As a small business owner, is your marketing helping your ideal clients overcome the skepticism of purchasing your services or products?

I’ll share a recent consulting project with you and what I learned about overcoming consumer skepticism:

So when Blue Cross Blue Shield asked us to help them with a marketing launch of a new supplemental insurance offering to those people aged 64 1/2, they essentially were asking us to help their ideal clients overcome the skepticism of paying for a new service.

Before I share with you what I learned about marketing and overcoming skepticism, you should ask yourself, What makes your ideal clients skeptical about purchasing your services and products?

Here are a few things I learned about marketing and overcoming skepticism that might help you:

1. Stop trying to change people’s mind and worldview.

You don’t have the time or money to be in the business of trying to change the mind of people who demonstrate they don’t want your services or products. You can’t sell something that people don’t want to buy. Find people, who already are buying similar services and products and sell to them.

2. Proactively address the known skepticism of purchasing your services and products in your online and offline conversations.

When you tactfully confront the known skepticism of purchasing your services and products, up-front, in your marketing communications, you take the “gotcha” mentality away from the skeptic. The skeptic wants to identify reasons why they should not purchase something from you. When you’ve already identified and sufficiently provided a win-win solution to those skeptical obstacles you’ve experienced with other clients, you remove the adversarial seller vs. buyer situation and shift to determining if this is a mutual fit.

3. Allow the skeptic to save face in the process. The best way I’ve found to allow both the skeptic and myself to save face is to gain permission to have a transparent conversation with the goal of uncovering if my business solutions are a fit for your business needs. Once I gain permission, I’ve converted skepticism into determining if we are a fit for one another or not. We both save face and mutually understand what’s next.

4. Share relevant 1st and 3rd party “proof” stories. This is simple + obvious, but overlooked. Here’s the formula:

• Do great work for people willing to pay you.
  
• Up-front, tactfully gain trust as part of your marketing process and perhaps expectation in having people willingly give permission to share their story of how they overcome their greatest challenges implementing your service or product.
  
• Ask skeptical people if it would be helpful for them to hear other people with the same or similar challenges to share their experience in working with you.
• Share a 3rd party story. “I have a client with a similar challenge as you. Here was their challenge, the action we took, and the result of our actions.”
  

5. Skepticism and trust. There is a difference between skepticism and trust. You can’t avoid skepticism, but you must avoid giving people a reason to not trust you.

What did you learn that you can apply to your own marketing strategy and process?