Whenever I am training people, I like to try to include video clips as much as I can. Their purpose is to stimulate people in different ways. The clips are usually more entertaining than me and provide the audience with someone else to watch and listen to, even if it is only for a short time.
One of the clips that I use is from one of my favourite movies, The Shawshank Redemption, https://youtu.be/njJ41irPjTc if you want to watch it. I use it to demonstrate how to attract the attention of your customer in a way that makes them think differently about a problem.
The clip shows a group of prison inmates working on a roof in the jail when they overhear one of the wardens moaning about having inherited money and having to pay tax on it. The main character in the movie, Andy Dufresne, was an accountant and goes up to the warden and asks “Do you trust your wife?” This definitely attracts the warden’s attention and Andy nearly gets thrown off the roof as a result. Fortunately, he has enough time to explain, that the warden can give the money to his wife and avoid the tax, so he avoids being thrown off the roof.
This was a very dramatic way of gaining attention but it worked and gave him the opportunity to explain how he could help him. It would not be a line that I would recommend to a potential customer but the format of grabbing attention and then explaining how you can help is definitely one to follow, particularly when trying to contact someone for the first time.
Most people already have a way of doing the work that they are required to do or a solution to help them perform various tasks. Seldom does a ground breaking technology come along that does something entirely new. Even if a customer has a known problem or need, it is likely that they have an idea of how they are going to solve it. They may have done some research to investigate the possible solutions or they have a preferred supplier that they think can help them. As a result, they have an opinion about the solution and people are very slow to change their opinions. They tend to reject information that does not fit with their view.
If you contact a potential customer who you believe might have a need that you can help with, simply offering a different solution can therefore be quite difficult. The customer’s in-built bias will tend to reject information that does not conform to their view. As a result, you must provide information that they do not know which either changes how they see the problem or provides different ways of solving it. Whatever you do, you must tell them something that they do not already know.
To be sure that you are saying something relevant, you need to have researched your customer and know something about what they are doing and why they might be interested to hear what you have to say.
Some options include:
1. You might open with some research or analysis that is relevant to their business. This must be very up to date to ensure that it is new information for the customer. If it is research that you or your company has done, then that is often a great opening as this is quite likely to be new to your customer.
2. Consider stating some insight into how the use of your solutions have helped to solve business problems. Ensure that the problems are ones that the customer is likely to be suffering from.
3. If you have developed new ways of working or new best practise methodologies, these are also good openings. This is information that only you are knowledgeable of and can deliver as insight and training to your potential customer.
4. Introduce unconsidered needs to the customer. That is, unforeseen problems, challenges or missed opportunities that they may have underappreciated or do not yet know about that create flaws or limitations in their current approach.
Your initial approach to your customer has to get them to think differently about their business. This provides you with your opening. If you don’t get them to think differently, you are unlikely to be successful selling to them.