How To Convince A Customer To Buy From You | Selling Made Simple

Are you finding it difficult to close deals, even though the buyer knows they have a problem and that you can fix it?

The solution is to increase “the gap”.

The Gap

Deals often stall because from the buyers perspective there isn’t enough distance between their current reality and their future reality.

For a buyer to go through the pain of purchasing, implementing and then using the solution that you provide, there must be a big enough reward for solving the issue that they are facing.

I might be willing to pay $50k for a car to get me from A to B as the gap between my current reality of not being able to get to work and the future reality of getting to work is a big important one.

However, the gap between being upsold on a nicer car to travel in more luxury will not be as big of a gap and so might be a harder sale to close.

If the gap between the buyers current reality and their future reality isn’t big enough for them to take action you’ll hear objections like:

In fact if the gap between their current reality and their future reality is small, they’ll:

• Try and solve the issue themselves rather than paying to work with you to fix it
• They won’t both going through the pain of getting a deal done and soluition implemented. Instead they’ll just live in their current reality until it becomes painful enough to take action.

So, how then do we increase the gap between the buyers current reality and their future reality to that it becomes big enough that they need help from us to get from one side to the other?

Step 1: Define their current reality

Make it clear to the buyer the position they’re in right now:

• Facts – What are the hard data points that describe their current reality? Sales numbers, revenue, turnover rates, etc. all work great here.
• Impact – How are those hard data points impacting their position? Are they
• working harder? Missing goals? Losing trust?
• Emotions – What are the emotions those impacts are causing? Anxiety? Depression? Burnout? Shame?

Step 2: Uncover their future reality

Next, outline what their future reality looks like once they solve their problem. What would their bigger, brighter, bolder future reality look like? A good strategy here is to go through the previous 3 points again (e.g., “meeting your sales numbers would mean hitting your goals, reducing anxiety, and feeling more confident” for example).

Step 3: Increase the gap

The final step is to start to make the buyers currently reality more painful by explaining the consequences of standing still in the market.

Then make the future reality more pleasurable by explaining how things could be different.

If the potential transformation isn’t enough to make them take action then keep looping this process making their current reality more bleak and their future reality more bold and exciting until there’s enough momentum to take some action.