The Importance Of A Meeting Of Values

When you meet a prospect for the first time, do you make sure that you have agreement on the major questions of our time like; capital punishment, wealth distribution, and abortion?

Of course not, explains Grant, but you do need to have a meeting of business values

When a prospect goes on your website, or you meet them for the first time, do you make sure that you have agreement on the major questions of our time like; capital punishment, wealth distribution, and abortion?

You don’t do that? But a meeting of values is important…

Okay, so not those sort of values. The challenge is that when you’re promoting your products or services, whether it’s online or face to face, there’s a danger that the customer just sees no relevance to what you’re saying.

What ‘values’ does is it allows you to establish a framework where there’s a meeting of minds and it sets a context for the conversation.

Let me give you an example. Many years ago I worked with an online platform who basically sold recruitment advertising. Many of the HR directors of the time – senior people – just couldn’t see the relevance of the online world and favoured spending money in broadsheet newspapers and the like.

The people promoting this platform needed to establish a set of values with these HR directors – where there were generational differences – in order to have that meeting of minds and to set a framework for the conversation.

And what they said was this, ‘we believe that today’s graduates are not rushing out to buy a broadsheet newspapers looking for jobs. Their first point of call is to go online and look around there’ and that was a narrative that the HR directors could accept. And that meeting of minds – meeting of values – then gave a framework to have a more sensible and productive conversation.

Another example would be a company touting their video solutions. Out of context, a customer just may not see the relevance, but if that company was to explain to a customer that 70 percent of all web traffic today is video, that provides a context where the solution seems more compelling and a sensible conversation can ensue.

So if you want to engage with prospects early in the purchase journey – when they’re looking online for solutions – or later on, face to face, the important thing is to establish a meeting of values, because within that context it’s easier to have a productive conversation.

So… If any of you are interested in my marketing solutions, please do fill out a contact us form on our website, specifying where you stand on gun control.