The 3 Sales Doors
No matter what industry you are in, there are only three doors through which a sale can come to your business. These doors are:
“The first time someone buys something they buy a product, the next time they buy it, they are buying the company that sells it.”
1) The New Sales Door.
2) The Referred Sales Door.
3) The Repeat Sales Door.
It’s important to think about sales in terms of these three sales doors because it will keep you from over-focusing on product strategies that hurt margin and do not create company loyalty.
The key to open each sales door is the same, and that key is surplus. People only buy when they are in surplus … when they feel they will get more than the price to be paid.
This surplus can be created in one of three ways:
1) Drop your price.
2) Add features.
3) Deliver an unexpected level of experience.
When engaging a new customer, someone who has not bought from you before, you often have to focus on price and features to create buyer surplus. Why is this the case? Because what new customers know about you is based on what your marketing says, and your marketing likely uses the same words as your competitors, and when that’s the case, the only clear difference is price and features.
Unfortunately, price and free-upgrade strategies hurt margin and create product/industry loyalty not company loyalty.
Because of this, you must strive to create buyer surplus through an unexpected level of experience as this drives company loyalty, and company loyalty drives repeat and referred business.
Experience is your company’s last impression and your last impression is the key to repeat and referred sales.
If you don’t deliver a great experience, you will be stuck competing for new sales with strategies that hurt margin and you will be missing out on 2/3rds of your market’s sales doors.
When thinking about your market’s three sales doors, remember that you control your access to sales through Door 1, but customers/buyers control your access to sales through Doors 2 and 3.
