Friday, February 18, 2011

'Woo Your Prospects, Make Them Fall In Love With Your Solution'


'Woo Your Prospects, Make Them Fall In Love With Your Solution'

Valentine's day is round the corner and the season of expressing love is right here. Everyone wants to be loved, you, me, brands, companies, employees, buyers, vendors, just about anyone and everyone you can think of. But the point is can you make someone fall in love with you, your brand, your product, your services?

Of course, as a marketer, I can share a hundred ideas with you, which I believe will make almost anyone fall in love with anything you want…but lets keep that aside for another day! Today, I just want to share some thoughts on the psychology behind love and how you can use the same to make your prospects fall in love with your offerings.

Psychologist M.Farouk Radwan wrote an interesting book sometime back, How to Make Someone Fall in Love With You. According to his website, he has sold more than 500,000 copies, that is a lot of people looking for innovative ideas to woo :)

Recently a friend shared an article on FB by Radwan, based on the book where he talks of 6 methods and ways that can help in making someone fall in love with you.

While I am not sure, how successful his 500,000 readers have been with wooing their object of love, I was thrilled with his suggestions, because to my surprise or not really… I found the same logic works for finding love in business too..check out for yourself.


"I have what you need" - Yes, that is the first step towards being loved. Send out a clear message to your prospects 'I have what you need'. To do that, you need to clearly figure out and communicate the problem your offering is trying to solve and how your solution is different from what your competitors are offering. When looking for love, people are just trying to fill a void in their current state, it is the same with prospects too, when they start looking out for a vendor, it is to fill a gap or solve a problem within their area of functioning.

"Meeting Criteria" - Radwan states in his book, "Inside the mind of every one of us is a quick list of basic criteria that must be met before we even consider loving a person. Although meeting these criteria does not neccessarily mean that we will love the person, not meeting any of them makes it certain that we will never love him."

Your prospects are no different, most have a basic criteria for vendors, it could be anything from - the size of the company, client portfolio, service contract period etc. It will help your efforts, if you are aware of all such preset criterion, to ensure you tweak and customize your proposal when approaching a prospect. This exercise may not exactly get you the deal but it will definitely improve your chances.

"Does Trying Harder Work?" - According to Radwan, it surely does in matters of the heart. In business too it makes a lot of sense. It does not matter if your prospect already has a vendor or is pursuing your competitor, it is never too late to try and make a genuine and attractive offer. Of course you have to evaluate how much is the risk involved, but if having a company on your client list is absolutely necessary and it is going to increase your credibility and visibility in the market….you should definitely try harder and harder.

"Program his Subconscious Mind" - Radwan asks his readers to tame the subconscious mind of their love interest, he says, "The subconscious mind can be made to accept something by continious repetition. Chasing the subconscious mind requires no more than staying in sight, and letting him/her see you a lot. Even if you hardly talk, just staying in his/her sight is enough to enforce your position."

In pure business terms, Drip marketingLead nurturing etc. are some of the activities which will help you remain in sight of your prospect and help in programming their subconscious mind. The more your prospect knows about you, the higher your chances of impressing them.

"More Subconscious Mind Programming" - Radwan suggests, "If you have mutual friends then you are even more lucky, since the subconscious mind is programmed much easier by trusted sources. The more your friends talk to him/her about how great you are (something you'll probably have to arrange) the better your chances of having a place in his/her subconscious mind."

Now does that ring a bell? Understand why your marketing keeps asking for customer testimonials, case studies and customer referrals - it is all for programming the subconscious mind of your prospects. Now go one step ahead, ask your happy customers to endorse you, promote you on social forums like Twitter, Linkedin etc. Find a common connect between you and your prospect and use them to put forward your offerings. Nothing beats a reference from a known source, it is a sure way of making to the top of the list without much effort.

"Position yourself well"- You have always known that one, in business the law of attraction works completely on the basis of how you position your company. Your positioning is how prospects perceive and relate to your brand. Also like I mentioned in the post earlier, your positioning should also help you differentiate your offerings from your competitors.

Radwan specifies, "What is the first word that comes to people's minds when they hear your name mentioned? Do they think of the word "strong","confident" or "loser"? Positioning is simply associating yourself with a certian image that is printed in people's minds."

It is imperative for every company to have a positioning statement, which clearly defines there stand in the crowd. You can position yourself as a 'market leader', 'innovator' or 'reliable partner' anything that goes with the way you intend to project your company in the market.

Companies and brands are made of people and by people and people react usually the same way to Laws of attraction. But many a times as marketers we fail to see our prospects and customers as individuals, in our minds we see them has huge office buildings with super logos or as news headlines and numbers on Fortune magazine lists, maybe that is why we fail to woo them.

Happy Valentine's Day!
Happy Wooing!

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