Every customer you encounter has concerns. Doing business with you is risky. We’ve discussed how to mitigate these risks before, but today let’s talk about how we can address customers’ unspoken concerns.
According to Selling the Invisible, customers often hide their concerns and leave them unspoken. At the same time, you’ll see recurring patterns of questions and problems that arise with your customers.
Make a List
Sit down and make a list of common concerns that people have when doing business with you. These may have come up in your discussions with customers or with your employees.
For each concern come up with a way to resolve the issue. For example, if you install gutters, the customer may be worried about the workmanship after you leave. Resolution: tell them that if anything goes wrong with the installation after you’re done, that you’ll come back and fix the problem for free.
Preemptive Resolutions
After you’ve made your list of concerns and resolutions you now need to focus on communicating that to your customers. Remember, they don’t always tell you their concerns. You need to mention your resolutions as part of the benefits of your service or product. List them out in your conversation or marketing materials.
When a customer hears your resolutions they will internalize them, eliminating their concerns without a word spoken on their part.
The trick is to sneak in the concern resolutions and not wait for the customer to express doubts. If you’re waiting for the customer, you may never hear their concerns.
Don’t Mention the Problem
Not all your customers will have the same concerns. You don’t want to plant concerns in their heads. Therefore when explaining the resolutions we discussed above, keep your conversation positive and don’t highlight all the things that could go wrong.
With our gutter example above, simply state your work is guaranteed. If anything goes wrong, you’ll fix it. Don’t list out all the ways the gutters can fail.
Keep your resolutions positive and don’t dwell on problems.
Put it in Practice
Anticipate your customer’s doubts, problems, and concerns so you can resolve them without mentioning the problems themselves. This will make your customers more comfortable with your business and they will be more likely to buy.