What Do Business Owners WANT From A Coach?

In my series of articles in this magazine I’ve been revealing to you the 30 fundamentals required to build a successful business.

Last time, I briefed you on the second critical fundamental small business owners must have… identifying their ideal client.

Now let’s discuss fundamental number three… understanding your prospect’s decision-making process.

All small business owners need to wake up to the fact that we decide to buy the things we do based on emotion. We only use logic to justify the purchase. When a customer buys a new car, they’re looking for a certain feeling that exists within them. That new car represents something about them personally, and they want their purchase to reflect whatever that feeling is.

As crazy as it sounds, most of us use facts to confirm the choices we have already made. Facts validate the decisions we make every day. They just come into play at the end of our buying experience… not at the beginning. This may be the single biggest mistake most business owners make when they market their product or service.

In our day to day lives, we actually make very few decisions based on facts and figures. Instead, we rely mostly on our senses. We match the things we experience and compare them with familiar past patterns that our collective experiences tell us will meet our needs.

When people move, they tend to gravitate towards neighborhoods that mirror their values and behaviors. When the radio is on in the car, we prefer music that reminds us of the music of our youth. Ever find yourself reaching for the audio control in your car when that song that was special to you in high school suddenly comes on the radio? We do this because it works—most of the time.

Indeed, we couldn’t function at all if we had to analyze every decision as if it were a new situation. We simply wouldn’t have the time or mental bandwidth. Our decision making ability has been honed over a thousand centuries of human evolution, enabling us to instantly assess new situations as either potentially dangerous or extremely desirable.

We have an almost instantaneous ability to unconsciously recognize certain patterns that aid us in making quick decisions. Did you know that 90% of all new product advertising fails, despite being “market tested” in advance? That’s because this testing uses logic-based approaches such as consumer surveys and focus groups. But we don’t make our buying decisions based on logic. People make decisions based on emotion. In other words, they buy what they want… NOT what they need.

That’s why I’ve been stressing over and over that for any business to be successful you must have that first fundamental I discussed several weeks ago… the market-dominating position.

You MUST stand out from the crowd… you MUST offer exceptional and extraordinary value… you MUST have a compelling message that lets your target customer know that your product or service is different from all others on the market, and that you offer them so much value they would be foolish to buy from anyone else.

Here’s the key… you MUST select a niche market based on what you do best.

Stop trying to market to every single prospect who may need what you sell… and instead, focus on those select customers who want a specific solution to a specific problem they have. Robert Collier used to refer to this as gaining the ability to “enter the conversation taking place in the head of your prospect.”

When you can do that, you immediately stand out from the crowd and you will quickly dominate your entire market.

In future articles, I’ll continue to reveal these critical fundamentals, and how their application will greatly impact the businesses you coach… both professionally and financially.

So until next time,

Adrian Ulsh