Customers in need of a car or a smartphone have an easy time comparing features that meet their needs.
But how do you, for instance, convince a customer that you are the best and most reliable moving company in town?
Of course, the client has reached out to many moving companies, so how do you ensure that you stand out from the rest?
Marketing and selling services can be challenging since there is no tangible product that the customer can touch, feel or see.
You are selling the invisible, and the customer will be taking a risk by trusting your ability to deliver as promised.
Your prospective customer will be worried about the risk when buying. They don’t know whether they will get what they paid for. They are buying a promise — that you and your team have the expertise needed to provide value to them.
It’s tricky, but it can be done.
Selling a service requires effective marketing and good customer experiences. When selling a service, just like when selling a product, you have to provide a solution to a problem your prospective buyer is facing.
You need to meet their needs and improve a part of their life. The outcome of what you are selling is what makes the difference.
You are telling the customer, “I offer {this service}. It has the following {features}, that will meet this {need} or solve {this problem}. I want to transform your life or business {this way}.”
You will, therefore, need to stand out from the rest by offering an experience they cannot get from your competitors.
How To Effectively Sell Services
1. Build a strong brand
A brand differentiates your company from the crowd. A strong brand connects with your customers and distinguishes you from everyone else out there. It provides your prospects with a reason to choose your services instead of others.
A recent study by Red C, a marketing agency, found that 82 percent of customers chose a brand they were already familiar with regardless of where it ranked on SERPs. The findings show the importance of brand recognition and brand trust when winning clicks.
On further investigation, the researchers found that 47 percent of clicks were due to being familiar with a brand, 20 percent were for trusted brands and 15 percent for known brands.
Image Source: Red C
Consumers prefer to buy from a familiar brand. Your service business may be competing with already established brands out there with big budgets but differentiating your brand can help you stand out.
How do you brand your service?
You brand it through reputation. Your brand is defined by how customers perceive your business. It means being consistent in messaging and experience. As a service provider, your brand is your reputation.
You cannot provide your services to everyone. Brand building requires knowing your ideal customer so that you can tailor your messaging and mission to their core needs.
Get specific with their details: their demographics, jobs, education level, professions, location, income, motivations, goals, brands they like, pain points, and influencers they follow.
By understanding your customers well, you can create a brand that they identify with. The target audience for your service will consume your content, read your emails, click on ads, share on social media and purchase.
They will appreciate the content you send because you understand them better and are offering a solution they want or need.
Why are you providing the service? What value will it bring to the target customer? Does it resonate with your customers? These are just some of the questions that your mission statement needs to answer.
And if your answers are spot on then you are on the right track.
Find out what they do well and how they do it. How do they do their messaging? What is the quality of the services they offer? How are their reviews and mentions? What are their marketing strategies, and are they effective?
You also need to find out what their customers are not happy with and use that info to your advantage.
How do you provide value? How do your customers’ lives change after getting your service?
Make these offers and benefits crystal clear.
A logo and tagline are important for brand building. The logo is your identity, your promise, and your calling card. Make it exceptional so that it becomes the visual that your customers can identify quickly.
The tagline should be memorable, concise and meaningful.
This voice should reflect your brand. It’s how you communicate with your audience. Apply it to all communications and incorporate it into your visual messages, both online and offline.
The brand voice can be professional, friendly, authoritative, conversational, informative, service-oriented or promotional. It depends on your industry, audience and mission. The correct brand voice will help you connect with customers.
Use the brand voice to inform your target audience of who you are. The message should be one or two sentences associated with the brand.
The message explains who you are, what your services are and why the customer should care. Ensure that the message addresses clearly why your service is important to the customer.
Use the message across different channels when reaching out to customers. Research shows that customers’ trust in brands strengthen once they see the message on different channels.
Image Source: Edelman
Provide your customers with tailored services and interactions that relate to your brand voice. Your personality should stand out in everything you or your employees do: your email signature, how you handle calls, how you interact with customers, what you wear and your office look.
Make your brand visible in everything your customer reads, sees or hears. Your office should have a brand image (logo and tagline) displayed.
Have it on your business cards, your design templates, your social media channels, your website, and every other customer touchpoint.
Make sure they have the same color, logo placement and that they feel and look the same no matter the channel or placement. Consistency is key.
Color improves brand recognition by 80 percent, while consistent brand presentation increases revenue by 23 percent or more.
2. Find a niche
97 percent of start-ups fail mostly due to competition. Without specializing in a niche, you are just joining the other numerous companies in offering the same service. Specializing in a niche positions your service better.
A niche makes it easy to describe what you are offering to your customers, resulting in better sales. The faster your audience can recognize themselves in your niched messaging the faster they will buy.
The niche can be in the form of different things, including the service offered, the target audience, the price, or delivery method (membership, subscription, one-time service and more).
Once you decide on a niche, research, and find gaps in the market, your service can fill. Research competitors and areas to avoid.
3. Build buyer personas
A buyer persona is your ideal customer. As mentioned above on brand building, researching your target audience helps you understand who they are and how your brand can help solve their pain points.
Find out what your potential customers seek out when they want a service like yours. What do they think? How do they act when seeking a solution that your company offers?
Researching into the buyer persona can help you provide great services, determine pain points to focus on and how to market your service.
Consumers want brands to adapt to their needs. Seventy-two percent will only consider a brand that cares and understands them. Fifty-four percent feel loyal to brands that understand their preferences and priorities.
4. Help the client find a solution
Make the service about the customer: every touchpoint they have with your business should be about them. Consider how each customer interacts with your brand and customize interactions accordingly.
Selling successfully means helping your customers find solutions that solve their problems. It means finding out what their goals and challenges are, and then helping them change to meet these goals or solve the problem.
Make connections with your clients
Ask them questions and listen to them. Every customer is different, and no matter how much research you have done into your target audience, there are still gaps you need to fill.
Also, customer needs evolve with time. Asking thoughtful questions allows you to understand your customer’s needs so that you can help them solve a problem.
The questions you ask should determine if you have the right solutions for the customer and whether you are a good fit or not. Can you help them? How can you do it? Do you want to help them?
Before you begin asking questions, understand what stage of the buying journey they are now in. Did you call them to inform them about your service? Are they already evaluating your products?
Research the customer before asking questions
This helps you to become familiar with the kind of product/service they want. Doing this allows you to formulate a presentation on how your solution can help them.
If you need to meet the client during discovery, prepare for the meeting. You can send them an email with an agenda on areas you would like to cover so that the client comes prepared too.
Some areas to cover are the company information, problems they would like to solve, their industry, the role of the client in the company and their budget.
Research the company or person on social media, their website, their customers, customer pages and any other relevant data. The more information you have about the client, the more prepared you will be to ask intelligent and relevant questions.
During the meeting or call, present your business and the value you will bring to the client. Tell them why you are better than the competition and how you can solve the challenges they are facing.
The presentation should be all about how you will solve their problem and meet their goals. Use data, case studies, social proof, and testimonials to demonstrate expertise.
Present your pricing options in package form
It’s the best way to sell your services. The packages will be easy to buy and cater to the client’s budgets and needs. For example, you may have the best package (gold), a better package (silver), and a good package (bronze). Each package should cater to a different segment of the market so that your client can choose.
The packages are in no way options for service quality. No, they are different levels of actual deliverables and total value. They give the customer control.
Finally, give a time frame
How long will it take to complete the service and how long before the customer starts seeing tangible benefits.
As you walk your customers through services offered, make sure they understand what it is you are offering. Periodically ask the customer if what you are saying makes sense and whether they have questions.
At the end of the meeting or call, enquire if there is something you didn’t address that the client considers important. If nothing and if you have answered the questions asked, ask whether they are ready to work with you or sign the contract.
Most of the time, the customer is considering different options and will promise to get back to you. Find out how long the review process will take, and when you should expect a reply.
If the buyer doesn’t get back to you at the stipulated time, pursue them, but only if it makes sense. Sometimes you may keep following up on a sale that went wrong and fail to follow up on other promising opportunities.
Know when to move on.
Most sales reps do not make a second call, but 93 percent of leads convert after the 6th call.
Image Source: Leads 360
Leads that take more than six calls are 45 percent less likely to convert.
If the customer falls through, enquire why they chose to go with another company. This may not be pleasant, but it will help you improve your strategy so that the next time you also improve your chances.
An automated marketing tool can help you get leads and nurture them through until they convert. It ensures that you send the correct content through email after a customer performs a certain action on your site.
Some of the sales and marketing automation tools include Constant Contact, HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, and Infusionsoft.
5. Focus on emotion
Feelings and emotions fuel most of the customer’s decision making. According to Gerald Zaltman’s book: How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market, 95 percent of the customer’s purchase decisions are subconscious. Emotion drives their purchase behavior.
To help your customers remember your service, engage them and target their feelings. For example, target their status, self-worth, and acceptance. Offer connections or inspire glory or adventure. Target emotions brought on by love, sex, and relationships.
Sell the features of your service, but also sell the feeling and the lifestyle. Highlight the emotional feeling the customer will get when they use your service. Appealing to their emotions will help you make a sale.
Make them feel comfortable too. The customer should feel safe about doing business with you. It will help if you remain passionate about your service when presenting. The customer should know that you love helping people.
However, you will still need to provide logical reasons for purchase to your prospect.
6. Establish an online presence
Eighty-seven percent of consumers begin their search online, while 45 percent use social channels to discover new brands. An online presence ensures that when a customer searches for your service, the SERPs direct them to your page.
You will need a website and a social media presence. On your website, provide your contact information and the list of services you provide. You will also need to include other useful information including:
Testimonials and reviews
Most internet users use reviews when searching for products.
Image Source: Statista
Testimonials and reviews touch on the emotional side of the consumer. There is also security in numbers, and the consumer wants to make sure the risk is low before they can purchase your service. If other people like it, then it must be good.
Ninety-one percent of millennials view online reviews as personal recommendations. The more reviews your business has, and the higher the ratings, the more you gain the trust of consumers.
The next step after reading a positive review for consumers is visiting the business website and contacting the business.
Image Source: Bright Local
Create video testimonials with customers and post them on your website and social platforms. Ask your customers to leave reviews to help others know about your services. Reviews are also a good form of feedback.
They help you know what services to improve to provide better experiences.
By automating your social media presence, you can use social media listening tools to monitor your mentions on social networks. This way, you can thank customers for leaving positive reviews or recommending you to friends. It will also help you monitor negative feedback so you can handle it before it escalates to a crisis.
7. Optimize for search engines
Optimize your website to drive more traffic and grow a customer base. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps your brand increase traffic to the website organically. The higher up you appear in search engine pages, the more likely a customer will click on your service.
Blogging
Establish an online presence by having a blog. Use this platform to engage customers with information on the services you offer, your brand story and the benefits your service offers.
Generate and share content that is compelling, entertaining, relevant and useful. If the customer finds relevant information, they will eventually buy from you.
Optimize your blog for search engines too by using relevant keywords.
Social media
Use social media to target customers and engage with them. There are many social media platforms, but for effectiveness, choose platforms your audience frequents. Consumers will buy from brands that are honest, social, friendly, and helpful.
To boost your return on investment, improve engagement through answering questions and providing relevant content. A social media automation tool like Hootsuite is great for social listening.
It will help you view all your social media pages from one page, keep your audience engaged, answer their questions in time, and find out what they are saying about your brand.
Image Source: Sprout Social
Use social media to network too. Connect with the right people, including bloggers and influencers. Sixty-one percent are influenced by influencers to make a purchase. Connecting with the right people opens opportunities for new leads and more conversions.
You can also attend events and use face-to-face meetings to inform potential customers about your services. Whatever method you decide on, ensure you build lasting relationships. Get to know your contacts, what they do, and why they would need your service.
Conclusion
Selling a service may seem like a tough nut to crack, but it’s doable. Find out what your customers need, what your service can offer (pain points it can alleviate), the best way to deliver it and personalize every interaction with customers. Fulfill your promise by delivering exactly what you promised the customer.
Provide high-quality services. Go above and beyond to give your customers exceptional experiences. Show them that you are the right solution and that you will meet their needs. Request your existing customers to provide reviews and testimonials.
In case of complaints, resolve them immediately and with a positive tone. Don’t be rude or take too long to respond. You can never please anyone, but you can be fair and do the best you can to solve their complaints.
Be consistent in your brand messaging and service delivery. Provide the best version of your service to each client every day at any time. Follow up with customers, ask for feedback, analyze the methods you use to gain leads, and see what works and what needs improvement.
This guide will help you sell your services online. It shows you how to build trust so that people want to do business with you, even though what you are selling is not tangible.
A customer will believe you are worth their time and money if you show them you care, show them your service provides value, and deliver on the promise.
