Welcome to the Escape Blog

I have just read The Jelly Effect by Andy Bounds and it got me thinking. He talks about AFTERs but one thing that struck me is that we need to be selling what people are actually buying - and translating this concept to our marketing material.

AFTERs is an acronym used in the book and although I won’t go into it now (I would suggest reading the book) it does make you think about your message.

Andy talks in one of the chapters about selling and the sales cycle and how clients are actually buying that feeling or result that they get maybe a year down the line AFTER you have finished your part or selling and delivering. eg. I spent £10k on a website last year - have I seen any leads come in?

Think about what you sell in terms of a product or service. Would your clients look back six months after they have bought it and say to themselves I’m glad I bought that from them? …six months down the line, way after you have invoiced and been paid and you have moved onto the next project?

It reminds me of when you go shopping and you want something new, like clothes, and you see something you simply must have. Is that feeling still there even one week later after you have paid for it and worn it once or is that ‘feeling’ short-lived? It sometimes happens, but not always eh?

Selling That Feeling

Now, with our marketing and sales literature, online web presence, or even face-to-face, is that the thing we actually concentrate on selling? Nine times out of ten I would suggest not. We tend to concentrate on us, our systems and how great we are… not necessarily what they will get out of it into the future.

There is also a case for establishing what that ‘feeling’ or ‘end-goal’ actually is for the client because we tend to assume. A great example (and I can’t find who it is attributed to) is the one where people who buy a drill, actually want the holes. The drill gives them the holes, but it’s actually the holes they want. It’s a tool to get them ‘that’.

And, it’s the same in sales for our business. I sell a website to someone, not because they want one for show; it’s because they want more sales, or leads, etc. In reality, if a website got one lead from one visitor a day, then we wouldn’t be talking about lack of traffic, it would be a success.

Framing The Sale

The Jelly Effect and the AFTERs may help you decide how to frame your sales proposition accordingly and translate that onto your marketing material and like I said, it certainly got me thinking. The thing is, if your service offering is fantastic, and that is always building block number one, but prospects still don’t buy into you, it may just be the way you are saying it.