Be Easy To Buy

 Sounds straightforward, right? But why is it then so many of us don’t really appreciate this concept?

I’ve been lucky enough to have been immersed amongst some pretty successful thought leaders over the last few years. Experts in their field who are working hard to deliver their secret sauce and leave a legacy. It was during a conversation with one of them a few months ago that has stuck with me ever since. When I asked this thought leader what she was doing right in her business she responded saying ‘I’ve got great relationships with my clients, I nurture them. And I also make myself easy to buy.’

 It left me thinking, what exactly does she mean by ‘easy to buy’? Initially my thoughts went to: she knows her market’s problems and she clearly communicates her solution. Her messaging must be spot on. Our conversation steered in another direction soon after she said this, and I never grabbed the opportunity to clarify what she meant. But as the weeks unfolded, I’ve been on the receiving end of some ‘slightly hard to buy’ moments myself, and I’m slowly starting to understand that ‘easy to buy’ means more than just on-point messaging.

Just two weeks ago I tried to get hold of a thought leader I’d been following for a while. I was in the position to reach out and say ‘hey we want to buy your offering’ but after sending two emails literally saying ‘take our money’, I still had no answer. I went hunting on her website and couldn’t find a telephone number. I ended up reaching out to her on LinkedIn. It turned out my emails had ended up in her spam folder, but it was a week’s delay and frustration was kicking in.

Vague job titles can also create confusion. A few months back I was looking up someone’s profile on LinkedIn to see that she was titled Chief Happiness Officer. I kid you not. Pay attention to the category that defines your IP (for example: leadership; communication; personal branding etc.) and label what you do so clearly that people know exactly what solutions you offer to their problems. Don’t make them have to sift around unnecessarily to figure out exactly what you do.

And just recently someone who I had worked with on a project asked me to leave them a review, which I was happy to do, but I had to ask for the link to fulfil the request.

The harder you make people work on the easy things, the more you make them question working with you at all.

So, look at all the touchpoints of your business and ask yourself, am I easy to buy? Do I make it easy for people to understand what I do? To get a feel for my personality? To connect with me? To sign up to my blog? To leave a review for me?

If you can get this right, you will be oh so easy to buy.