The B2B Easy Button

So…you’re a B2B business and you’ve got a significantly-priced offering or product or service. And you’re trying to figure out how to get your prospects to make the leap and trust you and commit to this decision to buy from you. I have three steps that I’d recommend for you to think about, to help make this easier for your prospects and better for you.

Chart the path

First, if I’m in the grocery store and I see an interesting product on the end aisle, I might just choose to buy it even If I’ve never heard of that product before. It doesn’t work that way for you and your significantly-priced purchase. There are a series of relationship-building and warming-up and development of trust that has to happen before they’re going to be ready to make that commitment with you. So first you need to understand what each of those steps is. Make sure you’ve mapped that out and understand what happens first for them to know who you are – say, what happens for them to be interested in your product or curious about it. And then what happens for them to start to trust you, et cetera, et cetera. It’s going to be different for every business, but you need to know what that path is for this to work.

Bite-sized commitments

Then you want to take that path and divide it up into bite-size commitments. The key here is to only ask your prospects to do a little bit, each time they make a choice to come closer to you and to trust you. Okay?

Make value > friction

Once you’ve divided your path into these bite-size commitments, then you need to look at each one of those steps and figure out how you can give them a choice where they get more value than the friction. So they get more than the risk that they’re taking; they get more than the effort that it’s taking. I have found the first few steps are best if they’re free. So — can you give them insights? Can you give them checklists? Can you somehow teach them or show them your insight in a way that has no risk for them? That’s what I found is the best way for them to dip their toes in the water. And then at each step, make sure you’ve got a transaction, whether there’s money involved or not, where they’re coming closer to you at a price that makes sense to them. That last step is signing the contract. And if you’ve brought them along, it’s not a very big step for them to make that commitment.