If you have
ever been in a shop where the assistant tries hard to sell only the
most expensive item
in a product line, then you will know how a
customers’ resistance grows when painted into a corner, when
there is seemingly only one way out. Can open-minded thinking improve
your position?
Budget busting decision
My brother-in-law needs to paint the outside of his house, and the
outside walls were originally finished with mortar in a Tyrolean
finish. (For those who don’t know; this type of rendering leaves
the rough native finish characteristic of Austrian chalets).
He took a long time to think about the amount of time it would take to
paint the walls with a brush, and the difficulty he would have stubbing
the bristles into the rough surface to make sure the paint covered
well, not to mention the potential wrath that might be visited on him
should his brush stray and flick masonry paint over the pants and
animals strewn around the property.
Perhaps a spray gun might do the trick, he thought, sending us off on a
mission to fins the right tool for the job. A budget was set, and after
a while on the Internet we came up with a bewildering array of
potential candidates, with an associated enormous price gap. It would
have been easy to have just plumped and hoped for something towards the
lower end of the scale, but caution suggested that we investigate a bit
closer, since we had both had mixed experiences of the low end of any
market.
Painting your way out of a corner
After a while, it was still not clear, because all of the low end tools
still said that they would cope with outside masonry paint, but we were
somewhat wary of their claims.
A chum suggested a machinery store that specialised in tools for the
trade and DIY person, who had, in the past been very helpful.
We rang them up, and a gentleman on the ‘phone was keen to help.
Upon explaining the job in hand, we suggested a model of paint sprayer,
somewhere above the bottom tier which appeared to offer the type of
performance we needed. It would have been the easiest thing in the
world for the chap to just agree with us and net an easy sale, but
instead he explained the differences between the types of spray gun we
were interested in. It seems that they fall into two general camps,
those that deliver the paint by way of air under pressure, and those
that don’t.
Using self-persuasion
He explained the why the latter were more expensive and why their were
more suited to outside work. Although the cheaper models claimed that
they would deliver masonry paint to the walls, he explained, logically,
that the paint sprayers in that range would only deliver the paint if
it were thinned, usually with water.
We went away to ponder, and, having convinced ourselves that he was
right, rang again to ask about the most basic of the high spec
machines. At that time, again, he could have made an easy sale, by just
accepting our selection, but instead he explained why this machine was
the cheapest in the range, and instead suggested the model one higher,
saying that he felt that he would be getting a call from a not entirely
happy customer if we plumped for the one we has selected.
Of course, we ended up buying his selection, because psychologically he
had taken the responsibility for our satisfaction in the product.
Candour complements innovation
We all know that whether your organisation develops a physical product,
or delivers services, that it’s extremely important that the
customer is delivered something that you business has entire confidence
in.
It’s the same when you ask your innovators to come up with
enhancements to an old product or even when developing a new one. Both
they, you and your customer must feel entirely comfortable that you all
have complete confidence in what you are selling. When encouraging
product innovation, encourage your development team to be frank about
the advantages and disadvantages of the product that you will be
selling. It’s all to easy for developers to pitch a product so
that your decision makers will buy it, when in fact it doesn’t
come up to a standard that wow the people who might buy it.
Rob Wendes
Business
Technology Consulting 27th March 2009
