“How to Determine the Fear of your Customers”

You know the power and importance of knowing the fear that plagues your customers.  But do you know how to determine this fear?  Should you just guess?  Should you use your own fears as a guideline?  No.  Guessing and using your own fears will not adequately serve your customers and in fact could hurt your bottom line.

So how should I figure out the fear of my customers?  Should I just ask them?  Wouldn’t that be the easiest and most direct way to find out this information?  No.  Common sense says that people will be open and tell you exactly what ails them.  Unfortunately, people probably won’t tell you their real fears for a variety of reasons.  They may be embarrassed and not want to admit their fears.  For example, they may be embarrassed by their weight and not want to admit that they fear they will die soon from being overweight.  Plus, some people are simply shy and/or don’t feel comfortable discussing problems with anyone, but their family.

Another reason you probably won’t be able to determine their true fears is because people don’t always know their fears.  This means that some of their fears are on the unconscious level, so they have no idea that they fear something.

So instead of asking people to name their fears, you should present the following five questions:

1.)  What is your biggest challenge with (insert topics such as “business”, “diet”, etc.  It depends on your product, services, and customers.)

2.)  How come the answer to question #1 is your biggest challenge?

3.)  What is the worst thing that could happen if you don’t meet that challenge?

4.)  If that (your answer from question #3) were to happen, what could that end up costing you?  (Make sure to get a number for an answer.)

5.)  What would it be worth to you to make sure that (answers to question #3 and question #4) doesn’t happen?

Here’s an example of answers:

The problem was that an individual had trouble following through.  He felt like his daughter required too much of his time.  The worst thing that could happen was that he would miss out on sales.  It would end up costing him millions of dollars in losses.  It would be worth millions of dollars to overcome this challenge.

So as a business you can create a product or service that helps this individual learn how to follow through so he can earn millions of dollars.  This is a simple example, but demonstrates how to determine the fear of your customers.