Don’t sell a product, sell a reason to change

Any product, no matter what it does, has to be incorporated into your customer’s processes or workflows. If it does not, then it is a waste of money.  So, if your customer is going to incorporate it, then they need to change those processes.  Unless they can understand the reason to change, and can be persuaded that the change is more important than staying as they are, then they will not change.  Consequently, they are not going to buy your product.

So, rather than selling your product, you have to start by persuading your customer to change. However, the mere mention of the word change may make some people feel uneasy.  We often find ourselves resisting change because of the perceived risk or fear associated with it.

To make a successful change, you need to follow the five stages of the transtheoretical model.

1. Pre-contemplation Before any change is possible, you need to think differently about the situation. To do this, you need to receive some new information.

2. Contemplation Next, you need to understand what this information means to you. How will it affect you? What might happen if you do not do something?

3. Preparation Based on this information, you now need to decide what to do. What actions are you going to take in order to change?

4. Action You now put the plan into action and start to make changes. Over time, you will start to see results.

5. Maintenance The change has become normalised and is now part of your everyday life. You are no longer actively changing.

The purchase of any product to help to facilitate a change only comes at the end of stage 3. So, if you lead with your product, you have prevented the customer from progressing through stages 1 and 2 and therefore they will be reluctant to change as they do not understand why they should or the advantages of having changed.

Download our White Paper that discusses this in more detail.