How to Build Consistency and Familiarity into the Sales Process

The sales process is where the rubber meets the road. It's when you either make or break your deal, and it starts with one word: consistency.

You need to create a consistent experience for your customers from start to finish if you want them to come back again and recommend your product or service.

This blog post is gentle reminder that the more they're exposed to what makes you different, the easier it will be for them to remember who you are and why they should buy from you.

Can Creativity Hinder Consistency?

As a creative, you want a brand that is unique and helps you to stand out from the crowd. Although creativity is important to the success of every brand, it can also be a detriment if it gets in the way of consistency and familiarity with your customers.

After all, what good is an innovative idea if no one understands how to use it? Additionally, sometimes our designs are so colorful and vibrant they end up distracting from your message.

Try this simple exercise: When trying out any new product or service have you ever noticed how fast they can become boring?

Instead of spending huge amounts of time trying to be creative, focus on delivering a consistent message about how you can help a prospective client achieve a goal or overcome a challenge. At the end of the day, an "ugly" sales page or piece of marketing collateral that clearly showcases what's in it for the prospective customer will beat a pretty ad all day.

Are Consistency and Creativity Mutually Exclusive?

Consistency is a key element of familiarity. Customers who have purchased from your business before know what to expect and they appreciate it when you meet their expectations.

While this sounds like an obvious benefit, some salespeople may be reluctant to establish consistency in the process as they feel it is too restrictive and prevents them from demonstrating creativity.

However, establishing consistency in the sales process can benefit both you and your customers by reinforcing customer confidence as well as building rapport with new buyers.

For example, when designing your online course, make sure that you clarify course deliverables, then deliver a WOW experience, and followup with companion checklists, quizzes and other educational tools to reinforce that you actually delivered on your promise.

3 Creative Sales Ideas

While consistency and familiarity are often considered to be at opposite ends of a spectrum, in sales they actually work well together. Consistency creates familiarity with your product or service which leads to customer confidence when purchasing from you, while also creating better brand recognition for future purchases. Here are three different ways you can use these concepts in conjunction:

• Use Consistent Sales People to Build Familiarity - Should you decide to have an affiliate partner or sales teams, make sure that these individuals share the same values, and are with you for at least 3 months.

  Educate them on the transformational benefit of your offers so that when a customer has questions about why something works a certain way, they will be able to answer them easily and efficiently.

• Give Customers Consistent Communication Channels to Build Familiarity - When customers get the same communication from you each time, they will feel like they can trust your business more. For example, brand all marketing materials, create templates and provide an email address that is always checked or a phone number that goes straight to voicemail every single day at the same time so people know when to expect you to get back in touch.

  Make sure that you also provide customers with consistent communication channels so that when it comes time for a purchase decision, they will already know who to contact and what information they can expect from your staff in terms of response times.

• Give Customers Consistent Delivery Times When Building Familiarity - If customers always know when they are getting the next shipment of the product or service that you offer, this will allow them to feel more at ease and trust your business even more because it is reliable. Even if each individual delivery takes only one day, if they know exactly when it is going to arrive, this will help create a sense of familiarity with your company.

In this blog post we discussed how consistency creates familiarity. Familiarity creates customer confidence. Customer confidence leads to sales. That is the way it's been for a long time and that is the way it can be in your business, too!