1) What does your business bring to the marketplace beyond the basicindustry core competencies?

2) What's unique about your business?

3) How will you communicate this?

Before we get into addressing these questions, let's try to understandwhy someone might buy from you. There are several key concepts ofunderstanding the mind of your prospect.

For your prospect to agree to buy from you, she must go through what iscalled: The Pain of Change. This is a measurement of the prospectsfeelings and experiences associated with doing something such asdecorating.

You need to relate this to the Consequences of Not Changing. This is theprospects losses they incur by not doing business with you. Perhaps itis the emotional letdown of not using your decorating skills.

When a prospect first becomes aware of your business, they believe thatare doing fine without you. They also believe that if there areconsequences for not doing business without you, this is acceptable. Ifthis is true, then you do not have a prospect.

In order to begin the selling process, you must introduce the conceptthat there are indeed consequences associated with not doing businesswith your company. If there are no consequences, there is little chanceof making a sale. To educate your potential prospect about the direconsequences of not doing business with you, you need to use questionsto raise this awareness.

Before we get into asking these questions, let's think about you idealprospect. What would be the potential pain or risk if they were to dobusiness with you? This is what was referred to before as The Pain ofChange.

Here are some examples:

It's too expensive!I might make poor decisions.

I could end up with poor quality workmanship.

I am afraid to do custom work.

I am not convinced of your decorating ability.

I don't trust you.

It is up to your Value Message to answer these concerns. Your prospectwill work hard to convince you that you do not have a Value Message, sothey can base their buying decision solely on price. If you can't defendyour Value Message then you run the risk of being judged as a commodity.

It is urgent that you communicate your Value Message so you can separateyour business from the competition.

There are certain core competencies that every competitor brings to themarket. These competencies are things all competitors do, and areessential to be taken seriously in the marketplace.

However, if you choose to compete based upon only the core competenciesthat everyone else has, you insure that your business will be considereda commodity. If you only want to discuss things like product quality andprice, you will be evaluated solely upon the investment required to buywhat you are offering. Your uniqueness of what separates you from thecompetition will most likely be ignored.

The concept of the Value Message says that you must bring somethingunique to the market place so you can convince your prospects to gothrough The Pain of Change and buy from you.

Exercise:

List the 3 strengths or unique features of your business offering:

1) In House Workroom

2) Great Showroom

3) Talented Design Team

For each strength list a corresponding consequence the prospectexperiences by not having as part if the offer.

1) In House Workroom-A lack of quality control and higher prices becauseof no middleman.

2) Great Showroom-No ability to view actual examples of work.

3) Talented Design Team-Not having treatments that you can show off.

For each consequence indicate how does it show up? Who ultimately getsthe bill for not having it? Who feels the consequences the most?1) A lack of quality control and higher prices because of no middleman,results in poorly done treatments that the consumer pays for and isstuck with.

2) No ability to view actual examples of work, results in not being ableto picture your custom window treatment ahead of time, and ending updisappointed because of not meeting your expectations.

3) Not having treatments that you can show off, results in not meetingthe emotional expectations of the client. This is what she values most.

Remember, Decorating is Entertainment!To review, let's take one of the strengths and add the correspondingconsequence and the result:

An In House Workroom addresses the problem of poor quality control andthe issue of higher prices because of no middleman. The result of nothaving such a service could be poorly done treatments which the consumerultimately pays for and is stuck with.

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