That’s right. If you are engaging prospective customers who are happy with how things are going in their business, then there is not anything you can do for them. Whether things are actually going all that well or not, is immaterial. Whether they can do things better, whether they can do things differently, or whether they can do new things – it just does not matter if they are happy with how things are. Even though doing something new may create great improvements in their business; and not doing them may hinder their ability to achieve their goals; it doesn’t matter. If they are happy with things just the way they are, they will never be good prospects for you.
On the flip side, unhappy customers are the cornerstone of new business. There is one simple driving force behind it all – people don’t like being unhappy. It’s not that hard to understand. If there is something that makes people unhappy, it continues to bring them down. It has to be addressed. Unhappy prospective customers will not be able to continue running their business with their status quo. Things that bug them will continue to eat away. They may try to suppress the unhappiness, hoping it will go away. But, sooner or later, they will be driven to remove the root cause of what’s making things unhappy.
Whenever someone buys something new, the decision making is always part emotion, part logic. And logic is always the deceptive part of the whole process. That is because you will never sell something to someone based solely on having an exceedingly good rationale. When you believe the just the logic of the whole situation is just irrefutable – there can always be some additional logic that is introduced which can kibosh the whole proposal.
When it comes to generating demand for your product or services, the marketing messaging that you create is crucial in kick-starting a process that will put your prospective customer on the right path. And that is the path that will stir up some emotion and show the potential to remove that unhappiness which your prospective customer can really associate with.
Demand generation is all about seeking out the source of unhappiness and determining how to bring that bottled-up emotional energy to life. And it doesn’t start by asking the prospect about what is their greatest challenge. That great challenge may remain that way indefinitely. It starts by focusing on what is the source their unhappiness. And then telling them stories to make them more unhappy about their whole situation. Ultimately, with a source of unhappiness that is genuine, it will build to a breaking point where things just cannot go on in the same way. And that is when the nature of the dialogue changes and you have a real prospective customer.
Don’t be overly content with happy customers. Even if they are your happy customers, their state of happiness is a reflection of the past. It is something you have done for them that has made them happy. But it is all in the past. To get new business, you want unhappy prospective customers. Driving your business with this mindset will give you both growth and direction of spreading your own solutions to those who need them the most.