Why Customers Buy What They Buy

It would have amazing if there was way to know where we could find our customers and more so, what would make our customers buy our offer, isn’t it?

Probably every business owner, sales person, entrepreneur’s hungry soul tries to find the answer to same question. What if we would know the “magic word” we could say and the customer would never walk out of the store without paying? It is one thing to have customer visit the shop and it is another for them to pay. Afterall, “interest” doesn’t necessarily mean conversion. How many times have we faced a situation where a customer drops in a note on our website, sends us an email or makes a query on call? However, they didn’t necessarily make a purchase. Whether product or service, the question remains the same “what can I do to make my prospective customers turn in to a paying customer?”

While there are thousands of approaches to make sure the business is visible to the audience or be available in places where the prospective customers are looking for our service or product. Such as being among leading search results on Google, placing ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or through blogs, content websites, product placement in stores, classifieds and so many other things. Necessarily because there are thousands of types of customers using so many media and it is difficult to hunt for the “ideal customer” using a single strategy.

Nevertheless, once the prospective customer has arrived by the mercy of angels or through persistent marketing efforts, there are only a few things that can make or break the deal. And possibly the “Only Thing”.

How often have you realized that when you are out shopping, and you may be browsing many products right from leading brands to new entries in the market? While you might have set your mind on a brand when you stepped out of your home, yet you ended up buying something different or new that was unheard of, yet met all the specifications you imagined in the product.

I had a similar experience recently when I was planning to run a crowdfunding campaign for my game project. While Kickstarter or Indiegogo are restricted to certain geography, they are the rather popular sites and I hoped they could gather me more audience. However being based in India, I had very few choices especially when crowdfunding is not as popular or widespread in this country as yet. My search populated some really nice crowdfunding sites; some started by successful and really popular entrepreneurs, movie icons, sports celebs and others. There were also startups who were making their way into the crowdfunding space with several successful campaigns in their kitty. I wrote to all of them with queries about how I could set up a campaign for my game.

It turned out that the heavyweight, leading sites backed by leaders or celebs took almost a week to respond to my query, with a one or two liner response. While a nimble site TheHotStart responded overnight, appreciated my concept, helped me setup my page, guided me through the process while trying to understand my level of knowledge of crowdfunding as a space.  I felt connected and overwhelmed with the response rate and support I was given. Above all, the “Attention”.

Everyone likes to be pampered, to be appreciated (not fake ) and to be guided. I made up my mind that I am going to work with this team. A week later, while we were working on finalizing the campaign page, I happened to visit Delhi where the team was based. To my surprise it was a young team of entrepreneurs working out of a cafe and the person I was talking to was an intern working part-time while still in college. The excitement went up to another level and we discussed many ideas for long term collaboration.

Recently, I was speaking with one my colleagues, who is also a CEO at a leading Regulatory Consulting organization about “what makes a customer pay the money”. He almost instantaneously said, “attention”. He went on to share his experience about how a Senior Executive from a leading pharma company emailed on the company’s sales email address requesting some services and he responded to that email with a call within few minutes. The overwhelming response rate and attention compelled the executive to verbally commit within few minutes on call that he will be working with this agency. It is indeed magical.

 (I find above pic quite inspiring. It might not be everyday when Mr Branson would be doing this (or be a PR thing), but it’s a great thing that talks about business’ attitude towards customers)

It is quite clear that while there may be a thousand ways to pull customers to our sites or shops, there are only a few or possibly only one classic thing that can make them turn from prospects to paying customers. The “Only Thing”, and that is “Attention”.

– Pay Attention to Your Inbox, Your Call List (the communication channel)

– Pay Attention to the Words or the Voice from the other end (the query)

– Appreciate, encourage and guide (the customer as an individual)

– Be honest, be hungry and work really hard.

Please do share your thoughts and similar experience, if any.

About Me: Creator of GameofWords @dervishyogi

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