There are six steps common to any customer experience, and today I’m talking about #3.  We know that every experience starts with a person who has a need, problem or desire they’d pay money to have solved.  We’ve discovered the triggering need, and what it takes to earn consideration as prospects are learning about options.

The TRY step, from your customer’s point of view

This step begins when your prospect tries out each option on their short list (the mental list they created during Step 2). It ends when they land on a single option to which they are ready to commit – ideally yours.   In the TRY step, your target customer is:

Building an understanding through experience and knowledge; envisioning what life will be like after a potential solution to their problem has been applied.

To choose a winner from a short list credible options, your target customer must reject other options, whether in one fell swoop or with the painstaking testing of one criterion after another. Humans are not psychologically conditioned to let go of alternate courses of action without some amount of vulnerability.

Sadly, some get stuck in this step, deciding that none of the options are right to solve their need. I say stuck – not finished – because their need or problem doesn’t go away. Instead, they live with the problem and without a solution until some option demonstrates that it is best to help them solve it. Can you see prospects or returning customers stuck in your TRY step?

From your organization’s point of view:
DEMONSTRATE you are the best option to solve their need

From your company’s perspective, the goal is simple: target customers who confidently choose you. You must demonstrate why and how your organization or product or service is the best option to solve their need. For you, this the definition of this step is:

To build an understanding through experience and knowledge; to help a prospect see what life will be like after your solution has solved their need.

If you do your job here well, your customers will do the qualification work for you. Either they will weed themselves out if they are not your target prospects, or they will feel fully confident in choosing you if they are. See how both authenticity with prospects and your return on sales and marketing investments are at stake here?

You want your customers to choose the best option to solve their need. You want your target customers to choose you. You want the wrong customers to choose someone else.

Most of us know when this is done well. Walt Disney World (what we know Disney sells) uses planning demos and podcasts to demonstrate how it helps make family dreams come true (the need or desire we can say Disney solves). Rather than list of features or price comparison charts, Disney helps customers see themselves in a family-dream virtual reality.

What Disney does – and what you must do, too – is build a virtual reality and not a beauty contest. Offer customers a demo, taste, sample, or snapshot of how life will be with you solving their need. Don’t give them a comparison of price or features that may or may not be relevant to the need. When you do that, you leave the customer to do all the imagination work. You must do that work for them.

DON’T BUILD THIS

BUILD THIS

Photo by Adi Setiawan

Help your prospects envision life on the other side of the purchase with their problem solved well by you, and build that virtual reality.

You’re likely already tracking the financial performance metrics that show the payoff your getting from your TRY / DEMONSTRATE experience step. Let’s talk metrics payoff in another post.  In the meantime, how do target customers try you out?  Are you demonstrating you are the best one to solve their need?

Related resources:

Looking for more how-to help for mapping your target customer experience, or why demonstrating your solution is essential to driving better financial performance?  Pick up a copy of Domino. The book offers peer examples, how-to exercises, and the business metrics you can use to know you’re on track.

Catch up on the rest of this series:
Step 1: The Triggering Need
Step 2: Earning Consideration.