Sell the problem you solve, not the product

Why doesn't selling products lead to sustainable results?

When you sell a product, you gather the information you consider relevant (no one knows the product as intimately as you do). Because of this, you sometimes unintentionally set aside your potential buyer's perspective. In short, what you end up doing is guessing at the benefits your product will ultimately provide.

Potential buyers won't care about a particular feature your product has unless it's directly related to a problem they need to solve. The more research you do before the sales process, the faster you'll be able to attach a solution, or benefit from your buyer's problem.

Prospective buyers and non-prospects

The first step in the research cycle is identifying your ideal buyers. Gather as much information as possible about your potential clients before starting communication.

• What are their challenges, aspirations, and inspirations?
• What other solutions have they tried?
• What do they like about their current service, and what don't they?
• What are their budgets?

This will determine whether the prospective buyer is a good fit for your services. Qualified buyers represent a high level of productivity for the business overall: it's frustrating to discover a month later, in the middle of the buying process, that your potential buyer wasn't actually qualified. Especially when a single question would have been enough to disqualify the potential buyer from the start. For example, learning that the budget to solve the problem is a fraction of what the solution costs. Or that the problem is a symptom of a much bigger problem that requires a very different solution.

By researching your prospective buyer, you reduce the chance of a surprise that stalls the sale during the process. All of this takes time, both in research and in learning what to look for, how, when, and where.

Understanding the buyer's process

Once you've defined the potential client, focus on selling their solution. Every organization has its own way of solving its problems. It's important to stay attentive to your buyer's process and the complexities that exist at each step. Again, this involves research.

During the process, provide your potential clients with relevant content that helps them solve the real business problem identified. If your content isn't aimed at a previously identified problem, there's a good chance you're contributing to information overload. That wastes everyone's time.

Research lets you anticipate actions. This way, you can guide buyers through their decision-making process instead of forcing them through your sales process, which can also save valuable time.

"Research is a valuable component of buyer intelligence," says Kevin Thomas Tully, of Creation Agency. "Using historical sales data, including established buyers and data-driven metrics like predictive analytics to determine a buyer's actions, can shorten the buying process."

Through research, targeting ideal buyers, and understanding the sales process, you ensure your product is more than just a set of sophisticated features: it's a solution to a real business problem.