SALES & MARKETING
Setting sale ( s ) for a post-pandemic environment
BY DAVID GEE
Remember when your showroom didn ’ t have a single new boat for sale and your lot was empty , save for customer boats ? When you had orders and waiting lists for units that hadn ’ t even been built yet ? When you weren ’ t sure how you were going to accommodate all those deliveries ? When the first – and last – words out of the mouths of your customers were , “ I ’ ll take it !”
It seems like just yesterday , huh ? Well , it practically was . Regardless though of whether the pandemic ’ s outdoor recreation boom seems recent , or a long time ago , that period has passed . And who knows if – or when – it will come again .
In the meantime , as you have to do a little more selling and a little less order-taking , here are some takeaways and tips that will help make for a sunny 2023 .
Creating emotional connections
Do you want the good news first , or the bad ? The good news is , it has never been easier to reach large numbers of people with your sales and marketing messages . The bad news ? It has never been more difficult to actually connect with them . And creating emotional connections in the first few seconds of an engagement is vital if we are to earn someone ’ s time and attention , and eventually , their business .
Research shows that over three-fourths of our sales and marketing messaging consists primarily of bombarding our audience with large amounts of infill and information . That is not going to put you on the path to persuade , move , convince – and sell . Here ’ s why . It ’ s not the way our brains work .
You see , reasons lead to conclusions , while emotions lead to actions . And every single decision we make , including every boat buying decision certainly , is rooted in – and driven by – emotion . So when cutting through today ’ s buying clutter , and there is a lot of it , you must create emotional connections quickly .
At last year ’ s Miami Boat Show , I was discussing this subject with a guy who has spent 25 years helping boat dealers with their sales and marketing . He told me the industry used to be really good at simply “ selling fun ,” but that many dealers get too caught up today with features and specs . You ’ re not selling cup holders or touchscreens or horsepower , you ’ re selling familymemory-making machines .
You can ’ t reason your way to a sale
Appealing to people ’ s emotional side to make a sale seems to make sense on a certain level , but what about big-ticket items ? Six or seven figure boats for example . Surely those are deliberate , planned , pragmatic decisions , made after lots of research . We can ’ t imagine that serious people would make serious decisions based on emotion , because we view our own emotional decisions as irrational and even irresponsible .
if you want to influence how a customer or prospect feels about you , your products , your services , and so on , provide an experience .
“ In recent years , psychologists and behavioral economists have shown that our emotional decisions are neither irrational nor irresponsible ,” writes Michael Harris , CEO of Insight Demand , and author of Insight Selling . “ In fact , we now understand that our unconscious decisions follow a logic of their own . They are based on a deeply empirical mental processing system that is capable of effortlessly processing millions of bits of data without getting overwhelmed . Our conscious mind , on the other hand , has a strict bottleneck , because it can only process three or four new pieces of information at a time due to the limitations of our working memory .”
Additional research has shown 95 % of our purchase decisions take place unconsciously . And that the reason we ’ re all not more aware of this is because our conscious minds will always make up reasons to justify our unconscious decisions .
Hence , you cannot reason your way to a sale ! And why would you want to ? Do you want to aim your sales and marketing efforts at a part of the brain with virtually unlimited capacity ? Or the part that can only process a handful of your features and specs before becoming overwhelmed ? It ’ s not much of a choice . And neither is choosing whether to quickly create an emotional connection right at the start of an engagement .
If you want to influence how a customer or prospect feels about you , your products , your services , and so on , provide an experience – either online or in person – that creates the desired emotion . Tell stories . Arouse their brain . Show up differently . Create connections . Do that in the first few seconds of an interaction , and you ’ ll earn time and attention – and eventually – the chance to sell .
David Gee is a keynote speaker and sales and marketing strategist , and the former editor-in-chief of Boating Industry .
14 february 2023 www . boatingindustry . com