Dr. Glenn Livingston (psychologist) is also a very intelligent marketer, bordering on brilliant. He’s made an uncountable number of worthy points to note, but one stands out for the purpose of this post. He mentioned that despite our best intentions when attempting to get a new customer we inadvertently unsell our products and services – then wonder exactly where we went wrong when business begins to slow.

What does it mean to unsell? Roughly, it’s the act of persuading a potential customer not trust in the worth, value or truth of a particular product or service. In other words, you’re destroying your own credibility through marketing within social media.

You’re actually talking the customer out of buying something.

When you first think about it, it doesn’t really stand out in your mind as something you normally do – especially not intentionally – but it does happen a lot. How many times have you been told by a retailer “we don’t carry that specific item you’re looking for, but if you go to X retail outlet, they probably have it”

It’s more of a subconscious thing that develops out of a desire to be both warm and transparent to customers or clients. In an effort or desire to be helpful, we’ll often do what we feel is immediately appropriate to help a client. It goes beyond that however. That’s just a small taste of the spectrum of things that can quickly unsell you and your brand with prospects.

• Are you more focused on price than on the goals of the client?
• Do you find that you’re typically late for appointments or meetings?
• Do you find that you’re frequently unprepared rush and disorganized?
• Ever had to make excuses for unprofessional actions, words or behavior?
• Have you specialized your niche to the point that you’ve painted yourself into a corner with paint that never dries?

Everything that you do through social media marketing has the potential of sending subtle messages to clients that can be a huge turnoff as they unsell your brand. The unfortunate part of all this is that any negativity tends to have a far greater impact on the position of the customer than the positive things we do. Mainly because customers expect a certain positive outcome, so unless you WOW them with your marketing efforts, it doesn’t stand out. Negative issues however stand out like a sore thumb and create a much deeper imprint.

Dr. Livingston blames our general actions on human nature, stating that “We always want what we do not have. Which means we always have our eye on ’the next level’ where we frequently forget about the people who got us to where we are currently”

We can easily rectify our conditioning to unsell our business by asking ourselves some key questions:

-Why are my regular customers staying with me?

-What have I stopped doing for customers lately within my social media marketing?

-What have I been doing that could potentially unsell me and my business to the consumer – especially the hyper-responsive ones

-Is there anything that I do, say or act that I would personally perceive as annoying, offensive, insulting or bad business if I witnessed another business owner doing it to me.

Honesty breeds integrity, and if you can answer these questions honestly and deeply examine how you’re doing business then you’ll likely find a number of ways that you can improve customer connection and engagement. Focusing on positive improvement will almost always help to improve your brand image and put you in a position to UPsell instead of UNsell.