Episode 63
How to help customers decide... to buy from you
Ben and Carlos try to interpret an email from Seth Godin to see how it relates to pricing and selling.
How do we help our customers make a decision (to buy from us)? And how do we do that with integrity and not feel slimy?
It can feel like we’re manipulating their ability to choose but we may also be helping them make the best decision.
Which side of the fence are you sitting? Master manipulator or benevolent guide?
Links
Transcript
if you are listening to this on the podcast, it'll be the episode after this one.
Carlos:Uh, and if you're listening to this live before.
Carlos:Wednesday the 1st of March.
Ben:And if you're listening to it live before Wednesday, then that is a whole different present thing.
Carlos:You've definitely gone within your naval and then entered the quantum field.
Carlos:The title of this episode is How to Help Customers Decide to Buy From You.
Carlos:And it was, inspired by a blog post that was sent through to me by, Frances Khalastchi from the Better Boulder Braver community.
Carlos:It's the Seth Godin, one of these classic Seth Godin emails that seem to go all over well, for me anyway, they seem to start in one place and then in another place.
Carlos:I have no idea how I got from one to the other.
Carlos:But it was around decision making.
Carlos:There were two ways that we're gonna tackle this conversation.
Carlos:One is how we help our customers make decisions or that process of decision making that may be going through a customer's mind.
Carlos:That will affect whether they buy from us and potentially also how much they will spend.
Carlos:Talking from your perspective, if you are listening to us and you are a founder or a, freelancer or a solopreneur, company of one, trying to price more powerfully, we are guessing you are here 'cause you wanna have a bit more ease in your business and you don't wanna spend too much time on the wrong things that de-energize you.
Carlos:There are bigger decisions that you potentially need to make and spend time thinking about.
Carlos:And how do you avoid or why you go to some of the more mundane decision making processes?
Carlos:Like what to have for lunch or, whether you should have headed note paper.
Carlos:What, what, what weight of cards should be on your business cards?
Carlos:So those are the two levels we're gonna try and tackle it at, tackle this out.
Carlos:I quite like the second one, the one that you're talking about, Ben, that kinda like more crunchy solely yeah.
Carlos:Existentially type questions I think.
Carlos:But for those who just want some super quick answers to say Customers are buying from me.
Carlos:I thought we'd just tackled that for a little bit.
Carlos:Basically, particularly through the lens of the program, which isn't gonna be soon, a self-paced course.
Carlos:We're gonna be launching that in a few weeks time.
Carlos:we just need to make some tweaks to make it easier for you to do it on your own.
Carlos:But we have videos and materials that you can follow in your own time, whenever you want.
Carlos:we believe that you'll be able to get to a place where you'll be pricing more confidently, and more powerfully, without having to listen to us all the time or jump on a call at a particular time of day and wait around and listen to, you know, uh, us drone on.
Carlos:So coming to a place near you.
Carlos:But for those people, who are wanting answers straight away, what I remem well, one aspect of the course that I think was quite helpful for people is this idea of options and how, if we don't present options, then our customers essentially just deciding whether to work with you or not.
Carlos:Is that a fair way to describe that situation, Ben?
Ben:so I think the thing with options is I think, and this is a well studied phenomenon, not by me, I'm just merely regurgitating other people's studies.
Ben:That the brain choose it, the brain needs choice in order, it doesn't know absolute values of anything.
Ben:And so that's kind of true of money, it's true of anything.
Ben:And so what tends to happen is a prospective client might ask us for, let's say a proposal, and we give them a proposal and we just sort of give them an option.
Ben:But the person in the kind of heart mind of the buyer, they don't know whether that thing is, you know, they don't know whether that thing is worth it.
Ben:They don't know whether that thing is right.
Ben:So they are all looking for choice.
Ben:They are all looking for comparison.
Ben:And so if we don't in that moment start to give them some choices, we're sort of forcing them in some respects to go compare us to other people.
Ben:It might be comparing on whatever the sort of criteria are, but the kind of person who's buying, they need some sort of comparison so that their brain can feel comfortable that it's making the right decision.
Ben:And if it doesn't have the comparison, the brain will not feel comfortable that it's making the right decision.
Ben:So, you know, it is on us, the provider of the service or the product to help them with that need for comparison.
Ben:And that's really what we're sort of talking about by offering choices.
Ben:If we don't give choice, we're actually making it harder for somebody to decide.
Ben:And if we don't give choice, we're sort of leaving them with no option but to go compare us with other people who might be offering similarly shaped things, because that's what they need in order to make a decision.
Ben:So better that we are trying to manage that process ourselves as opposed to kind of putting it on the buyer to manage and then they go where they go.
Carlos:So what actually made me think about when you're talking now is this idea of niching.
Carlos:and I get to that niche idea of niche.
Ben:Niche.
Carlos:Niching, of course niching for our American cousins.
Ben:Mm-Hmm.
Carlos:I get to that in when I was thinking like if they go to, you know, if they go, they are, for instance gonna go compare you to someone else, how, like you said, what criteria you are they using?
Carlos:And if they're using just cost, then you're kind of on a hiding to nothing.
Carlos:No one wants to race to the bottom.
Carlos:It's not worth it.
Carlos:But when you create a niche, and I'm thinking also about positioning, for instance.
Carlos:If you put yourself in a play or you just, you position yourself in such a way that it isn't about being the cheapest, for you.
Carlos:It's about the experience.
Carlos:For us, it's like, it's about the experience of learning pricing with us.
Carlos:That's one of the key things.
Carlos:If you want that sense of community, if you want that sense of emergence and kind of just feeling held so that you can work out some of these tough questions on your own, that's us.
Carlos:So if you wanna compare us, compare us on that to someone else, and if that's something is important to you, then.
Carlos:You really need to consider that aspect of what we do.
Carlos:That's how I'm thinking about how we as business owners can help our customers make the right decisions.
Carlos:And so in a sense, it's the niching part is like we want to attract people who want to make those kinds of decisions.
Carlos:They might by default, out of sheer overwhelm, just go to the price.
Carlos:But if we give them some knowledge or help them be more confident that choosing based on their own values and in this case, it's like, I wanna work with other people, I appreciate, I'm the kind of person who thinks out loud and I need that back and forth, there's like, okay, I now have some real clear criteria from which to decide.
Carlos:I can remember, Klaus Rasad, I think he was on the previous process.
Carlos:the logics we used the Pricing, he called them the pricing logics.
Carlos:But the internal logics that we have to be consistent with in order to make decisions that we're proud of.
Ben:Yeah.
Ben:So the niching thing is definitely relevant and interesting 'cause if we are just understood to be the same as an ocean full of other options, of course it is making it hard for our prospect to buy because how to choose?
Ben:Why to choose?
Ben:It's the same as everything else, so I have no idea.
Ben:It's kind of demanding of them an impossible decision, isn't it?
Ben:'cause how could they ever possibly know?
Ben:And of course that then also plays into money because the decision is harder to make.
Ben:But also if the product or service is just understood to be the same as a gazillion things which are out there.
Ben:Then in the mind of the buyer, then the price has to be comparable to all of those other things because it's the same thing.
Ben:So in a way, the value bit, you know, the kind of price bit, does come from perceived difference..
Ben:And so the more that my thing is perceived to be different, of course the more ownership, the more control I can have about what the price of that is.
Ben:So there's, in niching or niching, there is of course value in helping them choose because they can say, oh, this is offering all of the things which are important to me.
Ben:the specific things which might be values, might be things around motivation, might be in the tangible and intangible things that people are buying.
Ben:But in niching we're essentially signaling to a much smaller subset of people that this is really for you, and so by extension it's not for other people so that those, those signals are there.
Ben:That of course, does make it easier for people to buy, but it is also the root of being able to control your price and to confidently stand behind a price which is different to what other things in the market might be.
Ben:It allows you to not go on the comparison basis because you are confident your thing isn't for everybody.
Ben:It's for certain types of people in these situations.
Ben:And in confidently standing behind that, it allows you to better control the narrative around price.
Carlos:And so when they get to that point now where they really, connect to the niche that you've created, you know, their values align to your values, you're kind of solving a problem that they need to have solved, they feel that they're gonna have the right experience with you, then in a sense, you are a bit more liberated from the market rate, because you're suddenly rising above this.
Ben:Because you're not in the market.
Carlos:You're not in the market, you're not trying to sell on the same principles, but then you still have to pick a number.
Carlos:And so that number, like you said, is like, if it's just a solitary number, well, that number needs to make sense in some way.
Ben:Mm-hmm, yeah.
Carlos:And so you need to tell a story about that number.
Ben:Mm-Hmm.
Carlos:it's interesting things like, oh, I'm happy to pay that money.
Carlos:It's like, it makes sense to pay that amount of money.
Carlos:Because I think what I've heard is it's useful to have a bit of discomfort because you're gonna have to have some commitment.
Carlos:Behind paying that amount of money.
Carlos:If it's too easy to pay, then maybe there's a lack of commitment on your part It could be, particularly if you're coaching or doing something that's transformational, the customer has to have a level of commitment, and so there's something in that number that needs to, I would assume, speak to that.
Carlos:But even still, if you've only got one number.
Carlos:how would you tell the story of that number to your customer so that it makes sense to them?
Ben:Yeah, and maybe that is the good way of sort of describing it.
Ben:It is about the story that you're telling overall and the price is part of the story that you are telling.
Ben:There is a need to tell a story and either you do that intentionally or you don't, but there is a need to tell a story.
Ben:The price, the amount is part of the story that you are telling.
Ben:So you know that there are different prices allows you to flesh out the story somewhat.
Ben:So there is value in terms of the need to be telling story in having different prices.
Ben:And coming back to we about at the beginning, there is also sort of material decision making value in being able to kind of offer them different choices so they have frames of reference to understand, well, this relates to this in this way,
Carlos:And I chose the word story.
Ben:Because it comes up on 2020.
Carlos:It comes on 2020.
Carlos:Thank you very much.
Carlos:Stories will change canvas.
Carlos:If you check it out.
Carlos:I'll put a link in the show notes.
Carlos:it's this idea that this is also an emotive decision.
Carlos:This isn't purely a logical.
Ben:All decisions are emotive.
Carlos:Exactly.
Carlos:All decisions are emotive.
Carlos:And sometimes I believe a lot of people who haven't done a lot of pricing work can fall into the trap, it's just a number.
Carlos:It's an absolute number.
Carlos:There's some absolute scale that we're working towards.
Carlos:As opposed to, and this is why your stories, there's a set of feelings and there's a connections and the thing about a story is not laying out all the facts and then you trying to understand the facts.
Carlos:It's like threading them together in a way that you kind of going on a journey and you can, seeing the contrast in not just a logical way, but in a motive way.
Ben:Mm-Hmm.
Carlos:And so there's something around, you know, when I think about the different, say, if you present different.
Carlos:Level different options of price, there's a story of commitment.
Carlos:How committed are you to this work?
Carlos:And if you're not committed that lot, that much, then you pay this much and you'll get this.
Carlos:And if you're really committed, pay this much and you get this.
Carlos:And if you're kind of in the middle you know, there's a, there you can help people be comfortable with the choices they make when they have a story that they can justify their decision with.
Ben:Yeah.
Carlos:And then there's a story, the internal story around.
Carlos:The beliefs they have about themselves, how confident they are about, investing in themselves, for instance.
Carlos:Mm-hmm.
Carlos:Particularly in coaching, it's like, ah, you know, I'm not allowed to invest in myself, or like, oh, it's a lot of money and like, it should be spending it on the business or somewhere else.
Carlos:So there's also a story to tell about, well, without you doing this for yourself, the business itself won't thrive.
Carlos:And so what is it worth to you to do this work?
Carlos:' Cause if you don't do it, what happens to the business?
Ben:Mm-Hmm.
Ben:And I think your point around the sort of the decision making bit is, is of course kind of material because it's pretty well understood that essentially.
Ben:The way we make decisions, we make the decision emotionally, we then justify it rationally, and which is what, I think Klaus was talking to with the logic or the, the phrasing that, that they used.
Ben:But the decision is made emotionally.
Ben:You know, either we do connect with somebody on an emotional level, we move them at an, on an emotional level.
Ben:They then are looking for the logic that backs up the decision that they have instinctively made, or intuitively made.
Ben:And so, you know, that's happening all the time with everybody who's buying anything, or deciding anything.
Ben:And so we do need to kind of recognize that and we do need to be talking to that.
Ben:But then the other things you were sort of talking about there around sort of things like commitment, I think, they all become part of the justification story, don't they?
Ben:It's like, the story that I'm telling myself about why this is good, and why somebody wouldn't be making a decision around.
Ben:It's something they might be saying, oh, you know, I shouldn't be spending this money on that.
Ben:I should be spending on something else.
Ben:Really, that's just talking, that's telling you there is some anxiety, some uncertainty, and there's just, there's a lack of, there's a lack of safety in a way on the part of the buyer that it's okay to sort of step into.
Ben:So I can default to things like, oh, I shouldn't spend the money on that, or I really can't afford to do this, but I could afford to do that.
Ben:And actually I see that as some of the conversations I'm having kind of recently, like some people will say, oh, because the kind of business, the commercial stuff, it's slowing down, right?
Ben:You know, there's for sure like a slowing down In the kind of wider marketplace, it's harder for people to, you know, maybe sort of small businesses making less money.
Ben:And so on the one hand we'll say, I don't know if I can invest in this, say, because things are slowing down.
Ben:But on the other, might equally be continuing to spend money that they're already spending, which may mean that they're losing money.
Ben:and so, but, but the, so the story in their head is not yet clear.
Ben:They haven't yet made the kind of emotional decision that it's safe to step into, step into something that you might be, you might be offering them.
Ben:But yes, I think, I think, you know, where we get presented with those things that seem like rational things, like can't afford it, now's not a good time, but really what they're saying is that I haven't yet got the kind of emotional sort of safety or the emotional connection to step into this.
Carlos:So a word that spr to mind around the fear and anxiety bit was the word shame.
Carlos:And the way I was connecting to it is 'cause one thing that, maybe this is just me, it's like if I have to defend my decision to someone else, like, how do I do that?
Carlos:Because everyone's like, oh you idiot.
Carlos:Why did you spend that much money?
Carlos:And the market's going down, you're spending money.
Carlos:This, it's like, what a crazy thing to do.
Carlos:And to arm your customers with a real confident story of like, but I believe by working on this, I'll be able to weather the storm.
Carlos:And it is an investment and it isn't a lost, Lost money.
Carlos:It in one way will deliver value.
Carlos:And so to be able to, not be shamed into feeling like you've done something wrong is, well, that's what I was connecting to because like why is there fear and anxiety?
Carlos:There's maybe existential thing, oh my God, this is the last 10 pounds I've got in my account and other than that I'm not gonna feed myself, which most people we work with aren't in that situation.
Carlos:So it isn't really that a real existential threat.
Carlos:There's something else around that, which.
Ben:links to the story that they're telling themselves.
Ben:Because, you know, maybe they tell themselves a story, that they make good decisions about things.
Ben:Maybe they tell themselves a story, that the decisions that they make are prudent, that they're wise, that they're careful.
Ben:And so, you know, essentially what we are needing to is understand that stories that they tell themselves, which comes back, I think, to how you were framing the, conversation generally.
Ben:Not so that we can manipulate them to do it.
Ben:But in a sense, 'cause I think everybody who's listening to this, essentially the work that they're doing is useful.
Ben:The work that they're doing is well intentioned.
Ben:The work that they're doing is, is kind of oriented to positive kind impact.
Ben:So I think there is no danger of kind of manipulation, that sense among the people who are listening to their, unless some random hedge fund people found their way in and are a bit confused.
Ben:if we take as a baseline that, uh, people's intention is positive, I think then there is an onus on us as the provider to explore ways, and this is not to say again the caveat that we are just going to persuade all people to buy our things 'cause that's never gonna happen.
Ben:But, you know, if we believe our work is good, if we believe our work is kind of right-minded, right oriented, all of those sorts of things, spending some time to help people connect to the story that they're telling so that they too can benefit from it, is part of the task of what we're doing is part of the sales process.
Ben:And that is about understanding their story, is about understanding the emotional drivers, is about understanding all of those things.
Ben:'Cause we, that's the level at which we need to connect what we are offering with who they are.
Carlos:Which then leads me onto, is like, that's one of the most important things as a business owner to do, is to really understand your customer, and to spend time.
Carlos:And even this whole idea of niching, right?
Carlos:Really getting some clarity of who do you wanna work for?
Carlos:What is it you are, what's the change you're making for them?
Carlos:I can remember as a web design agency, we were so caught up with playing with technology and making pretty things, and we would spend more time thinking about that rather than a harder question of who is it we wanna work with?
Carlos:You know?
Ben:Yeah.
Carlos:Who do we wanna commit to?
Ben:Which is brilliant segue.
Ben:The kind of question, do we basically just conveniently spend our time.
Ben:Distracting ourselves with the, the things which are kind of easy and immediate, and in the process, avoid the stuff which is important and hard?
Carlos:And that's that whole, aspect of that Seth Godin post around decisions, the hard decisions that we run away from.
Carlos:And from my experience, the kind of decisions that I run away from most are the ones that have less of a right and wrong answer.
Carlos:It is kind of like it's so on the edge.
Carlos:Like, I could do this, I could do that.
Carlos:I could shut down the agency and then run with this thing called the Happy Startup School, which might not make any money.
Carlos:Or I could just leave Happy Startup School as a side project for Laurence and I run the agency 'cause I know, I, I know of businesses that work that way, there is a model to follow.
Carlos:And those kind of decisions, those kind of more creative.
Carlos:most of the time, I think, are strategic within businesses, those decisions are the ha because it's so hard to know whether you're gonna get it right.
Carlos:I'd rather not tackle.
Ben:Yeah, I mean it's, we, it's avoiding the ones where there is a lot of emotional risk actually, isn't it?
Ben:Because it's like, if I shut this down, what am I gonna lose, essentially?
Ben:You know, have I, am I basically sort of condemning myself to living on the streets or whatever, I don't know the fucking thing would be, but you know, it's like the, where it kind of feels like there's lots of risk to something.
Ben:And so it's avoiding, it's avoiding the situations, avoiding those kind of moments, which, feel like there's a lot at stake, that I could lose a lot.
Carlos:And it feels, without being able to make those decisions or have the courage to make those decisions or find a way, a mindset that allows you to work with that level of uncertainty, that negative capability, then all the smaller decisions, even the pricing decisions that you are making, might not work because they're not fed from a clearer vision or a clearer direction.
Carlos:So you're kind of like doing these little strategic tweaks on something that actually is kind of shifting sands or not?
Ben:Yeah.
Ben:I mean they're actually more tactical tweaks, aren't they?
Carlos:Yeah.
Ben:Tactical.
Ben:They're not actually strategic, strategic.
Carlos:Yeah.
Ben:It's basically muddying in the tactics.
Carlos:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Carlos:So you are like in the field just trying to work out, reacting to what's happening around you.
Carlos:Rather than saying, actually, is this where I want to be in the first place?
Carlos:And so, you know, I would urge anyone listening to this, you know, pricing is a way in to just thinking about your business.
Carlos:It's such an immediate visceral, oh my God, I'm not earning enough, or it feels really like I'm not being paid my worth.
Carlos:But what we found is by starting to think about this stuff.
Carlos:It is a doorway into actually the broader aspects of the business.
Carlos:The marketing, the positioning, the niching, and then the strategic stuff.
Carlos:And what does it mean to run a successful business?
Carlos:Or for me at least any, you know, personally.
Carlos:It's interesting, like you can, you can try and do the clarity strategy stuff which, whenever you're gonna be fully clear, or you can go into the weeds and try and work out all the nuts and bolts and tactical stuff, and then maybe go in the completely wrong direction.
Carlos:What's the middle way?
Carlos:And that's the question I've always had is like, how do we take confident steps forward, even if we don't know if they're in the right direction.
Ben:Yeah.
Carlos:And then, work on some of these tactical things with intention to really learn them since we're playing with them in the end, because we dunno if it's gonna work or not, but through that process we meet people, we get feedback and we experience some discomfort or some challenges.
Carlos:And hopefully through that process we get more clear about what it is we really want to do and how the business should be structured.
Ben:And maybe part of it is, you know, how do we know Is the sense, like, with some reflection, whether done, you know, by yourself or with others, just I think give yourself the, opportunity to, am I really distracting myself with simple tactical things, which ones, so what am I avoiding by spending my time thinking about this?
Ben:You know, and it sort of invites Griffin.
Ben:'cause I think in a sense, you know, what we were joking about at the beginning, coming at it both ways round and arriving in the belly or whatever, in some form.
Ben:That's kind of what, you know, if, if I guess, if the Buddha was to do anything, maybe that's kind of, that is partly what it would be, isn't it?
Ben:Is like getting to a place where I am giving at least equal weight or some sort of proportion rate to, yes, I'm working on some tactical things.
Ben:Yes, I'm experimenting with some changes.
Ben:But I'm also giving some space and time to be able to reflect a little bit more broader to ask myself the question, so yes, I'm in this field, playing in this weed.
Ben:Do I ever want to be in a field at all?
Ben:And so that I am at least giving myself the opportunity to explore both ways round.
Ben:I'm giving myself the opportunity to explore the tactical.
Ben:I'm giving myself the opportunity to ask some of those kind of bigger questions about being in the field at all.
Ben:And then trust actually that I will arrive somewhere in the metaphorical belly of my work.
Carlos:And I think from my experience of.
Carlos:Early days of running a business and being around other early stage business people, it's so easy to get caught in the weeds.
Carlos:I know we have Anya asking can we find confidence in knowing that we can handle whatever arises as we take a step into that unknown direction?
Carlos:So, trying to find a place to place confidence.
Ben:And that, so the thing you were talking about, you and Anya were talking about there, that is also, isn't that also a definition of creativity?
Ben:It's your ability to sit with ambiguity, the ability to sit in that sort of unknown liminal space.
Carlos:because until you've got full cla, you know, I've always been looking for a plan.
Carlos:It's nice to have those, they'll roadmap.
Carlos:Just do A, B, C, and D and you'll, you'll get to where you need to.
Carlos:with bills to pay and, and life to live.
Carlos:so there is a, there's a bit of a messiness to this.
Ben:Think long and short.
Ben:Have a big sort of far ahead orientation, direction of travel.
Ben:And then just start fucking walking.
Carlos:But it is that Perspective.
Carlos:So like you said, being able to look broadly further ahead while at the same time being quite present and focused with what's needed now, not kind of, yeah, getting all cystic and escaping into, some philosophical.
Ben:Oh, nice word.
Carlos:Culdesac.
Ben:You're just gonna drop that in there are you?
Ben:I'm just gonna drop it in there.
Ben:Be that and I'm just gonna leave that in there with you.
Ben:Not before I end the podcast.
Carlos:I can't even spell it.
Carlos:Alright.
Carlos:but ultimately the, tho those questions that can, you know, for some of us who are purpose driven, can be very naval gazy.
Carlos:Like, but Beccie says, why the fuck am I in this field?
Carlos:What is this field?
Carlos:Where am I?
Carlos:You know what, why do I exist?
Carlos:What's the purpose of life?
Carlos:Which I love, but unfortunately, no one's gonna be paying me to sit and think about those questions all day long.
Carlos:Unless I'm Alain de Botton.
Ben:Yeah.
Carlos:And I run the School of Life.
Ben:Or you've sought out your pricing to such a significant effect that you basically only have a couple of hours a day where you're needing to do work for money, which happily frees you up to have the whole rest of your time to reflect on why the fuck am I in this field at all.
Carlos:So if you want to get clearer about your pricing, go to happypricing.co, sign up to the mailing list 'cause we'll be sending out an email soon to allow you to do the self-paced version of the Happy Pricing program and news pricing as a spiritual path.
Ben:exactly.
Carlos:Until, uh, next week where actually I've discovered, we're gonna be talking to Matt Matheson.
Ben:I discovered something.
Carlos:I just discovered.
Carlos:It's an internal kind of adventure.
