I had an interesting call from a potential client (or spy) yesterday. They had prepared a number of questions that we ran through on the spot when they called. While they didn’t want to say exactly who they were, they told me they were a high-end business coaching company. I was intrigued with the approach and gave them a few minutes of my time. I thought the conversation could help a number of people who sell high-end services so I’ll do my best to remember the questions and my answers below.

So Wes, why do you think many small business’s struggle to attract leads and sales through their websites?

I think often they make the message and process too complicated. We all rush online so your website needs to be clear. A complicated website is like communicating with someone who speaks a different language, it is time consuming, energy sapping and usually only a few bits of information are communicated. Certainly the whole message with the relevant twists and subtleties is far from understood. The same phenomenon happens in most selling activities I see. Often the seller and customer may as well speak different languages. And by this I mean the words used have different meanings to the seller and customer even when they’re both speaking English!

Isn’t that interesting! How do you believe we can overcome this problem?

You need to understand the emotional reasons why your prospects want your product or service. That’s what your right-brain is responsible for. Once you work out what that is, it’s all about starting with the end goal and working out the easiest steps for your prospect to get to that point. If you think in the same way as your customers, with the same part of the brain, that will increase your chances of success. Customers go through an emotional process when they make a buying decision. Understand the process and you will quickly and effectively develop rapport and trust, which are the foundations of effective selling online and offline; your customers will feel you are on the same wavelength.

And how then do you get on the same wavelength as the customer?

Most of us make the decision to buy with the part of the brain that processes emotions. It’s the part of the brain that views the buying decision subjectively; it asks ‘how will this decision affect me as a whole?’ These characteristics are associated with Right-Brain thinking and to sell effectively you need to communicate using Right-Brain thinking. You still need to be aware of the Left-Brain; logic, facts, and figures. Because this is what people use to justify the buying decision.

Your online sales process must match your face-to-face approach so you can sell from your ‘comfort zone’. This allows you to relax and feel free to enjoy the customer relationship. Your customers will genuinely like and trust you, they will feel they have got something special and wont want to negotiate or ‘think about it’!

There seems to be a lot of similarities with face-to-face sales and online marketing.

Yes, of course, have you noticed how many ads incorporate an element of emotion? We buy what we want based on how it makes us feel. We need to consider how our products or services make a clients feel. Is it security they are buying, maybe it’s pleasure, maybe it’s status…. Figure it out and you’ll be on a winner.

This content was originally published on Omnific Design before we rebranded as Uplift 360.