By Daniel Wadleigh
Marketing Consultant
As ISOs and merchant level salespeople (MLSs), you've been told that if you find a need and fill it, you will make sales. Another way to approach this is to find a pain and offer ways to avoid or eliminate it. This works because the desire to be pain free is the reason people buy products and services. This concept belongs at the core of your marketing.
Pain can be physical, emotional, mental or financial. Think of pain as any factor that causes loss of time, value, peace or possessions - or something that hurts physically or emotionally.
In addition to eliminating pain, all purchases are propelled by people's desire to protect and improve what they have. This desire fuels your merchant customers' purchases of POS equipment, transaction processing, and other products and services.
All of your marketing needs to start with satisfying your prospects' desires - physical, emotional or intellectual. Emotion inspires; logic justifies. The rationale for making a particular purchase (logic) is very important, but it starts and is greased by desire (emotion).
And selling is easiest when you show potential customers how you can eliminate their pain. Take this as gospel.
So, play the desire card well. Put it in your ads, your presentations, your public relations efforts, your radio and television interviews, and even your elevator pitch. And make sure all of your employees embody your message, even when they are away from the office.
I know a very successful contractor who shows rats chewing on wires as the justification for trapping rats and blocking their entry to his customers' homes. This approach works. The vision of being invaded by rats and the damage the vermin can cause to their comfort, quality of life and property values affects his clients emotionally and causes them to act.
And in the payments sphere, you have to find a way to make the consequences of not doing business with you as unacceptable as a house full of rats. When you do this, you will get more responses and greater profits.
Remember, it is emotion - the elimination of pain or stress - that propels almost all sales. You must wrap your mind around this to effectively generate new customers. Then you have to satisfy their desires so that they not only buy, but also refer you to others.
This is the key to your business success. Go ahead; try it, and see what happens to your bottom line. Talk up the benefits of your pain-removal solutions to motivate prospects to buy, and talk up the benefits of your main products and services to help them justify their purchases.
Try to find which areas of your prospective merchants' lives are causing pains you can scratch and then soothe - with applicable skills and products. If you don't now offer products or services that can reduce pain, do some research and expand your arsenal with products and services that target pain.
For example, just as someone selling shoes may add inserts to literally remove potential foot pain and protect the footwear's ability to perform, you can offer Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard compliance services to help merchants avoid the pain of data breaches and the resulting fines.
Look to add value - always - but strive to add value that can save your customers time, grief, money or actual pain.
Automatic monthly withdrawals for services rendered can save merchants time and aggravation, as well as ensure they will continue to appreciate your ongoing value. Scheduled preventive maintenance on POS equipment can reduce the grief caused by downtime and save merchants money in the long run. There are many other examples of products and services that can eliminate pain.
Find the ones that will appeal to your specific customers. Then vividly convey the pain your products and services can resolve, and enjoy watching your portfolio grow.
Daniel Wadleigh is a veteran marketing consultant in the payments industry. He offers an educational program that is available on a PowerPoint presentation and designed to help ISOs elevate themselves above the competition. For more information, please visit www.morenewcustomers.net.
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