You either help a person looking to buy to act with you  or lose out on the sale 98.7% of the time

Once you know what motivates people to buy from you, you are better positioned to enjoy the upside of business ownership when more people buy from you at a profit.  The problem for most underperforming businesses is that they aren’t good at persuading people to act.

What they fail to appreciate is how nothing gets done without completed actions by your employees and prospects.  The most impactful tool for creating the right actions across your business is a repeatable process for helping people through their purchase consideration process.

Business owners who achieve financial freedom have a persuasion process that helps them get people to act because they believe in what they do and know that the more people who buy from them, the more people who benefit from what they do.  Those who don’t have a persuasion process always sell less than they should because they fail to shape demand, which leads to more people buying consistently.

Every sales transaction comes down to prospects and employees completing a series of actions

All sales come down to persuading people to act.  Persuasion is employed to help move another to a new belief, position, or course of action by reason and emotion.  Even impulse purchases require a person to act on their impulse.  Rarely does this come down to chance; it is most often a function of being in the right place at the right time when the impulse to act is at its highest.  Typically, this is when people are hungry or looking to fill an unconscious void in their life.

Most sales purchases require a series of actions requiring an employee of the seller to prompt a prospect to act.  It is helping people act where the persuasion process moves a person through the following consumer to retained customer progression model that helps you see how people move from ignorance about your business to retained customer.

Profitable sales are not sustainable by manipulating people through the above progression to buy something they won’t use.  Profitable sales are the byproduct of helping prospects see how they will benefit from your solutions to their problems as your customer.  The transaction of sales is where people transfer their money to you for ownership and access to your solution.  It is at this point that a prospect becomes a customer, and cash flows into the business.

The importance of this is reflected in how demand creation occurs in only one of two places.

When demand creation for what you do exists with your prospect, it’s about persuading those who show up to take the necessary actions needed for them to buy from you.  When it’s through your marketing, it starts with creating awareness of your existence with a call to action that engages your target customer to want to learn more about your solutions.

Businesses suffering through low sales is either a function of not providing people relevant solutions to their problems at an acceptable price or it’s a failure of action caused by the business owner not helping their employees and prospects see what action is needed to move them through the following purchase decision funnel that is part of the sixth influencing principle involving promotion and packaging that answers the question why buy?

One of two things happens as prospects become informed and then influenced through your promotions.  They will either see the value of taking the next step that leads them to buy or pass because they do not see the value of acting further.  Prospects not seeing the value of acting rarely result in a purchase.

The unnecessary breakdown that most often occurs in taking a prospect through the sales funnel is a failure of not appreciating when the prospect engages in your sales process how aware of their need or want are they when they start considering your solutions.

Whether your prospect that shows up is self-evident in their needs and wants or they are unaware, it’s about persuading them to act.  If they know their problem and are seeking a solution, it’s about persuading them that you have the best solution.

If they are unsure or unaware of their problem, you must first create the desire to solve a problem they need to be made aware of.  Once they decide they need a solution, then it’s about persuading them how you have the best solution for them.

The persuasion process is more than a sales process

The persuasion process is about positioning prospects to make the best business decision because you see the value waiting for them when they decide to buy from you.  Those who have documented how to guide people from consideration to purchase are focused on helping people buy the things they need to improve the quality of their lives or the results of their business.

A sales process is less about what’s best for the buyer and more about what’s best for the seller.  Rarely are these processes designed to help people buy what’s best for them.  Most sales processes are about coercing a person to buy regardless of the benefit to the buyer.  Yes, the sales process is involved in persuading a person to act.  The difference is that a persuasion process is about helping a prospect take a course of action that benefits them.  In contrast, a sales process is about moving a prospect to act in ways that benefit the seller.

A documented persuasion process helps more people to buy from you

One of the fundamental differences between business owners who have achieved financial freedom through business ownership and those who haven’t is the refusal by those achieving sales success to leave a prospect’s decision to buy to chance.  They and their employees lead their sales prospects through their purchase consideration process so that more people buy from them.  They do this through a documented persuasion process because they know profits don’t start to develop until people buy.

A persuasion process is a defined sequence of steps taken to convert a prospect into a customer.   A typical persuasion process has eight core phases that build on one another.  Each phase has an objective, actions to take, and a deliverable.  The purpose of each phase is to help a prospect through their journey of purchase consideration from initial contact to purchase.

The flow of your persuasion process is shaped by what your ideal customer wants and looks like.  The insights required for this are developed through the first two influencing principles involving who should buy and what’s their problem.  Your answer to these two influencing principles positions you to separate suspects from prospects.  You do this because taking any potential customer through your persuasion process costs time and money.  Below are the eight most common persuasion process phases an ideal target customer should be taken through:

Target—define who should buy from you.

Prospect—engage the target.

Qualification—determine if a purchase need exists.

Rapport—build common ground leading to like and trust in each other.

Discovery—needs analysis via data gathering and information exchange.

Solution Presentation—demonstration of solution fit and capability of delivering.

Commitment—obtain the decision to buy your solution at the proposed price, then deliver.

Follow-up—to ensure purchase satisfaction and lay the foundation for repeat sales.

Referrals—invite the customer to introduce you to others you can help.

Note that the persuasion process does not end with the purchase.  It includes follow-up to ensure satisfaction and the request for referrals.  This is done because the cheapest way to increase sales is to get new customers to buy again and introduce you to others who can benefit from what you do.

Most small businesses aren’t resourced to invest in training their people to sell.  The best get over this hurdle by documenting their persuasion process with supporting tools that lead prospective customers through awareness, consideration, interest, intent, purchase, and repeat purchase.  A process they work over and over, day in and day out.

The balance of this article highlights key elements by BusinessCPR™ Persuasion Process Phase and how they come together to influence more people to buy from you at a price that earns you a profit.

Target—identification and recognition of your ideal customer

To quote the words of Thomas Watson Sr., one more time, “nothing happens until a sale is made.”  You will always sell less than you should and, as a result, make less than you want or should until you establish the who, what, when, where, how, and why for your target customer to lay your persuasion process foundation.  Below is how this foundation-laying phase is reflected in your persuasion process:

Objective	Actions to Take	Deliverable
Create our ideal customer profile to target for promoting to and prospecting with	Identify customers that are: 1.       Easy to work with   2.       We make money on the work we do for them	Use ideal customer definition to find new while avoiding unprofitable and difficult to work with customers

Once you have established what your target customer looks like and how to differentiate a sales prospect from a sales suspect, the next persuasion process phase involves prospecting.

Prospect—engage the target to begin the sales process

Prospecting is more than promotion and more than the function of marketing.  It is the most difficult part of the persuasion process.  The goal of prospecting is to generate leads you can work with.  It results from taking people from ignorant of your business to aware to interested in considering what you do.  Lead generation is the goal of your promotional campaigns, virtual and physical locations for your business, and the result of satisfied customers telling others about their positive experience with your business and everything else that must be done to generate a lead.  Below is how this first phase is reflected in your persuasion process:

Objective	Actions to Take	Deliverable
Build awareness and create leads for qualifying to filter out suspects	Cold Call, Advertising, Direct Mail, Public Relations, Signage, Website	Obtain an appointment; website traffic; info capture for lead-tracking system

Qualification—determine if a sales opportunity exists

You can’t separate the suspects from the prospects to determine if a sales opportunity exists until you engage with your lead.  With suspects, it’s about finding out if they have a sincere interest in what you have to offer, whereas with prospects, it’s about further developing and defining that interest as you work to turn them into customers, as shown below:

Objective	Actions to Take	Deliverable
Separate out the suspects from the prospects to protect your time and money	Assess buying readiness based on identifiable concerns and goals	Document basic customer information for follow-up management

Rapport—build common ground leading to like and trust in each other

Because prospects and suspects look like your target customer, sometimes you won’t be able to determine which category they fit into until you build rapport with your lead.  With suspects, it’s about finding out if they are interested in what you offer.  You know you have a suspect if they don’t respond favorably to your information-gathering questions to determine how best to help them.  As you try to build rapport, a suspect will hold back information you need to help them, while a prospect will share because they are in consideration mode, as shown below:

Objective	Actions To Take	Deliverable
Confirmation that you can work successfully together.  If yes, begin discovery activities	Before they buy what, we can do, they buy us.  Find areas of common ground to build on	Go, no go decision-based on ideal customer criteria

Discovery—needs analysis via data gathering and information exchange

The goal of discovery is to develop knowledge and insights around what problems your prospect is trying to solve to help you identify how best to help them.  Most of the time, discovery is about helping the prospect think through unknown and unseen things.  The key here is to hold back on your solution, your goal is to get them to become clear on what their problem is, as shown below in part one of discovery:

Objective	Actions to Take	Deliverable
Translate discontent, difficulty, and dissatisfaction into a want, a desire, or an intention to act that we can satisfy	Listen to statements expressing a want or a concern involving discontent, difficulty, or dissatisfaction	Based on identified wants and concerns determine what solution we could cost effectively deliver for presentation in phase five

Part two of the discovery phase is to quantify what your prospects perceived areas of discontent, difficulty, dissatisfaction, and pain are costing them in terms of time, money, quality of life, and improved business results.

Objective	Actions to Take	Deliverable
Define criteria to determine the value of what they are considering	Confirm customer life and business objectives to be improved by our solution	Establish the value equation based on the size of the need and the cost of the solution

Solution Presentation—demonstration of solution fit and capability of delivering

You are never in a good position to present the first part of your solution involving the following until you know what the prospect’s points of discontent, difficulty, dissatisfaction, and pain are and how they will place a value on removing them.

Objective	Actions to Take	Deliverable
As you present your solution, get the customer to tell you how they see your solution helping them	Keep your solution focused on the benefits to be realized tied to identified discovery needs	Confirm that what is being proposed is important to solving their problem

Part II of the solution presentation phase is to confirm that your proposed solution is seen as helping your prospect.  Once you have confirmed their interest, your next influencing objective is to connect the perceived value of your solution to its cost to influence them to decide to buy, as shown below.

Objective	Actions to Take	Deliverable
Confirm why they find this solution helpful relative to their needs	Explore the value, usefulness, or utility the customer perceives in the solution	Present the value equation based on their value criteria you established in discovery

Commitment—obtain the decision to buy the identified solution at the proposed price, then deliver

Commitment is more than a promise to purchase sometime in the future.  It is the stated obligation to take the necessary actions to purchase from you.  Here is where your prospect is committing to you to become your customer, ready to exchange their money for ownership of your product and access to your services.  The first part of this phase is the following:

Objective	Actions to Take	Deliverable
Address any open issues or concerns before proceeding	Confirm that objections and key concerns have been addressed	Propose an appropriate commitment.  I.e., sales order, PO, or purchase

Part II of commitment is to complete the sales transaction that involves a cash outflow for your new customer that represents a cash inflow to you, as shown below.

Objective	Actions to Take	Deliverable
Secure the order by PO, full payment, or deposit	Summarize the benefits, including what will be done by when	Deliver the solution and receive customer payment

Note:  if you extend payment terms to your customers with their purchases from you, then this phase in the purchase process isn’t completed until payment is collected.  Past due accounts indicate a breakdown in customer commitment as evidenced by them not paying you for delivered products and services.  The primary accountability for chasing down past-due accounts belongs to the sales function, not admin.  Don’t burden your accounting clerks with collecting late payments, particularly when commissions on sales are being paid ahead of the customer paying you.

Follow-up—on purchase satisfaction where a desire for repeat sales exists and with “warm” prospects

Customer follow-up is significant when you rely highly on repeat customer purchases, especially with those who expect to have a relationship with you in the future.  This follow-up form should be done by those in customer service, operations, or project management, not sales.  You want your sales talent focused on influencing more people to buy from you rather than confirming that your customers are satisfied with the product and services your operations delivered to them.

Objective	Actions to Take	Deliverable
Measure the degree of purchase satisfaction	Confirm customer purchase satisfaction	Completed customer sat survey by phone or email

The win for your business in having operations perform the above follow-up is that they will learn firsthand from your customer any issues they are having with their purchase that operations should fix.  If the issue is with the solution presentation, then it’s an opportunity to refine how your solutions are presented to avoid an over-commit and under-deliver problem that compromises repeat purchases 100% of the time.

For every “No” it is incumbent upon the management team to determine if the “No” results from sales overcommitting or operations under-delivering.  If the “No” is with sales provide training on what needs to be done differently.  If the “No” is with operations, identify what needs to change to prevent the expectations failure going forward.  Fail to take these steps is the primary reason why new customers don’t become repeat customers.

The second part of the follow-up is with selected prospects who currently like your solution and have legitimate reasons for passing on it.  These people aren’t afraid of committing to act, as demonstrated by their thoughtful explanation of their decision not to buy at this time.  Again, the following is for those prospects your salespeople want to have as a customer and are willing to follow up with until they get a definite yes or no.

Objective	Actions to Take	Deliverable
Leave a positive impression so that when they have a need, they think of us	If they don’t buy and rapport exists, see what else we can do to help their business	Determine how they would like us to follow up with them in the future.

A well-articulated “no” after serious consideration of your solution provides valuable insights into what’s missing in your solution and persuasion process.  A “no” at this stage is only a failure if you fail to discover the prospect’s pain points and value criteria adequately.  A failure in discovery usually leads to poorly received solutions presentation and weak commitments.

Ask for Referrals—invite the customer to introduce us to others we can help

The best sales persuaders are masters at asking for referrals.  They master this eighth phase in the persuasion process because they firmly believe in the value they create for the customers and are driven to help others secure this same value creation for themselves by doing the following:

Objective	Actions to Take	Deliverable
Invite the referrer to transfer their trust and like for us to someone they think we can help	Be bold in asking for satisfied customers to help us find more people to do quality work for	Obtain an introduction from the referrer to get an influence lift from their relationship and to avoid a cold call

Never leave a prospect’s decision to buy to chance.  Document your persuasion process for convincing more people to buy from you so that you aren’t reinventing the wheel each time a lead engages in dialogue with you through their journey of purchase consideration from initial awareness to purchase.

Do it well, and more people will buy from you, leading to financial freedom.  Doing it poorly will result in sales by luck, not skill and practiced discipline.  Those who take this latter approach to sales are most often in financial captivity and at increased risk of going out of business.  Click here to download the BusinessCPR™ Persuasion Process template to jumpstart your effort to formalize your persuasion process so more people buy from you.

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