Understanding the Buyer's Journey: Experience Your Product as a Customer | SOS Ep. 337

Have you ever wondered what secrets you could unlock if you experience your product as a customer? 
Strap in for an enlightening journey as we explore just how potent being a product of your product can be in the world of outside sales. In this episode, I, Mike O'Kelly, host of the Surviving Outside Sales podcast, share my personal experiences and insights collected over the years to illustrate the importance of understanding the buyer's journey by stepping into their shoes. From placing an order to receiving delivery, I discuss how each step can offer valuable insights to enhance your sales strategy.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

The Surviving Outside Sales podcast hosted by Mike O'Kelly, presented by Sales Builder Academy, the goal is to survive and thrive all phases of outside sales, whether you're getting in, dominating or getting out. Surviving Outside Sales. Now on with the show. Welcome to the Surviving Outside Sales podcast and your host, mike O'Kelly. If you like this episode, afterwards I'm going to ask you to download it, share it with like-minded individuals and keep this conversation going. So today, what I want to talk about is being a product of your product. A lot of times we're very quick to recommend products. We're very quick to get our buyers into the buying mode. We just want to get them through as fast from unaware to aware to user or trial to user and then advocate. But one of the steps that's really important to follow through on is actually go through the buyer's experience. When is the last time you've actually looked, from the buyer's lens, at all of the communication, all the information that you have dumped on them and then they've agreed to say yes? They said you know what. I really believe what you're doing and you say yes, have you gone through that process? If it's an order online, have you gone through? Have you put in the credit card information. Have you seen what it is? Do you see what happens afterwards? When is delivery? How does delivery look? Have you gone through, and are you a product of your product? Going through the buyer's experience is going to help you with any of the landmines that happen after the sale. There might be things you're unaware of during the process. That becomes self-evident when you go through the process of actually purchasing it. So if you become a product of the product, you now have a firsthand account on what the product can can't do, its limitations, how it worked for you, and now you can create a narrative, you have stories that you can share and you can have that commonality with your buyers. Hey, you know what? I went through this too. I use the product, I really believe in it and this is the results I've gotten. Have you seen the same type of results? Now, not everybody is going to represent a product that they're allowed to use or they are either not sick you know, if you're in the medical field and you don't need a hip replacement, you're not going to have gone through hip replacement surgery but if you have an opportunity to be a product of your product, even if you have to pay for it out of pocket. That is an investment in telling stories, and stories are what draw people into your world. Stories are going to help you close for future business. That's why it's an investment.

Speaker 1: 2:56

You're not just wasting the money or, oh, my company should have done X, y or Z. Yes, companies should allow their employees to be products of their products, but sometimes they just don't think of it at the higher levels. It just doesn't cross their mind to have everybody run through the process and see what their buyers go through. Once you do that, you can have empathy when they tell you that, oh, there was an issue with this, there was an issue with that. You also can get ahead of any customer service issues that happen after they have purchased, because if there are customer service issues after they have purchased, they're probably not going to purchase again. So what you want to do is you want to get them on this buying, liking, recommending, rebuying, liking, recommending. You want to get them on this merry-go-round where they just continue to be a customer year after year after year after year, and then they recommend and they recommend and they bring more people to you. One of the best ways to do that is to lock down your after-sale process. Even if your company says, oh, we've got it taken care of, go through and see what's going on. You might notice something that you can tell your superiors, tell your bosses. Or if you're running your own business, you can figure out yourself.

Speaker 1: 4:14

When I was building Sales Builder Blueprint, I did that several times. I ran through. Okay, let's say I purchased it and I'm running through Sales Builder Blueprint. Okay, what buttons do I push? What happens now? What emails do they get? Is my process perfect? No, it's gonna get a lot better with more experience. But I'm aware that there is an experience for the people who are buying it right now. So I'm diligently working in the background to make that the best experience possible. But I've gone through it. I've gone through. Okay, this is what happens. I've got the emails coming through. So I'm understanding what the early users of this course are going through.

Speaker 1: 5:06

But I have been a product of my product. If I was able to take the product or use the product or use the service, I've been a product of my product basically my entire career. I used to rent cars when I was at Enterprise. I didn't need to rent cars, but I used to rent cars because I wanted to go through the experience. I wanted to go through the experience of what it was like to rent a car. How am I gonna rent cars and manage stores when I didn't even know what it was like to rent a car myself? I've done it in a lot of my pharmaceutical companies. I asked the doctors to write me one prescription because I wanted to go get it filled at the pharmacy and see what happened. And then, when we had specialty pharmacies, I wanted to call up the number and be just a customer, because those pharmacies don't know you work for the company and just get a prescription and see what happens. What are the end users of my product? What are they going through? It's very important that you do that Again if you're working with something like when I had radiation machines. I couldn't administer radiation to myself and I couldn't purchase a radiation machine, but I had so many experiences before that I knew what to look for and that's really the focus and that's really the key.

Speaker 1: 6:29

You want to focus on the process After your customer says yes and after they purchase. What are the steps? Write them down. After the purchase, they receive a confirmation email. Okay, great Is that it? Is there any other follow-up emails A little bit later? Is there any other touch points, any other communication? Is there a promise of post-sale training? And start writing out the process. What does it look like for the next 30, 60, 90 days after they say yes? Because you're focusing and a lot of times in sales we just focus on the 30, 60, 90 before they say yes and then, once they say yes, we just kind of ease up. Don't If you want to get them to buy from you again. It's very critical that you understand what they've gone through and what they're going through right now as a customer, and one of the best ways to do that is to be a product if you product. Thank you so much. Really do appreciate it. I hope everybody has a fantastic rest of their day out there and we'll see you tomorrow surviving outside sales. Bye-bye.