BACK TO BASICS Working Smarter and improving security, you’re losing even more. Besides the extra money, you’re also losing the gratitude and referrals from a grateful customer. I’m going to finish this with an explana- tion of the selling/buying process in general, and then I’m going to relate it to what we’re doing in the trade, plus a few extra ideas. Once you understand how selling process works, you can fit it to any situation. There are three basic rules of selling that you should know. The first is that people don’t like to feel they are being sold to. Second, people buy for emotional, not ra- tional, reasons. Third, once sold, people need to rationalize their buying decision with logic. Before I explain these in depth, we need to understand several other ideas, and then I’ll tie them all together. Once I tie them together, I’ll tailor them to the locksmith trade. The first idea is core buying emotions. If people buy for emotional reasons, what are these buying emotions? Depending on the product or service being sold, it could be several different things. Let’s use a car commercial as an example. You see a Mercedes-Benz being driven down a winding road overlooking the ocean. There’s a beautiful woman or a handsome man driving it who seems to love the way it handles the curves. The driver looks confi- dent and in control. The narrator talks about the thrill of driving the car and mentions the antilock brakes, the power of the engine and all the airbags. When you watch that commercial, there are two things going on that relate to the second idea: features versus benefits. The features are the brakes, the powerful engine, and the airbags, and are fairly obvious. The benefits are whatever satisfies the buying emotion in the person watching the ad. You get benefits out of the features, and some features give you more than one benefit. A benefit of the anti-lock brakes is less chance of losing control and skidding. A 52 KEYNOTES JANUARY 2014 “If you’re in the habit of doing quick rekeys, handing someone the two keys you get with it, getting your money and running out the door, then you’re losing money.” benefit of the airbags is the high level of protection in an accident. The powerful en- gine gives you the ability to get away from reckless drivers, and so on. There are other benefits that aren’t necessarily features but still play to the core buying emotions. For the car ad, the buying emotion could be lack of self confidence. Someone with that emotion might think, “Wow! If I owned that car, I’d look like I really made it!” The benefit he’d get out of the car would be his feeling better about looking successful. The features of the car aren’t the most important things to him; the benefit is. The features come later, as in the third rule of selling I mentioned earlier: the buyer must rationalize his emotional buying deci- sion. He might be thinking that the airbags and the anti-lock brakes help protect his family, which makes him a good father for picking this car. This is a simplistic example, because a number of emotions are working at once when we’re buying something, but you prob- ably get the idea. For locksmiths, the core customer emotions would be fear, vulner- ability and possibly vanity. Your customers want to feel their homes, businesses and families are safe and secure. When you’re asked to rekey cheap or de- crepit old locks, or to install or replace cheap locks with the same junk, think of what I’ve been telling you so far. Go out to your truck and get a cheap lock (that you thoughtfully purchased for just this occasion) and a qual- ity lock to compare it with. It’s much better to show them than tell them. Point out the differences in quality. If the better lock is heavier, let them handle each one and feel the difference. Turn features into benefits, and don’t get overly technical; con- fused minds usually say no. If a lock comes with a heavy strike that has extra screws that screw into the frame, that’s a feature. Now turn that feature into a benefit by say- ing something like this: “The strike on this lock is much heavier (compare them) and comes with two extra long steel screws that screw into the framing studs. This makes it much harder for a burglar to kick the door in.” Point out every benefit of the better lock that you can think of. Once you’ve given customers the benefits that satisfy their buying emotion — fear — they will probably want the better lock. Make sure to ask about extra keys they might need or offer a free security survey. If you take these steps on every job, you’ll raise the average amount you collect every week. Think of it this way: If all you do is make four extra keys on a job, and you do that four to six times per day, at a dol- lar each, you’ll bring in an extra $120 per week. Who couldn’t use that? And that’s not even counting what you get from sell- ing better locks. Remember these two things: Have what you’re going to sell on the truck at all times, and sell people what you genuinely believe they need. I knew a guy who’d sell an elderly woman a high-security deadbolt for a hol- low wood bathroom door if he thought he could get away with it. Don’t be that guy; y. Wiersielis, CPL, CFDI, ore than a quarter y of experience, hav- rked in most phases e trade throughout the ork metropolitan area. WWW.ALOA.ORG
