During a job interview last week I had to chuckle when the interviewer asked me how I ended up living in Minnesota after spending most of my growing years in Louisiana. I owe it all to a fabulous Minnesota personal injury attorney I hired in the summer of 1985.

At that time, I had just graduated from high school and thrilled with my new found freedom. The first thing I did was buy a brand new white Volkswagon Golf, with zero miles on the odometer, and set off for the open roads to the North. I swear I must have spent eighteen hours a day in that beauty that first week of ownership, at long last making it to my goal, Minneapolis, on Saturday.

Life was good (for a day), that is until an unnamed Pizza company driver decided that the “30 Minute or Less” guarantee that was their trademark then was more important than driving safely. Fortunately, the injury to my body was slight with some neck and back pain, but my poor VW didn’t have the same lucky prognosis.

The following day I scanned through the Yellow Pages and came across the name of a personal injury attorney whose commercial I had seen that morning on TV. I called and spoke with the office manager who invited me to come on in and tell my story. What started off as a nightmare turned into a blessing in disguise. The new job that I was scheduled to start the following Monday was not to be, or any job for the next eight months, and endless doctor visits took its place finally ending in a settlement out of court. The money I was awarded allowed me to attend the University of Minnesota for four years with everything paid and repairs to my vehicle (although the paint never quite matched up after that – never go with the other insurance company’s repair shop, lesson learned!).

Had it not been for the Minnesota personal injury attorney I hired, I firmly believe that the pizza company would still be using this 30-minute guarantee almost 25 years later and others would have been hurt or killed because of it. I don’t want to say that my case was the defining reason for their stopping this campaign but the amount of money paid out was certainly enough to give the company pause as to whether it was worth it or not.

No one is perfect. I get it. However responsibility must be taken and the little guy cannot stand up for himself in the legal world without competent attorneys such as the Minnesota firm I hired. While 33% was a large fee to have given up, in retrospect I would given twice that knowing that my bad luck perhaps prevented someone else from my fate.

This article is written by J Keightley who is a professional life coaching specialist and ecommerce business owner of Giggleberries Mens Underwear, it explores the benefits of understanding your customer’s values in order to increase sales.

We all have values in life and it is the value we place on things that determines the importance and appetite we have for whatever it is we are attaching them to. They can either be contextual or inner; by this I mean that we can attach values to certain contexts or objects in our world or they are related to our inner beliefs and perception of reality, which vary from person to person. The value we attach will be different and personal to each individual’s perception of reality, which itself will have been constructed over many years of cultural and social experience.

Our inner and contextual values are like ‘hot buttons’ and we all have the requirement for them to be pressed because when they are our values are being satisfied. Therefore, when we are trying to engage with our customers it is favourable to be able to identify and satisfy their values so that we can in affect press their ‘hot buttons’.

It is possible to identify both contextual and inner ‘hot buttons’, and each can be useful when trying to reach out to our customers. The later requires much more skill and time and yet is possibly the most permanent, so if you are wanting to secure an ongoing relationship with a customer and increase the chances of them returning, then pressing their ‘inner hot buttons’ would be more advantageous.

On the other hand, being able to press their ‘contextual hot button’ is much easier to acquire and so it might be useful to stick with this approach as ‘inner hot buttons’ is beyond the scope of this article.

To give you an idea of a context dependent value or hot button, imagine you sell cars and your customer advises you that the car they have had for the past 5 years has been so RELIABLE, EASY to drive and just seems to have a really SOUND and STERDY finish to the build. These are the values that they place on this particular context and are the anchors or ‘hot buttons’ to what is important to them.

Therefore, being able to identify these and subtly press their ‘hot buttons’ you are letting them know you are able to provide and meet their wants for that context. The way to do it is simply to repeat and weave in to your communication the same words. However, you have to do it naturally and as subtle as possible, or it could come across as a hard sell. Therefore, take your time, have some ‘chit chat’ and at times, make appropriate conversation with the odd ‘hot word’ slipped in here an there, such as, ‘it’s important to have a RELIABLE car’ or ‘let me start the engine, how does that SOUND’. You can see how it works.

The knack is to identifying the right ‘hot buttons’ and this is all about listening and asking questions. Just by listening to what the customer says in general conversation will give you the opportunity to identify most of the contextual values or needs that they expose. Let the customer talk as much as possible, use silence to elicit more one way conversation and then you can ask questions when they seem to have said all they want to say. Ask them what they like about the car they are looking to change or what are they are looking for in the car they want to buy.

‘Hot buttons’ are an effective way to build rapport with your customers and a fast way to satisfying their needs.

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