All of us - every person, organisation and sales team - are surrounded by hidden forces that make it more difficult to convince others to adopt the new ideas necessary to close more sales.
So when your sales numbers aren’t meeting expectations, what do you do?
Loran Nordgren, author of The Human Element, believes that most companies add more ‘fuel’.
Staff are encouraged to sell harder, improve or invest more in marketing, offer new and improved products, and consider additional hiring.
What if you took a different approach? What if, instead of adding fuel, you removed friction?
It’s an important question because answering incorrectly wastes investment, time, and effort and leads to failure.
Fuel in sales is anything that elevates or enhances the appeal of an idea, product, or decision.
Typically this involves incentives, supportive evidence, emotional appeals or demonstrating the value of a new idea, product, or service to end-users.
Friction, meanwhile, is anything that resists change. It’s defined as any set of forces that drag on innovation and change.
Retailer learns a lesson
In Nordgren’s book, he uses the example of a hypothetical furniture retailer which sells customisable one-of-a-kind furniture.
The problem is that the customers love using the website to customise potential products and use online design tools for hours at a time; however, they don’t buy the finished product.
The retailer attempts to resolve the problem with ‘fuel’ by reducing prices and improving fabric options, both of which don’t increase sales.
The retailer then engaged a research consultant who discovered the real problem: customers didn’t know what to do with their existing furniture to make room for their customised product.
The retailer had added fuel to stimulate sales when all that was required was to eliminate the ‘friction’ keeping the customer from purchasing.
The retailer offered an additional service of removing existing furniture as part of the delivery process, and sales took off!
Forget the easy way
It’s easier and sexier to build a bigger rocket instead of a lighter spaceship. The human mind instinctively processes behaviour through the lenses of motivation and intent.
The same principles are at play when people make the mistake of adding more fuel rather than eliminating friction.
If people aren’t buying what we’re selling, we assume the lack of desire is driven by a product’s lack of appeal. We instinctively add more fuel in hopes of winning the sale.
Identifying friction can take a lot of time and energy, which takes our attention away from our customers.
The University of Chicago, for example, had a smaller applicant pool than similar colleges and universities.
The school had a reputation for being rigorous, and, as it turns out, it wrongly believed its brand was causing students to shy away from applying. In truth, students weren’t afraid of applying to a rigorous college; the issue was the ease of the application process.
Several other colleges and universities had joined a program that allowed students to file a single application that was distributed to all participating schools.
Once the University of Chicago joined that same program, applications increased dramatically.
Simple techniques to consider
Next time you encounter a sales problem, instead of trying to sell hard, consider making it easier for people to buy what you’re selling by fighting friction.
Make the action easier. Netflix automatically plays the next episode of any series because it knows this improves the chances that you’ll keep watching.
Even the most minor changes to friction can keep a customer engaged. Make the customer feel as though they are the author of the change. We are most influenced by ideas that we believe we generate ourselves.
Guide your customers to the right purchase; don’t tell them what to buy. Remove negativity bias.
Everyone knows that negative experiences carry greater weight in comparison to positive ones. You need five good experiences in a relationship to outweigh one bad one. Think about how that principle can be applied to your relationship with customers.
The bottom line
Before you begin any sales process, consider your audience's perspective. Uncover any sources of friction and address them.
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