working with you. There are so many sales techniques out there that tell you to stick with a script when you talk with clients - yet often, you get so focused on sticking to the script, you miss the genuine concerns of clients. You’ll never adequately meet your clients’ needs if you don’t take the time to understand them.
• Explain your value. Your clients don’t know how much better you are than others - they don’t have a reference point or framework to evaluate you against everyone else. It’s up to you to inform and educate your clients about how you fulfill their needs. Often people don’t realize they’re getting great service or that you are going out of your way to serve them, so you must educate them and get them to understand and appreciate how you are helping them.
• Fulfill wants and needs. Often clients may want something that isn’t necessarily what they need. Your advertising, marketing, and client interactions must address their wants - but you should fulfill both their wants and needs.

In other words, never assume anything. Don’t assume your clients will appreciate what you do until you inform and educate them to the benefits and advantages of working with you. Don’t presume you know and understand their needs, wants, motivations, concerns and fears until you really listen to what they’re telling you.