Fact - potential customers do not want to be cold called, spammed or sold to. They want to make an informed buying decision and engage with you when they’re ready. This goes for all customers and in my experience, particularly when you’re selling to other business owners. What they want is a self-service experience
The self-service experience means that they can find the information they need on their own and find out as much as possible about the product or service before they make a final decision. That includes pricing. Hiding your prices is a huge barrier to customers buying from you. It makes them suspicious. If you don’t have a fixed price for your product or service then do your prices starting from X, so the customer can work out if they can afford it.
They want to try before they buy, if that’s not possible they need your marketing and sales to validate your claims with great testimonials, reviews and case studies. We’ve seen in the last 12 months an increasing reliance on third-party information sources, including user reviews which have increased by 11% year on year (YOY), communities and forums by 10% YOY and analyst rankings and reports have increased by 14% YOY.
If you are a service provider then an interesting trend to note is that more and more buyers want to experience readily accessible free trials, which was up by 15% on last year.
How well does your marketing, website and online experience facilitate the self service customer? Could they make a buying decision without contacting you?
