As marketers and as salespeople, we’re used to hearing people talk about adding value to customers’ lives. The idea is that if we can go above and beyond just providing a product or service and actually change the way that people live their lives for the better, they’re going to continue to be a customer come hell or high water.
The problem is that it’s not always easy to tell what you can do to actually add that value, and that’s where this post comes in. And you can probably make a pretty good guess about what we’re going to say by checking out the title.
Everyone has something that keeps them awake at night from time to time, and if you can find out what keeps your customers awake and then build your company around that, you’re on to a winner. But here’s the clever part. For many companies it’s already too late to pivot, or they’re already dealing with a successful product and they don’t want to risk major changes. And that’s okay. That’s where sales and marketing comes in.
Sales and marketing as problem solvers
One of the best ways to make sure that people are paying attention to your sales and marketing teams is by getting them to directly cater to customers’ problems. This means identifying pain points amongst your target audience and using them as the basis of your sales scripts. It also means creating content that’s specifically designed to make people’s lives easier.
Your marketing team needs to create the kind of marketing content that’s so good that people would be willing to pay for it. What this content actually looks like depends upon the problems that your clients are dealing with. For example, if they’re struggling to stay on top of a fast-moving industry and they don’t have enough time to read the news every day, consider creating a weekly podcast that they can listen to during the commute.
The odds are that you’re already aware of the value that you offer to your customers. Now it falls to you to find ways to offer to something to people who aren’t your customers but who might be if only you gave them a good reason. People sometimes worry that if they give away their expertise for free then nobody will ever be willing to pay them, but that’s not true. At worst, there may be one or two people who were trying to take whatever they could get and who are now no longer interested, but so what? Who wants to do business with those people in the first place?
Conclusion
If you can figure out what keeps your customers awake at night and then find a way to take that pain away from them, you’re going to become so much more than simply a supplier. You’re going to become the go-to problem solver, forming valuable business relationships that are more like partnerships than simple transactions. You’ll attract clients who spend more and stick around for longer. What’s not to love?
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.