Breakdown the Barriers to Buying

Want to attract more clients or customers? This article will help you to understand the barriers that you may be putting in place between your company and prospective customers. If you can break them down you can attract more customers and existing one’s will buy even more from you.

Put yourself in the shoes of one of your customers for a moment and conduct a quick audit. Think about each of the following in turn and score your business on a 1 – 5 scale, where 1 is very poor must address immediately and 5 is excellent – we couldn’t possibly improve.

1. Awareness and Accessibility

How easy is it for potential clients to find out about you and what you offer? Are you well known in the markets in which you operate? Would you be a natural choice for the prospects you’d like to attract?

If a prospective client wants to get in touch with your business can they do so easily – or do they have to go through an untrained receptionist or worse still a voice mail system? Obviously not all of us have the luxury of a secretary to take messages for us and we can never be accessible all of the time – but handling contact well, by training all your staff to answer the phone in a style that’s acceptable to potential clients and take detailed messages or provide direct assistance, is essential to breakdown the first barrier.

A word on the Internet at this point. Websites are a great way for potential customers to find out about your business, but they must be kept up to date, and if you have a “contact us” option you absolutely must respond to enquiries - quickly.

2. Perception and Image

Assuming potential clients and customers know your firm – what do they think of you? Are you the kind of company they’d like to do business with?

Prospective clients will form a judgement based on many factors – before they start doing business with you they will consider things like your offices, even their location. Are they scruffy or plush? Are staff welcoming or off -hand? Are brochures and promotional materials, including your website, professionally produced or amateurish? What image does this material, plus things like your stationary, building facia and staff uniform, convey to potential customers and do they match what customers are looking for?

There is absolutely no point having expensive looking, glossy, modern, very colourful marketing materials if potential customers are looking for an old established firm with traditional values who won’t charge the earth.

Analyse your target audiences and thoroughly review your marketing materials to provide the ammunition you need to breakdown this barrier.

3. Purchasing Convenience

How easy is it for customers to buy from you? Can they order over the telephone, via the Internet, can they visit a showroom? Which method do they most value and are you offering them this option? Are you adequately staffed at busy times or do potential customers end up walking away or hanging up?

Can you accept all relevant forms of payment for your target audience? For larger organisations and public sector customers can you set up things like BACS?

And what about your sales force? And don’t just think about the traditional sales man or woman out on the road – how about the people who answer the telephone and take orders? In professional firms what about the lawyers, accountants or surveyors themselves. How do they treat a prospective clients, how forthcoming are they with information which “sells” the company and it’s products and services?

Are the sales force trained to cross sell and spot additional and future sales opportunities and are they appropriately rewarded for sales and customer service? Do you monitor your sales force through mystery shopping and general observation? Are customers happy with the service they get?

Break down this barrier by really putting yourself in the shoes of the customer and understand the stages they have to go through to purchase products or services from your business. How can you simplify this process? Would additional information be useful – in professional firms especially where most people are a little in awe and sometimes concerned about incurring additional costs – would a step by step guide to working with your accountant be the kind of thing that prospective clients would value and make them come to you rather than going elsewhere?

Conclusion

How did you do overall? If you scored below 10 you probably need to make some changes and make sure the customer is represented and considered throughout your business.

The barriers are not difficult to breakdown, once you have realised they exist that is! By putting yourself in the shoes of your customers and encouraging all of your staff to do the same you should be able to see the barriers easily and draw up a plan of attack to remove them.

Article written by Teresa Harris, Second Opinion Marketing. Teresa is an independent marketing consultant specialising in communication solutions and the customer experience. To contact Second Opinion Marketing call 01789 740396 or email tah@secondopinionmarketing.co.uk.

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