If you can’t show your prospects or customers how their life will be improved by your product or service you won’t make the sale. For example, if you’re selling a big screen TV with a great picture and surround sound, you must show the prospect what it would be like in his or her home.

Suppose your prospect is a sports fan. If your prospect is a football fan then use future pacing to paint a picture of how he or she will actually feel when they’re watching a game on the TV. Paint a clear and vivid picture of them feeling as though they were actually at the game sitting on the 50-yard line. Tell your prospect they will feel as if they can actually reach out and touch the players.

You have to be able to paint a picture of what you product or service will be like in the life of your prospect or customer. Once you’ve done that, then you must focus on explaining what unique advantage your product or service will bring them that your competitor’s product or service doesn’t. This is where you need to understand the difference between intangibles and tangibles.

Intangibles are all the things that you do that your competitors don’t. For example, an intangible aspect of selling would be the warm relationship you have with your customers. Not just to sell them but to advise them and make sure that what they buy really benefits them. It’s taking the time to be really interested in them as opposed to just making the sale. That’s the power of intangibles.

The tangible parts of the sale are you products and services. You should always remind yourself that you will only do well if your customers do well. You are interconnected with your customers and the more you invest yourself in their well being the more prosperous and successful you will be.

You need to always look for more and better ways you can do things for your customers. Every time you sell them something, you have the opportunity to add more things to the sale that will benefit them. You can add things that are beneficial, yet inexpensive. You can do things for them, like calling them, sending them emails on new things to try out with no obligation. Doing these things makes your business distinctive.

Suppose for example, you own a woman’s clothing store and you are friends with the owner of a very good beauty salon. You give them a coupon for a percentage off that is exclusive for your customers only and you could tell them that if they don’t like the way they look, you’ll reimburse them for the cost. Doing something like this is powerful tangible reinforcement of your intangible commitment to your customers.

To be successful in business you have to look at your customers as a lifetime relationship. You’ve got to look at them the same way you would look at a dear and valued friend. It’s a long-term relationship that, unless you breach it, will go on indefinitely. It’s a relationship that will grow and bring you more referrals in the future.

Future pacing will cause a dramatic increase in your sales. Painting a picture of how a person’s life will be improved by using your product or service is very powerful, but it is after you’ve made the sale that the use of intangible and intangibles strengthen the ties with your customers creating both a human and a business bond.

Copyright©2006 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.