You're working with your prospect to design a new ___________________ (fill in the blank: this could be kitchen cabinetry, custom closet, landscaping, living room furniture, etc.; really anything that has a designed layout as one element in the buying process).
Question: How can you increase the likelihood that your customer will buy your design?
Answer: Make the new design very different from their current design.
For example, I would almost never design a new kitchen with the sink, refrigerator, and range in the exact same positions that they are in the current design, even if the old design is working acceptably.
There are three reasons why it's good to make your new design very different from the old design:
1. More than likely, what you have to offer is going to be more expensive than what your customers want to pay (isn't that almost always true?). To bring added value to the table, you need to have something fresh or new or innovative so that customers are jolted into seeing how much improved a new design could be.
2. If you're selling a service (design of built-in bookcases, for example) along with a product (built-in bookcases), if you don't show something new, the customer may conclude that they should only have to pay for new product, not new design.
3. Almost all customers are intrigued by new ideas, insight, and depth-of-thought. If you can show you have these characteristics, you'll have a better chance of dislodging your prospect from status-quo paralysis. And when that happens, you have a good chance of closing a sale.
There are drawings of new and old designs to illustrate this point at selling design.
Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers, a B2C sales training and consulting firm. Subscribe to the free Selling to Consumers Sales Tips Newsletter.
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