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 Get an Engaged Customer-6 Parts Challenge: Part -Get honest

This is a challenge in 6 parts that will lead you to acquire a new customer, one that is really “engaged” with you and your company.

If you accept this challenge, and take only 15 minutes for everyone of the 6 articles that I will write, the promise is that at the end of this process, you will engage with a customer that will be “perfectly fitted” for you and your business.

I didn't use to think in terms of “engaged customers”. For many years, my theme in sales was “to make it happen”. I pushed and pushed and my employers praised me and said that I was “very proactive”.

But sales were tough to come and the opportunities that required my push costed me up to the last drop of my energy.

Until I had no more energy. Or interest. I lost my mojo.

Luckily, I found around this time the book “Attracting perfect customers” by Jan Brogniez and Stacey Hall.

When I opened that book, a new world of effortless sales and perfect customers appeared in front of my eyes.

I didn't know then (it was still 2010) that very soon I would need every tip of that book, because in 2012 I was going to start my own Coaching and Consulting Business.

And that in 2014 I would become a Certified Facilitator of the Strategic Attraction Plan method, from Jan Brogniez (now Jan Stringer) and her husband Alan Hickman.

The system made so much sense that I decided to use it for me and my customers. And it worked. I started to experience an alignment with my new customers like never before. Things were in flow, much more effortless and therefore less cost of sales was involved.

I had seen so much struggle in my time with corporate sales, especially in the oil and gas sector complex technology sales, that I was (and I am) driven to make things better by bringing this new method to my former playground.

So that is the WHY of this challenge.

Now back to you and your sales situation.

Are you ready for applying a new perspective to an old problem? Are you prepared to play full out? Can you look at it with beginner's eyes?

If the answer is YES, let's get started with Step 1.

Step 1 requires an easy action on your part, something that perhaps you do often anyway, but now you are going to do it with a higher purpose: COMPLAIN.

Yes, list all your complaints, disappointments and frustrations about your prospects and customers.

Take a piece of paper, or your computer, and make a list of all complaints and frustrations.

If you skip this step, because you are too rational (or nice) to complain, you will not achieve the result at the end.

Complaining consciously will highlight what you have been “tolerating” that is not a perfect fit for you.

It will bring to the surface things that might be perfect for other businesses but not for yours.

Typical examples might be:

  • Our prospects are sending us the right messages in the first meeting, but then are difficult to get hold of for a second meeting.
  • Our prospects tell us that they have no budget.
  • Our customers buy our products and they don't use them.
  • Our prospects delay the buying process giving us a lot of different excuses.

Go on, write! Be very specific. Share your complaints here if you want or keep them just for you. We will use this list for the turnarounds in Steps 2 and beyond.

The second part of Step 1 is a bit scarier.

Go through your sales pipeline with a brutally honest eye and write next to each opportunity “Push” or “Pull”.

Write “Push” if you are the only one pushing, and there is no pull whatsoever on the other side. No email reaching out, or quick answers to your messages. No questions, no curiosity, nothing.

Write “Pull” if you have seen any behaviour where they are reaching out for you.

The result of this process, as simple as it sound, could be a shock for some sales managers or account executives.

But even if for 20 opportunities you only find “pull” in one of them, don't get discouraged. This is the beginning of the turnaround.

I like this sentence from my mentors in this process: “your perfect customers are looking for you in this very moment”.

If you believed that and operated under that premise, what would you do? How would you behave? How would you conduct your business?

During this 6 steps challenge, I am going to help you to position yourself so your perfect customers can find you.

See you in the next article for Step 2 in a couple of days.