I watched with disgust and dismay as the recent publicity
unfolded about Wells Fargo Bank and the appalling breach of ethics apparently
perpetrated by 5000+ bank employees against its customers – all apparently in
the desperate attempt to meet sales quotas for financial services ?
Why were these services so difficult to sell that bank
employees had to resort to fraud to meet their individual sales objectives? Was
it a simple matter of excessive quotas or is there something inherently
difficult about selling financial services?
Many will be talking about the Wells Fargo fraud for months.
They will focus on management, sales culture, and all manner of possible
influences. But I think something more fundamental is at work and something
with which all of us who sell professional services need to contend. In a
recent article about general issues of service marketing, Kevin Johnson, a
financial writer for the Houston Chronicle,
identified this problem: “[The difficulty in selling a service is that] the people you pitch to may not be able to visualize what you do. …, but
even [after you explain the benefits] … you may have to repeatedly articulate why your service has value.“
I sometimes
find it difficult to help my customers see the value of the services I offer.
It is a real challenge to paint a word picture of future benefits that is vivid
enough to overcome the reluctance caused by the need to part with significant
cash to sample or “try” these services.
One place I look for answers: the masters of word picture creation: Advertisers. Since the
early days of newspapers, advertisers have been painting great word pictures in
an effort to inspire people to buy all sorts of goods and services. Their
newest territory was opened with the advent of the Internet, and online
advertising is growing rapidly.
When I recently looked for nuggets of wisdom that I could use in my services marketing
challenges I found one fairly quickly in a Wordstream blog post by JonathanDane . In his post, Jonathan describes
ideas that make AdWords campaigns effective, but I think one of his ideas also recommends
itself to those who sell professional services because they help us make “our
word pictures” vivid:
"Advertisers sometimes lose
sight of what their customers are truly looking for. I call this “The End Goal:” or what
people ultimately want to accomplish with the help of your product or service."
Instead
of justifying the value to Mr. Bank Customer of online BillPay with overdraft
protection and deposit processing via mobile device, by telling him, “he’ll save on postage” or
“he’ll enjoy the convenience of using his computer to pay his bills,” it’s more
compelling to focus on the End Goal, e.g., “You’ll never pay another overdraft fee, and never again have to visit the bank.”
Now
that’s a word picture I could get behind.
