Elaborate con movies are one of my favorites. And no, I am not taking notes and making a playbook. “The Sting” is one of the classics that just stands out. Con overlaid on con. You better be wide awake for this one. Truth or lie, fact or fiction. As with all great cons, nothing is what is seems to be.
What I find intriguing is the entire setting. The mastermind has to think through the entire sequence of events. The interconnections. The interplay. The indications of when to proceed from one step to the next. The plan B. The type of players needed. Individual mindsets and their needs. It is all thought through. The con artist is a student of how things work. And that is a key take away for all of us.
You can imagine if the sales process was a one-step ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. Do you want it or not? It sounds like an ultimatum of sorts. And buyers certainly don’t like ultimatums. If you are selling anything beyond the most commoditized of commodities, you are assuring yourself a ‘no’. And that gets you nowhere.
Isolated tactics do not get you very far. What is essential is that you invest in learning the big picture. How does the buyer discover their problem? What makes them care? What motivates them to do something? And where does it go from there?
Yes, of course there are models for this. There is the most famous of them, i.e the AIDA model (i.e. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). And there are also several others. Some are simply derivatives, and some are different. For example REAN (Reach, Engage, Activate, Nurture); and AISDALSLove (Attention, Interest, Search, Desire, Action, Like/dislike, Share, and Love/hate). Whichever the model, the fact remains that these models have been applied to drive the marketing and sales strategies for various classes of product.
But the base model only serves as a starting point. There is the model itself. There is the tweaking and customizations that may be needed to apply to your specific scenario. And then there are a set of tactics that need to fit with the model.
One tactic does not a strategy make. In moving along the buyer’s journey, a set of tactics needs to be applied at each major stage of your buyer’s decision-making approach, in order to fulfill the buyer’s goals for that stage. And there needs to be effective transition steps to make the jump from one stage to the next.
The cost of your prospective buyer’s participation at each stage is a key aspect of the journey. Whether that cost is: time, convenience or money, it has to fit with what your prospective buyer is willing to surrender.
In today’s hyper differentiated and hyper competitive world, there is an unwavering pressure for results. With the rush to implement tactics, the possibility is there for tactics and strategy to get mixed up. The risk of course is that it’s just helter skelter. Too many tactics at one stage of the buying cycle. Not enough tactics at another stage of the buying cycle. And the premature loss of prospects just translates into wasted resources. Don’t succumb to this. Get a handle on the big picture first, and methodically figure out the sequence of events. And it’s not about being a con. It is about being able to effect the things we understand.