MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

A lot of suc­cess­ful peo­ple have said that we always have to think about the cus­tomer and to think about the sales. You’ll hear me talk a lot about sales because it’s a skill we all have to mas­ter. In busi­ness, the only way to remain in busi­ness is to sell suc­cess­fully. No one will buy any­thing from you if you don’t mas­ter the art of selling.

I got a cou­ple of key insights on sales at the Los Ange­les con­fer­ence. This hier­ar­chy of sales break­down came from some­one who used to be the only guy in the US to have a PHD in sales.

1. Com­mod­ity items

This is the low­est level at which the hier­ar­chy starts. I think most of us can agree that, when it comes to com­mod­ity items, the only fac­tor that mat­ters is price. If you really don’t care what the com­mod­ity is, you’re only going to look at the price.

2. Prod­ucts

This comes after com­mod­ity. You can think about cereal and other such items. Every time you walk into a super­mar­ket you see a lot of dif­fer­ent prod­ucts. here, you’ll poten­tially look at cou­ple more fac­tors than price but not many more…it’s mostly a sim­ple deci­sion that’s mostly price based.

3. Ser­vice

After prod­uct, not sur­pris­ingly, comes ser­vice. Everyone’s talk­ing about the ser­vice econ­omy age we’re mov­ing into. Ser­vice com­mands a big­ger price pre­mium than just a prod­uct. The goal is to move down the selec­tion cri­te­ria: the fur­ther down you move, the fur­ther up you can move the price. You can charge more for ser­vice than you can for ‘just a prod­uct’, as it were.

4. Expe­ri­ence

Expe­ri­ence comes after ser­vice. Sadly, most peo­ple stop at this point. Remem­ber, our biggest com­peti­tor, Cen­ter­pointe sends out a demo in the mail so that peo­ple really expe­ri­ence their product.

One brand that a many peo­ple know is Star­bucks. Star­bucks is an expe­ri­ence. The cof­fee may cost more than it does else­where, but it’s the expe­ri­ence that mat­ters. You’re not buy­ing cof­fee when you go into Star­bucks –you’re buy­ing a lifestyle (which is really the experience).

Are you sell­ing a prod­uct? If so, how are you going to start sell­ing the experience?

How­ever, you don’t stop here.

5. Trans­for­ma­tion

A trans­for­ma­tion is even more pow­er­ful than an expe­ri­ence. I can go to Star­bucks, but it doesn’t change my life. If you can help some­one quit smok­ing or oth­er­wise com­pletely change their life, how do you put a price on that? What’s the price tag for an expe­ri­ence that com­pletely trans­forms an individual?

Are you sell­ing trans­for­ma­tions today? If not, how can you really cap­ture that?

There’s only one thing bet­ter than transformation.

6. Guar­an­teed Per­sonal Transformation

This is the only step after trans­for­ma­tion. If you can guar­an­tee some­one that they’ll have a pos­i­tive per­sonal trans­for­ma­tion, that’s way bet­ter than just a trans­for­ma­tion. With nor­mal trans­for­ma­tion, they might go on hol­i­day and it might or might not work out…who knows?

Antony Robins, for exam­ple, has tons of fans; any­one who has ever gone there is an evan­ge­list and raves that he is the go-to per­son to take your life to the next level. When you hear it enough times, you think to your­self, ‘it seems to work for so many peo­ple, maybe I should check it out’.

Effi­cient Fron­tiers is also a good exam­ple. They go into com­pa­nies and say that unless they get an imme­di­ate boost of 20% by using their tech­nol­ogy, they don’t have to pay. It’s guar­an­teed trans­for­ma­tion. They are man­ag­ing ad spends of hun­dreds of mil­lions per month –almost shock­ingly high. That’s the power of guar­an­teed per­sonal transformation.

Jay Abra­ham always talks about risk rever­sal. “If you’re not sat­is­fied, get your money back” is not nearly as com­pelling as “If you don’t get at least 20% improve­ment, you don’t pay”. That sounds even more pow­er­ful. Obvi­ously, you must have an incred­i­ble offer to be able to do that, but that is the power of nestling at the high end of the hierarchy.

If you have a truly guar­an­teed per­sonal trans­for­ma­tion, it’s the eas­i­est sale –you don’t need to greatly con­vince peo­ple espe­cially if you are address­ing one of their core pains.

Elim­i­nate your com­pe­ti­tion. The days of bas­ing your prod­uct solely on its USP are almost gone, and this is why the UEP is so impor­tant. Today’s les­son, in short: a guar­an­teed per­sonal trans­for­ma­tion is hard to dupli­cate and replace. What are you selling?

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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