How Understanding What Your Customers Value is the Key to More Sales

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 Judy Murdoch


Have you ever had this experience? You work hard on developing an offer for your product or service. Maybe you even ask a few people to take a look at your Web page or brochure to make certain they get your message. Then you send your offer out into the world.

And you get no responses. Or a puny little trickle.

So you send multiple offers out over a couple month's time. Maybe you sell a few but given the time and money you've invested, not enough to count.

The Fatal Error

The fatal error that will kill your marketing efforts every time is failure to understand

value as your customer defines value. Not as YOU define value.

Defining "Value"

Think of customer value as a simple formula:

Cost of Non-action (minus) Cost of action = Value

When Value is positive (meaning, there's more to gain by acting on your offer, buying your products, taking your class, etc.) prospects take action.

When Value is zero (meaning they think it will cost about as much to act as not to act) or negative (meaning there's more cost to acting than not) it is very likely that they will stick with the status quo.

To improve your response rate, you need to increase perceived value.

How to Increase Perceived Value

Looking at it this way, there are two things you can do to your offer to improve your response rate.

1. Decrease the cost of taking action.

2. Increase the perceived cost of not taking action.

Examples:

Decreasing the Cost of Taking Action

Before we began promoting our Info Product Roadtrip program we interviewed a variety of small business owners to get their reactions to our idea. It was a good thing we did. Although most of the business owners we spoke with loved the idea of passive revenue, about half were very concerned about the time, effort, and expense of creating information products.

To make the program more valuable, we decided to focus on a smaller group: authors and speakers. Why? Because authors and speakers have existing content. It is far easier (less costly) to create an information product based on a chapter in a book than creating it from scratch (which was the challenge for many entrepreneurs we spoke with.).

Increasing the Perceived Cost of NOT Taking Action

Put simply, this is about "sweetening the deal." Oftentimes, when customers are slow to respond to an offer our first instinct is to lower the price. That's a mistake. Yes, money can be a barrier to purchase but not as much as most people think. In my experience, if your offer is valuable enough to your prospect, they'll find the time and money to act.

For example, the author of a book on their great grandmother's life growing up in the Louisiana Bayou might include some authentic recipes for gumbo and fried okra as a bonus for buying her book. Or a realtor giving a presentation on buying vacation property might offer a no strings attached discount to stay at a popular resort. When you offer additional value, you are in effect, increasing the cost of NOT taking action because you are creating the perception of missing out on something special and valuable.

Bottom Line

To get people to take action--to sign up for your free teleclass, or buy your new book, or schedule an appointment, you need to make sure that the cost to your prospects of not taking action is higher than the cost of taking action. You can do this by (1.) lowering the cost of taking action or; (2.) increasing the perceived cost of not taking action.


About the Author:
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost, effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals, guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances. To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt? Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com