The agony and the selling lesson

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday August 29, 2013

A few months ago, losing my mobile phone turned into an agonising experience - that became a deep le

sson in selling.

Shopping for a new one, I spent hours on hours questioning the internet, visiting phone stores, talking to salespeople, asking friends, because I wanted to "get it right".

Lots pointed me to an Apple iPhone, but too often their own were patched with sticky tape over the cracked screen or looked scuffed, and I was warned they were fragile. Besides, I liked the sound of the Android system. But the HTC or Samsung felt too big and Blackberry were launching a whole new platform, and I've learned to not be the first in anything new in computing.

Can you see what my problem was? Not a lack of choice - it was having too much choice, making my head spin.

Choose: durability versus ease of use; long battery versus loud music; old faithful Nokia or born-again Blackberry? And of course every brand sported half-a-dozen model numbers.

Then there were the dealers themselves. Telsta or Optus, Vodaphone or Virgin, Dodo or Lyca or Boost? And by the way do you want broadband with that?

In the end I confounded everybody, including myself, with a Motorola Razr. It was small but strong - Gorilla Glass screen, Kevlar case - I liked the idea of a bullet-proof phone. I'd had Motorolas in the past without problems, so it ticked a lot of the boxes.

But revealing to me was the sales process. I felt that all the way from the manufacturers to the dealers to the sales staff, nobody grasped the degree of confusion in customers' minds. The vendors live with, and understand, all the maze of details - phones, systems, plans, pros and cons - so why shouldn't we?

Here's why, in a quote from the guru of marketing, Steve Jobs. The man made billions following this simple philosophy: "People don’t know what they want until you show it to them."

Forget all that you already know, wipe the slate clean and look from the position of the customer. Here I'm not just talking about mobile phones. It might be cars, or fridges, a house or an evening dress. Choice can be an agonising process, and as a good marketer your job is to help the customer handle the pain.

Don't leave them struggling through a jungle of vines and branches, gasping and confused. Find out what the customers is looking for. Take the time to listen closely, ask questions. Get them to picture what they want - giving a little guidance to the process. Don't hurry or push, a good sales assistant is never in too much of a hurry to give you full focus.

Then lead them into your grove, point and say, "This is what you need, isn't it exciting?". If you read them right, they'll say, "Yes!"

Take a lesson from Jobs. He did this again and again with the iMac, iPhone, iPod, iPad - each a basically simple product that said, "I am the answer to what you need".

If one of the many phone salespeople I met had done this with me early in the piece, I would have meekly followed and the process would have been completed in hours, not days.

It's the same when you create any marketing campaign. Think yourself into the position of the customer entering your shop (or office or web site) for the first time. What do you see? What don't you understand? From that initial point of view, you can build a campaign as big as you need.