Start at Status Quo to Create Buyer' Momentum

I hear a lot of B2B marketers say that their prospects are already aware of the problem, so they believe this indicates that marketing content should focus further down the buying pipeline. This perspective can set you up for a long haul. After all, if prospects are "aware" of the problem, but not motivated to fix it, there's no momentum.

Think about how hard it is to go from 0 to 60 without an accelerator?

It's like pushing dead weight up a hill. Imagine Sisyphus with the boulder on the mountain and you'll get the idea. That's what you're facing if you ignore the status quo position of your prospects and think you can jump ahead to helping them solve the problem. They aren't there yet.

There's a big difference between awareness and urgency.

Urgency drives the motivation to solve the problem. Urgency is directly equivalent to the amount of pain the problem is producing. Your content will be ineffective unless you've got prospects who consider their problem urgent enough to solve. This means you need to help them get the problem to the top of their priority list.

Oh, wait.

You think your prospects are already motivated to solve the problem?

Really?

Who motivated them?

Whoever motivated the prospect to take action is likely to be who you're now competing against to get their attention to switch to your company. Problem is that you're late to the game. You've allowed the prospect the opportunity to develop a reliance upon another company for the information that motivated them to take next steps.

Your challenge now is to:

• unseat that competitor
• develop more credibility with the prospect than the competitor has already established
• catch and keep their attention 
• pass the comparison test over the duration of the buying process

It doesn't have to be that hard. Decide to focus on the entire buying process and eschew the shortcuts that really only make your job more difficult than it has to be. The trade off is worth the extra effort. 

Comments

[Michael D Goodman]

Love your post here. I have addressed this similarly from a sales only perspective at this blog. http://bit.ly/SalesGrail Not only does the Status Quo matter but the ideal location the person wants to get to. The better we can measure the differences between the two, the more effectively we discover our qualification to our buyer and even better, the better we learn to ask this question set, the more trust and credibility we develop with our buyer.
You would be amazed how powerful these are to exclude our competitors.
Regards,
Michael

[Ardath Albee]

Thanks, Michael! I agree.

If you happen back by, will you repost the link to your blog? The one you left isn't working.

[Michael D Goodman]

Thanks Ardath,

Here is the full permalink
http://speakingofsales.typepad.com/salessquawk/2010/08/solomon-says-the-holy-grail-in-sales-is-understanding-motivation-to-action.html