As promised, a follow-up to my first post on objections. This is the post where I start to get pointy-headed. I have to warn you that not only will I divide people into three categories, I’ll also divide each of these three categories into three subcategories!
But as long you can deal with that much taxonomy before breakfast, this post should give you a more nuanced way of working out how different groups of customer might relate to a potential objection. And there will be donuts.
I’ll also briefly talk about how to deal with these different kinds of objector. But this will be mostly theory: the applied stuff will come in the final post in the series. (Yes, it’s a trilogy!)
Explicit objectors, latent objectors and non-objectors
I ended my last post by saying that any given objection will split your potential customers into 3 different categories:
- people who have that particular objection, and would bring it up if you were talking to them
- people who have the objection, but wouldn’t bring it up if you were talking to them
- people who don’t have the objection at all
For what I hope are obvious reasons, I’m going to call the first type of person an explicit objector, the second type a latent objector, and the third type a non-objector.
But not all explicit objectors are the same, and neither are all latent objectors, nor indeed all non-objectors. In fact, each of them splits further into three different types. Those of you with calculators will have worked out that this makes a total of 9 types of objector.
To clarify what I’m going on about, here’s a hypothetical example of an objection. Say you run a company called Gloopy Glaze that makes extremely delicious donuts like the ones on the left.
Now, a consumer watchdog magazine recently published a study revealing that while your donuts may be yummy, they’re by far the most fattening on the market – in fact they have over double the calories of your nearest competitor’s product.
So we have a possible objection right there. Some of your customers will be more reluctant to buy your donuts because they’ve read or heard about this study. Others won’t.
But this reluctance and this non-reluctance both have several possible causes, and can be manifested in several different ways. Nine different ways, to be precise. (If you come up with a tenth, let me know.)
1. Explicit objectors
Explicit objectors are the people who, if you were trying to actually sell them donuts face-to-face, would actually mention the offending study. There are three types of explicit objectors:
1a. They have no intention to buy. These people are never going to buy your donuts, and nothing you can say will convice them. For some of them, the calories really are the dealbreaker; others are just argumentative. In either case, time spent trying to convince these people to change their minds is time wasted.
1b. They can be convinced. These people are wavering about whether their love of your donuts outweighs their concern about their waistlines. They’re not only open to being convinced; they secretly want to be convinced.
1c. They’re just going through the motions. These people have every intention of buying your donuts. They only mention the calories for form’s sake If you can make them feel less guilty, that’s a bonus, but you’ve already made the sale.
2. Latent objectors
These people wouldn’t mention the calorie thing out loud. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not playing on their mind and affecting their decisions at some level:
2a. They’re vague on the details. These people remember hearing something about donuts and calories a while ago. But was it actually Gloopy Glaze that was the bad one? Wasn’t it Krispy Kreme? Perhaps Gloopy Glaze was actually the best? An objection this vague can easily push a customer in either direction.
2b. They’re embarrassed. These people are worried about calories, but they’re too embarrassed to mention it out loud. Maybe they’re men who, even in these Biggest Loser days, still think worrying about calories is for chicks. Maybe they’re scared that if they mention worrying about their weight you’ll actually agree with them.
2c. They don’t know their own minds. These people don’t actually think they have an issue with calories, but after reading the offending study, they’ve gone from scarfing down Gloopy Glazes by the dozen to gagging at the very thought of them. Something’s going on there.
3. Non-objectors
These are people who know all about the calorie count of your product, but it makes no negative impact at all on their buying decisions. Even non-objectors, it turns out, come in different flavours:
3a. They don’t care. They might buy your donuts, or they might not, but either way the calories are not a factor in their decision-making.
3b. They don’t know. These people haven’t read or heard about the study in question, and persist in their happy delusion that Gloopy Glaze donuts are a health food.
3c. They know, and they like it. The more calories the better! These are people who are desperate to gain weight, actors who need to get fat quickly for a role, or unrepentant gluttons who love to rub their unhealthy food choices in the faces of “health Nazis”.
OK, so how do you talk to all these people at once on your website?
The short answer is, you don’t. You work out one or two key types of objector you have the most chance of making an impact on, and talk to them.
Sure, it might be tempting to run through all nine types of objector and tweak your FAQs to take all of them into account – give persuasive reasons for the 1b types, vague it up for the 2a’s, strut for the 3c’s, and so on. But you’d end up with a confusing, unfocused mess. Web content that tries to appeal to everyone ends up appealing to no-one.
Now, it is possible to get a “twofer” by writing answers for one type of objector that also deal tangentially with another type. I’ll talk about how in my next post.
But in the meantime, the very process of thinking about each objection in terms of how different customers might relate to it is something that should help you write better-targeted responses.
Image: lucianvenutian
