The Desert of Arizona
Clear 42 Degrees
Premature prescription is something that can be downright deadly to client attraction.
I didn’t think about this much until years ago when I read Dan Kennedy’s Trust Based Marketing book.
Ever since then, I’ve been very aware of how quickly you can kill attraction by prescribing a solution too early in the relationship.
What’s the dumbest thing to do if you actually want a child to clean his room? Well, the worst thing to do in our house is to actually tell him, “Go clean your room…”
The minute those words come out of your mouth, the human habit is to immediately resist. To think of reasons why NOT to do that or to rationalize why that’s NOT a good idea.
So prescription can be dangerous in the client attraction process. By prescription, I mean telling them what they should do.
Many service providers do this right in their sales materials.
Say you’re a personal trainer…
You go out and plaster signs all over town that say something like:
“Join my two part exercise program. You have to eat well and exercise! Yeah!”
Great program, but it’s about as attractive as lipstick on a pig.
Because the MINUTE you talk about the program and explain to people that they should be eating well and exercising their body, they disqualify you. “Everyone knows that… duh!” “And there’s no way in the world I’m going to give up my daily trips to McDeath for a hamburger, fries and shake. A guy’s gotta live!”
Think about how doctors do this…
The first thing they ask you is to talk about what the problem is.
They don’t walk in with the prescription in the first 2 minutes, they want to understand the pain.
Through that process, understanding is generated, trust is generated. And by the time the prescription phase comes along, it doesn’t feel like a “sale,” it feels like advice.
Did you ever think that doctors are salespeople? They are selling things. If they don’t sell things, they starve, just like every business.
But most people don’t view it that way because they’ve been trained NOT to view it that way.
Diagnose, then prescribe.
Take a look at your sales materials. Are you prescribing? Are you saying, “you should sign-up right now so you can work with me?”
Not attractive.
Here’s something to keep in mind. Remember I talked about how NOT to motivate a child to do something? Well, most every adult you encounter IS still that child somewhere on the inside. So the same rules apply.
What IS attractive is to focus your prospect’s attention on the pain. Show them you understand it. Talk about what happens if the pain goes untreated. Talk about what could happen if the pain went away.
Then you set your solution out there for them. If you’ve done your job right, you don’t really have to sell it. Instead, you will have crafted a scenario where they already want it.
Don’t be a solution wandering around looking for people who want it. Even if you only HAVE one solution, this is not the smart approach. Instead, be an expert who specializes in removing “pain.”