Prepaid Card Co's: More Sales By Selling More Directly To Prospects

This is the 2nd article in a series of articles focused on Driving Sales Results for Prepaid Card Companies.  You can follow the series by clicking here .

So what’s the difference between talking to prospects versus talking at prospects ?

We’re not talking about being polite in your prepaid card sales pitch (even though being arrogant or rude isn’t a great idea).  In any communication situation, the “listener” can quickly tell if the “speaker” is interested or even cares who they’re talking to.  It’s the same thing when you’re selling your prepaid card products.  It needs to be obvious that you have thought about and care which potential customers you’re addressing.  This is important for both creating an understanding the value of a prepaid card for their situation and creating buyer trust in your company (they’re asking you to handle their money).

Here are a couple of examples:

Example 1: A parent of a teenager heading off the college is concerned about managing the spending money of their child.   It’s a strong situation for prepaid card products to create value but the features and benefits that apply are very specific and different for some families than others.  The trust in your prepaid card product is partially built through a feeling that they are a customer category that you focus on.  What’s the trick in making them feel they are a key segment for you?

Example 2: People with challenging financial histories are also a critical segment for prepaid cards.   While they share a common challenge (getting a bank account or credit card), they’re pain areas can be quite different.  For some it’s about the loss of convenience while for others itss about fundamental dignity and participation in the mainstream economy.  Again — how to you make them feel that you are talking directly to them as a key customer segment?

A key to more prepaid card sales: Make prospects feel that you’re talking to them, not at everyone.

It sounds fluffy, but it works.  The best prepaid card websites deliver a targeted experience for different customer groups.  The result is a higher relevance of content, more value perception and a higher degree of trust that your company should be trusted with their money.

The same rules apply online as in the real world:

• Your website is delivering a sales conversation for individual prospects
• The best sales conversations are reactive, specific (to the prospect) and interactive
• Does your website deliver this experience to hot prepaid card prospects?

How to talk to specific groups:

• Ask first — then talk: early in your website, you should ask visitors to self select their core category
• Identify your key prospect groups and their key financial and payment pains and preferred card feature areas
• Define their real reasons for needing a prepaid card
• Create different sections of your website for different type of cardholders
• Defining the problems that they are focused on right now that you can solve

The impression you don’t want to create with potential cardholders:

• You don’t want them to think that your product is generic and is a “one-size-fits-all” product
• Don’t let them get the sense that you say the same thing to every prospect
• It shouldn’t appear that you really don’t focus on any customer groups
• Your prepaid card product shouldn’t appear to have been designed and priced without them in mind

AftertheNet pushes clients to treat their website the same way as their “real world” sales pitch.  While everyone recognizes that awebsite is not the exact same as a personal call or meeting, a lot of the same rules apply.   If  you expect your website to provide you strong leads, it needs to create a strong first impression and clearly establish the potential for value in the minds of visitors.

Your most precious resource in any marketing situation is customer attention.  With the goal of saving time, a prospect will only give you a limited amount of time to deliver enough information to convince them your prepaid card is valuable to them and that they can trust you to deliver as promised.   If your website doesn’t pass the early relevancy test, you won’t get the chance to deliver your whole sales pitch.

The Web Strategy Company will continue to publish this ongoing series of articles about how Prepaid Card companies can achieve a higher level of sales results.   Stay tuned for more articles in the series.