 Is she a tire-kicker? Not sure, but this is surely a great photo by Marcelo Chagas This dilemma is surprisingly common among our clientele of B2B consultants here at Copel Communications:
They’ll get prospects arriving into the sales funnel. They’ll spend time and effort cultivating and qualifying them. And yet those prospects will turn into either 1) deadbeats who don’t convert, or 2) clients who are so much work and hassle that they’re not worth the time. Uggh. Has this ever happened to you? Of course it has. In this article, we’ll dive a little more deeply into this problem; more importantly, we’ll tell you how to address it—to head it off in advance—so the likelihood of your ever confronting it again plummets. Who are the tire kickers? And why do they kick? Excuse us, but we can’t make any assumptions here. There’s a decent chance that you don’t know the origin of the phrase “tire kicker,” so we’re obligated to explain it. Quite simply, it refers to someone who, in the old days, would visit a new car showroom and take up the salesperson’s time, seemingly checking out a car they’d like to purchase (literally kicking the tires to test them for soundness), and then walking out, without making a purchase, much to the salesperson’s chagrin. The common assumption, at least in automotive retail (and we’ve worked in advertising for this space, so we have some experience here) is that these tire-kickers simply don’t have any money in their pockets in the first place. Maybe they just like to get a good whiff of that new-car smell. Maybe they just like to sadistically waste sales reps’ time. Regardless, they would (and certainly still do) trickle into auto showrooms, and it was incumbent on the sales reps themselves to identify these tire-kickers in order to avoid the wasteful time-suck they would present. This is not a tangent. The story above has everything to do with your B2B marketing. Clone wars We had a client in the tech space who complained to us that lots of the work they were doing was effectively clean-up of technical messes made by lesser-skilled (read: “Upwork”) technicians on projects where they’d been hired by clients seeking to cut costs. Burned by those poor technicians, these same clients would then turn to our client to “clean up this mess.” And our client hated-hated-hated it. Interestingly, they also didn’t turn it down. (Feel familiar? It’s not an uncommon trap.) Anyway, this tech client of ours was looking to do some re-branding, and as part of our customer-discovery effort, we asked them (just as we’d ask you), “What kinds of customers do you have now that you’d love to clone?” It’s a great question. Devote some nice biz-dev time to answering it. It also sets up the flip side: “Which kinds of customers do you have now that you’d love to avoid and never see again?” Well, you certainly know how our tech client answered this question. (In case you were curious, they were willing to finish any existing projects with these “energy vampire” clients and their technical clean-up jobs, but didn’t want to actively attract any new ones in the future.) This leads to the branding. It leads to how you can head off these energy vampires at the pass. And yes, it ties right back to that automotive showroom story we’d spun above. Cleanup on Web Page Four While this article pertains to overall branding (including all the vehicles and mediums you’ll employ to fill your sales funnel), let’s drill down to your website as an easy-to-illustrate example. Let’s ask you one simple question: Does it look conducive to tire-kickers? Aha! In other words, there’s a very simple way to dissuade these personae non gratae, and get them to self-select their way... elsewhere. Here’s the analogy: What happens when your Toyota Corolla buyer accidentally walks into a Lexus showroom? He looks around sheepishly. Blinks. Hands up. Apologizes to the approaching high-end sales rep: “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realize I... was...” And he quietly backs out the door. On his own. So if you want to avoid the Corolla buyer (nothing against them, or Corollas, for that matter), make your website the equivalent of the Lexus showroom. We have another client who wants customers with at least $100k to spend on their services. And they clearly don’t want to run a headline above-the-fold proclaiming “Great Services If You Have At Least $100k To Spend.” Of course not. But they totally got the “Lexus showroom” idea when we pitched it to them; combined with upscale messaging which addresses the problems of their ideal prospect, it makes the whole experience self-selecting for the great targets... as well as those who should politely exit the premises. That’s not mean. It’s actually helpful. For those who can’t afford our client’s services, it saves them time and aggravation, too. They don’t want to learn more about stuff they can’t afford. Unless they’re actual tire-kickers who simply enjoy the sadistic abuse of sales reps. They’re out there. You can’t avoid them entirely. But you can make the others go away. So you can focus your efforts on the ones you’d love to clone. Need help with customer-filtering challenges like these? Contact us today. We’d be delighted to help.
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