Get creative in meeting your customer’s needs

In my last two posts (here and here), I shared some of what I learned at the Overnight Authority event with Adam Urbanski earlier this month.  Today’s post is an expansion on one big thing I learned during a sales exercise we did in the workshop.

One of the points that was made during the introduction of the exercise was that our goal was to make a sale.  This was a real sales situation, and even though it was an exercise we were obligated to deliver what we sold and pay for what we purchased during the exercise.  We could sell anything we could offer that the other person wanted to buy.  That opened up all sorts of possibilities such as selling something that you had never sold before, selling something you created on the spot, or selling something completely unrelated to your business.  That was really the first lesson of that exercise – if you can help someone or provide something they need and they want to buy it, find a way to deliver it!  Don’t let formalities get in your way.

There was no way to get prepared for this exercise, so I didn’t have any of my usual materials in front of me.  I was forced to get creative in offering something for sale since I didn’t have any of my packages or products listed in front of me.  I listened to my prospect describe her problems and then created something on the spot that I could deliver that I thought would solve her problem.  In a way, it was better that I didn’t have my own materials to work from because I was forced to listen and create something that fit rather than try to fit the customer into my pre-defined pacakges.

People really took this and ran with it.  One person offered a package that was turned down by her prospect, and she then offered one tip for $25 which was accepted by the happy customer.  Another person created a package for her prospect that was something she could do but had never thought to offer in her business because it wasn’t part of her main work.  I offered something that I had been thinking about for a while but couldn’t quite put together until I was under fire to do it.

The really big takeaway for me was that yes, it’s great to offer a range of products and services in pre-set packages but it’s also great to wing it when you have the chance to make a sale outside of those packages.  Don’t let the fact that they don’t fit a pre-set offering cause a customer you could help slip away.  It’s a disservice to you and to the customer.

Aside from just generally thinking differently about creating things to offer for sale, one way I’m going to implement this idea is to be more proactive at offering to create a custom package for someone who I want to work with.  If they want to work with me and the issue is simply that I don’t offer a service package that appeals to them, I’m going to ask them “What kind of package would work for you?” and see if we can make it happen.

How can you be more creative at finding ways to offer what your customer wants?  Have you ever created an offer on the spot?  How did it work?  Tell me about it in the comments.