What’s In A Business Name? You Would Be Surprised
June 22, 2009 :: Steve Fisher
The following is a guest post by Toby Bray, Principal of Clarity Markets, a full service Sales and Marketing Consultancy with over twenty years experience in operating and growing companies. This topic is something that Toby and I spoke of often especially when I was going through a renaming of my business. He has some great insight into how people perceive you and how many business either expect potential customers to get what they do immediately or that they are too stupid to understand and would never be a customer anyway.
Ever met a business owner with something to sell that has a name that makes no sense and when you were given the sales pitch it took forever? It wasn’t called a mouse trap and the sales process started with a long description but it was capable of catching mice like any other trap. Naming a business, product or service can be easy when you think like a buyer and not like a seller.
The average consumer’s day can be described as hectic. Self imposed or not, the largest slice of the people we want as customers are busy. Okay you say, let’s sell to their curiosity. Not so fast. People by nature carry around frameworks to which they attach value. Each one of those frameworks (related to a subject) is rooted in the concrete notion that “I am familiar with this, therefore I believe it to be true or false, good or bad”. People are by nature creatures of habit, we like routines and don’t like to think when we are looking for something. We are very sensitive to changing our view – look at any presidential election.
Engage Potential Customers in Familiar Ways
So how can I connect the value of my product or service quickly in the mind of a prospect who is busy and adverse to change – engage them using one of their own existing positive frameworks. This starts with your business name and your tag line. If someone is interested in antique motorcycles, use terms they will recognize without effort and attach them to an existing framework with a positive connotation. In other words, don’t make them start thinking until they have connected your product or service with something they know and desire. Humans are resistant to change because it means work. Sales campaigns that cause people to do work before perceiving value and interest are already in trouble. If I have to explain myself before my prospect is interested they are less likely to remain interested in what I have to say simply because they make a choice to avoid the work of assessing the value. In a world crowded with competitors, the one who connects to the positive framework wins.
Case in Point…
Using our earlier construct, two trucks drive past you on the street in under eight seconds. One says “Pete’s Antique Motorcycles Sales, Service, Hard to Find Parts. 1-800-GET-RIDING”. The other says “Velociopter We know old machines 1-800-444-2314”. If you are into antique motorcycles, who are you going to call? Both of these companies are reputable, both of them can meet your needs. But one of them connected directly to something important to you and they never had to utter a single word. This axiom applies to printed materials, television and radio. Most importantly, it applies to selling in person. On a consumer oriented conference floor there are twenty-five vendors. One person greets you and says – I’m John from Wills Closet, We sell things to make your closets and drawers smell nice while getting rid of moths”. Right across the aisle is Odor Free Moth Be Gone. Who wins? It is as they say a no brainer.
Don’t Make Your Customer Feel Stupid
There is also the notion of making the prospect feel dumb. If we lived in a perfect world where everyone was well balanced we would never need to consider this challenge. We don’t. If I meet a person on the street and talk over their head, will they attach a positive or negative emotion to what I have to say? If I make them wait or struggle to understand me how will they feel? Will they tune in or out? Will they play devil’s advocate? Why did they not stay and listen? Because from their perspective, my approach made them think they were stupid or on the outside of a club. As for clubs, being “In” can be very seductive, but creating “In” is expensive, time consuming, and often fails because people who are “In” are early adopters. And as you may have guessed, early adopters are fickle and always looking for the next new thing. They also tend to use being in as a way to inflate their own social position causing others around them to look upon them from a negative perspective. “In” crowds can be fun, but they are high maintenance consumers that often demand much more from a business than the business can afford to provide.
Sell Before You Educate
One last point before we move on – Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. What does this have to do with selling. Well Maslow postulates that we change only when something in our lives forces us to do so. A power greater than ourselves you might say. Maslow has several levels in the Hierarchy of Needs, and moving up the scale causes a person to see the world from a broader and less self-centered perspective (to simplify). So if I want you to purchase my product, and the act of setting up the sale forces you to change a framework, how much resistance will the act encounter? In the simplest of terms, “Don’t make the prospect think”, and “Sell before you educate” are two ideas you can take to the bank if you have a product people want.
Bottom Line?
I’m not against tangential or strange sales approaches, but if we learned anything from the dot com bust, we learned you can’t sell without real value, and everything you do needs to communicate value starting with the first word.
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