It is important to have goals for your business. If you have a small business, you have sales goals. If you have a nonprofit, you have fundraising goals. Those goals drive you every day to find people who will support your business objectives. But one of the biggest, most frustrating mistakes I see businesses make is when they make the pitch all about their own goals and take the focus off their audience. Today, we will address why you will get more conversions by showing impact to your audience.
I remember one time when I was at home and a woman came to my door selling vacuum cleaners. She started her pitch by asking me if I would help her earn a trip to the Caribbean by buying a vacuum. It was one of the least compelling sales pitches I’ve ever heard. I told her I already had a vacuum, and she kept trying to find a way to ask me for help. So she could go on a vacation. The conversation ended quickly. I had nothing to contribute it to it. There wasn’t a single thing in it for me.
There are valuable lessons in this story, but the most important one is that your pitch has to mean something to your audience. There has to be impact on them – impact that they want – if they are going to buy or donate.
Your pitch has to mean something to your audience. #sales #salestips #nonprofit #smb Share on XIf you are filling a need for your audience, tell them that. If you are supporting a cause they believe in, tell them that. If you are giving them a way to achieve their own goals or success, tell them that. Frame your pitch in a way that shows what is in it for them. It’s not about you or your goals! (Read more here to learn all about leveraging your customers’ pain point.)
For small businesses, this is especially true. The “help me achieve my monthly sales goal” pitch is one that is more likely to make your customers feel used. There has to be a reason for someone to make their purchase that makes sense for them.
For a nonprofit, the line is blurrier. Your business IS a good cause. And you CAN make your goals clear, particularly for bigger campaigns. However, it is still important to show your donors the impact they have. In fact, it is even more important for you to communicate impact. Before they donate, you want to tell them about the way their contribution will make a difference. Then, after the donation, after you thank them, you want to show them again how their contribution made a difference. You are far more likely to get them to donate again in the future if the impact you reveal to them is aligned with the impact they wanted to have.
The challenge of marketing is to remember that – despite your objectives – your pitch always needs to be focused on your audience. This means there is no one-size-fits-all approach. You might start a conversation with a standardized opener, but from there it becomes a process of identifying what the person you are talking to cares about and what impact they want to have.
Marketing is about creating great relationships. Profits that come from favors people do for you are not sustainable profits in the long-term. What you really want is to have donors and customers who will come back to you time and again and who will refer you to others who may be as interested as they are. They will do it because they believe in the results and were happy with their experience.
Profits that come from favors people do for you are not sustainable profits in the long-term. #sales Share on XAs you move forward in a new year with new resolutions, remember that your goals are an important driving force for you – but not necessarily a reason for others to join you. Make it about them and show your audience the impact that is relevant for them.