People quite often use the phrases “potential client” or “potential buyer,” but few of them know what such a client is and how to find one. This is exactly what we will talk about in this article, and also give our recommendations on how to work with a potential buyer so that he becomes a real client.
Who is a potential client from a salesperson's point of view?
IN in a broad sense A potential buyer is a person who has the physical and material resources to purchase goods. Note that this concept is significantly different from the point of view of a seller and a marketer. In sales, a potential client, in addition to the above resources, also has a need for a product. The only thing that prevents the transaction from being completed is his uncertainty. The seller's task in this case is only to convince the client.
Experienced b2b salespeople keep a record of potential clients. IN this list Customers who have a need for a product, but have not yet confirmed their intention to purchase it, are entered. In this case, the employee tries by all means to “put the squeeze” on the potential buyer. This is especially true for long-term sales, where sellers must be much more active, constantly notifying customers about new products, services and promotions.
Who is a potential client from a marketer's point of view?
For a marketer, the entire target group for which the product was intended at the stage of its release are potential customers. Any businessman, when producing any product, thinks about who it will be intended for. For example, a luxury car manufacturer targets wealthy people for whom the premium quality of the product is important. The marketer’s task in this case is to identify and describe the potential buyer as accurately as possible.
Identifying potential clients comes down to answering a number of questions:
- What problems does the buyer face, and what product characteristics will help solve them?
- What is the gender, age and status of the potential buyer?
- Where is the target group of this product geographically located?
- What matters most to the client? important role when choosing a product?
Where to find potential clients?
At the stage of formation small companies are faced with the problem of finding potential buyers. Young entrepreneurs often do not have the opportunity to pay for expensive advertising or cooperate with retailers, which forces them to look for people interested in buying on their own.
As we mentioned above, you first need to identify and describe the target group for which the product is intended. If we're talking about about a young business that cannot afford to carry out an expensive marketing research, then in this case you can turn to the developments of clients. There are practically no free niches left in the market, so in most cases you can find competitors. Analyzing the activities of your closest competitors will give you basic information about your target group. Another relatively inexpensive option is to purchase information from thematic Internet resources that collect similar data.
How to work with potential clients?
Work with potential buyers is based on the basic competencies that an employee must have, his experience and talent. In order to convert a prospect into a client, the salesperson must use the skills of persuasion or even suggestion (in short selling).
Moreover, in many large companies There are sales scripts for working with such buyers that help the seller build a conversation in such a way that it ends with a deal.
People who simply need your product or service, they just don’t know about it yet. Your task is to turn them into real customers.
Of course, finding potential clients is not an easy job. Therefore, competent managers entrust it only to experienced and trusted employees.
So what are the main search methods?
1. Advertising. Business without it is impossible. Whatever you do - selling toys or providing hairdressing services, running a shoe store or cleaning company - potential clients rarely find themselves.
2. Application by mail. This is also a very good way to find clients. However, this method requires careful study. If you just send a bunch of letters and wait for an influx of buyers, then you will never see any results.
Alternatively, break your prospect lists into certain groups. Let one sales manager be responsible for one group. An employee can regularly, for example, every Monday, send 10 letters in accordance with his list, and on Friday call the recipients and find out their opinion.
3. Participation in exhibitions, fairs and conferences. What makes you think that your potential clients don’t attend such events? How they visit! During your participation in just one exhibition you can attract many more clients than in a month of mailing.
Moreover, it is not necessary to participate in such events yourself. It is enough to follow them and visit them to use maximum opportunities for finding clients.
Well, we figured it out. How to recognize them? Everything is quite simple here. First you need to determine: If you, for example, sell children's toys, then your target audience is parents and children. However, in most cases, a child will not be able to pay for the toy he likes, so you are only interested in parents as potential clients.
One of the secrets of attracting clients is a bright speech. Those who are endowed with the gift of persuasion and know how to colorfully describe any product are natural born. It has been proven that potential customers are more willing to “peck” at verbal description than on the visual representation of the object. For this purpose, it would be useful to conduct trainings for trade managers. In such classes, you can practice describing various products (not only those that you offer).
But what to do when a potential client is already on the doorstep? If you think that the job is done, you are deeply mistaken. Everything here will depend on how you present your product or service to him. Tell the client what benefits he will receive, what he will be able to feel after making a purchase. Every objection needs to be answered and turned into an advantage of the deal.
Follow these tips and your potential clients will turn into real ones in no time!
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The potential buyer offers a very good price and raises it until he scares off all competitors. Then suddenly another, more realistic sentence follows: If you want, take it, if you want, don’t. The seller has no choice but to agree.
Potential buyers in different regions have special needs and tastes. If these features play an important role, then it makes sense to use geographic segmentation. Geographic segmentation is also important for international marketing, when the question arises of what kind of marketing structure is best suited to satisfy consumers in a given country.
Potential buyers are people who may be interested in buying from you.
Potential buyers are a great thing and are essential to the success of a business. However, many businessmen make the mistake of believing that the most necessary thing to achieve success is to attract as many potential buyers as possible.
A potential buyer is someone who wants to buy something from you.
Potential buyers are people who may know about your company or you, but have never bought anything from you.
Potential buyers submit applications in advance to the auction organizers, indicating the volume of securities they would like to purchase, taking into account the price contained in the application. In this case, participation in the auction can be on a competitive or non-competitive basis.
Potential buyer (Prospect) - a legal entity or individual who can become a buyer of the company's goods.
Potential buyers often faced a situation where the manufacturer's desire to cover huge overhead costs through price led to the termination of the deal.
Potential customers who are not knowledgeable about the company or product may be reluctant to speak with a sales representative. Therefore, the promotion system should primarily focus on presenting the company and its products.
Potential buyers in different regions have specific needs or tastes. If these features play an important role, then it makes sense to use geographic segmentation. Geographic segmentation is also important for international marketing, when the question arises of what kind of marketing structure is best suited to satisfy consumers in a given country.
Typically, a potential buyer appears at a licensing office in response to a newspaper advertisement, which describes mainly the advantages and potential capabilities of a new product or type of service. He behaves defiantly: okay, they say, show me what you have here. The seller has undergone appropriate training and knows how to handle this human type. Instead of reflecting aggression, it directs it in the right direction and carries out the buyer identification program. Starting with basic questions general property, regarding his name, home address, occupation and characteristics, the seller puts the potential buyer in a position where he must prove his ability to cope with this license and become a worthy partner.
A friendly potential buyer sought by a company that is being acquired by a hostile company.
A potential buyer may be interested in the total costs of purchasing, using and storing a product, since the selling price is only a part of these costs; the rest is effort, time and nerves. Then the future buyer studies the difference between the final offers of competitors and considers them carefully.
A potential buyer has access to a greater amount of information that he can evaluate. In addition to general information, he receives financial reports, prepared by audit structures, and for public companies whose shares are traded on the stock exchange, also documents submitted to authorities. In addition, interested parties may seek relevant information from suppliers, customers, and even competitors (often through a third party) of the company of interest.
Hundreds of customers pass through the stores every day, sometimes more. And they go to some store again, and to some store they never set foot again! Why is that? What needs to be done so that customers come a second and a third time, and so that they become regulars? Read about this in this article; we will talk in detail about the types of buyers and how to attract them.
Potential buyer
The potential buyer of your store is your target audience, these are representatives of your target group, that is, that part of the people that you would really like to influence in order to attract them to your trading or manufacturing enterprise. Potential buyers are also present in another niche that interests you - a secondary one. This is a part of the population that is inclined to make purchases from you or your competitors. And the third group of your potential buyers are those who have never purchased anything from your niche products and do not intend to do so yet.
Why is this happening?
People may not yet realize that they need your product. For example, older people cannot even imagine how much more enjoyable their life will be if they buy... a color printer! Only you can tell them what kind of photographs they can print of their grandchildren, girlfriends, friends, acquaintances. After all, it is older people who still love to store photographs on paper! Therefore, this category of people are also potential buyers of office equipment stores, as paradoxical as it may sound!
What are the goals and objectives of working with a group of potential buyers? An entrepreneur needs to draw their attention to his store, invite them to his place, show the sales area and products, provide services for them, even in a free demo version. In this way, you can convince a potential buyer to make a first trial purchase. Well, then everything will depend on the quality of goods, services, and the ease of receiving and using them.
How can you attract customers to your business or store?
The first thing your potential client sees is advertisement. Think over the text, work it out on several clients, place it in the most popular media in your locality, or in those places where your target audience most often visits. The second important factor in attracting customers to your store is its sign and beautiful windows. It will be great if there is a promoter at the door of your store, whose goal is to invite as many customers as possible to the sales floor. Only the promoter must be “alive”; it is best to hire a person who is associated with the theater, one who has creative abilities.
To attract customers from your target audience to your store, you need to offer products and services that your competitors do not yet offer. Buyers are generally satisfied with the traditional buying process, but new products are part of satisfying the demands of novelty and curiosity.
Also use unusual methods of promoting your product. For example, many marketers believe that rumors work great if they are generated correctly. For example, have you heard that the Metel store brought fur coats at a price of 30 thousand and a million? Want to see million-dollar fur coats? Many fashionistas will not react at all to fur coats worth 30 thousand and will come running to see what’s so great about a fur coat if it costs a million?
Technology for spreading such rumors: places are selected where representatives of the target audience most often appear. In our example, these are fashion salons, fur shops, expensive beauty salons, medical centers, beauty salons, sports and fitness rooms. It determines which employees communicate with clients. And they are invited to tell visitors of these places, as if as a joke, in secret, with surprise, or as if reading a newspaper with news, about million-dollar fur coats. Yes, you will have to work hard to come to an agreement with these people, but an additional fee has never bothered anyone.
What about social networks? Do you remember them? This is where rumors and news spread in three seconds! Find interest groups and participate in the discussion, tell the story! What to do then? Do you really need to bring a million-dollar fur coat to your store? Of course not! Come up with a joke to make everyone feel good and happy. A girl comes to the salon, and it says - if you are looking for a fur coat for a million, contact the seller! And the seller gives such a lady a gift, for example, a discount card or a souvenir.
The most active participants in spreading rumors are grannies who, with free passes, can ride buses all day long! They talk to each other, and so loudly that the whole bus can hear. What are they talking about? It's up to you to decide, because you're the one hiring these sweet older women! They get an increase in their pension, and you get a great, working advertisement.
You can attract customers to your store in another marketing way: come yourself and bring a friend, in which case you will receive a nice gift. For example, bring three friends and get a gift for four! And give a box with four items that these people need in life.
You can also attract attention to your store by using the help of those who are already your customers. If one customer recommends your product or service to another, and the person makes a purchase from you, then the person who recommended receives a gift. And it is fair that the new buyer should also receive something. This is where a discount card comes in handy again.
Advertising in which the seller asks the buyer to do something works great. For example, a gift has already been prepared for you because you saw our advertisement. Come and pick up your gift! A person comes to you, you give him a tour of the store, he buys more, receives a gift, and then he will definitely come to you again if he likes the quality of your product.
IN Lately It has become fashionable to carry out partnership promotions. This is when stores advertise each other. Did you buy 1000 rubles in our store? Then you will receive a bonus check for 250 rubles if you buy something at the store across the street. Oddly enough, this promotion works; people often give coupons to acquaintances, friends, and family. But precisely for those who need such goods. Why not targeting? And even completely free! Precise hit on target.
Email newsletters also don’t need to be discounted if your target audience is constantly online. To organize it, it is necessary to constantly, when giving a discount, a discount, a gift, ask to fill out a form that contains an item - e-mail. Then all addresses are entered into a single file database, and a mailing is sent out inviting you to visit the store, take part in a promotion, etc.
Constantly expand your target audience, post products for other ages, for others social groups. In this case, targeted advertising will significantly increase sales. For example, introducing social products at low prices to your line will attract an audience that has never visited you at all and will not visit you at normal times, only during promotions and discounts! And not because there is no money, because the fact that there are discounts is simply needed.
Random buyer - how to win his heart in one store visit
In order to make casual customers regular, it is necessary to take care of the convenience of being in the store, the benefits of customers, and ensuring that the assortment is amazing. You can come up with anything on this topic, the main thing is that the buyer, when visiting your store, is charged with positivity, so that he only has pleasant emotions. Use original service techniques, the beauty of the interior, the efficiency of a comprehensive purchase, the convenience of the purchase process itself, salespeople must be trained perfectly, and each of them must demonstrate good mood, with a smile on his face.
Which store attracts and retains customers:
- convenient, with clear signs
- where affordable goods, an adequate combination of price and quality
- where in one place - the whole complex goods and services
- a huge number of ready-made ideas for using goods and services
- issued for purchase bonus points or discounts, gifts
- competent and friendly sellers who understand the product, do not skimp on positive emotions and attention to the buyer and his problems
- elements that provide a positive attitude. Recently I saw a huge cage with a squirrel in one of the beauty salons; it funnyly offered its sides to visitors to pet and scratch, and begged for cookies. Women began to go for procedures more often; according to the salon manager, sales increased. There are also aquariums, jukeboxes, original mimes, and theater promoters.
So, in order to retain a new client, you need to convince him that you will do a lot for him, and even more, which your competitors do not.
Why your customer may never come to you again
There can actually be a great many reasons for such a buyer reaction. For example, waiting always has a negative impact on customers. A person came, chose a product, but the seller was not there, or the cashier “moved away.” The need to wait has long since sunk into Soviet oblivion, so now it causes nothing but violent irritation. Avoid the need for clients to wait, and encourage staff that they have enough time to do their own thing.
The second extreme is that sellers are too intrusive; many buyers may leave because of this. So teach trade ethics to your staff!
A negative feature of many stores is that it is not clear what is where, where to look for this or that product. Too much assortment is also a deterrent, great amount price tags that make it even impossible to understand how much a certain product costs. A sales area that is too narrow or small, where it is difficult to move around and look at the goods, is also a nuisance for the buyer. Playing negative role and the impossibility of trying on, or when you cannot touch, twist, or hold the product in your hands.
Another factor that works very unpleasantly is when “a product with a 20% discount” is indicated on the shelf, and its full cost is calculated at the checkout. You need to go, prove it, take the price tag from the counter, call a senior manager for investigation. And there’s a line of buyers lining up behind you! This will definitely prevent you from further visiting the store!
E. Shchugoreva
Elena Shchugoreva - business consultant, trainer oratory and speech technique, head of the online school “Speaker Master”. She can be contacted by email [email protected] or through a group on Facebook
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