Around 8 years ago I met my good friend Alexander Seery for the first time. He came down to my old office in Somerset and we talked about his business and what he wanted to achieve.
I remember Alex vividly describing his FTM (I won’t share the details as this email gets sent at breakfast time and I don’t want to put you off your porridge 😀). Alex used to be a custody officer in the Police service. When someone has been arrested and they needed to be taken to the cells, Alex was your man.
He disliked many things about the job but there was one moment when a naked man with loose bowels shall we say was being very difficult in a cell and Alex had to try and restrain him.
I think you get the picture and it was at this point that Alex had his FTM.
He was fed up of the shit (literally!!) and he decided he HAD to do something else in his life and change his current situation.
Enough was enough.
He decided to resign from the Police and build a property business as well as an incredibly inspiring business called Shifts to Success but Alex always remembers his FTM.
I know you are asking, what is an FTM?
And more importantly, why does it matter for a buyer?
FTM are the time in a buyer’s journey when they have had enough and KNOW they have to change.
The words stand for…
Every Buyer has an FTM moment...
They can be big moments like Alex had or they can be smaller but the reason they are important is because it’s the point in the process where they decide to make a decision.
It is the time in the journey when the buyer says ‘I have had enough of where I am right now and I need to change’. Ideally, that change is them deciding to contact you and purchase your service.
I shared in my email a few weeks ago that EVERY buying decision starts with either a PROBLEM or DESIRE and 7 out of 10 people make a change from a position of pain.
FTM’s happen for buyers when:
- The pain has happened more than once
- The pain is happening on a consistent basis
- The pain is starting to have a huge impact on their life
- The pain and the thought of continuing to have the pain is unbearable
- The pain starts to have an impact on the buyer and their relationship with others
- Their situation is noticed by others who encourage them to change
- They are fed up of not achieving what they want and being stuck in the same place
- There are other reasons but the FTM is the crescendo at the end of a performance or the final moment in your temper when you snap at someone or something which has annoyed you.
It is the moment when the buyer looks at themselves in the mirror and admits that their situation can’t carry on any longer and that a solution must be found.
I have had them, you will have had them.
And when it happens, what do you do?
You engage with the company that is at the forefront of your mind to solve that problem. The one who shared insights and ideas to help solve your problem. The company that wasn’t pushy but regularly checked in to see how you were and who you just KNEW wanted you to solve your problem in a time that suited you.
The company that shared regular examples of how other people in a similar situation to you were solving the problem and were feeling better as a result.
These are the companies and salespeople who win deals and who pick up business as they have not relied on luck or accidental timing to get their results.
They understood the FTM. They had seen it before. They knew the buyer had to come to that realisation themselves.
In Alex’s case, he at that point decided to invest his life savings in a Property course provided by a company that had worked with people similar to him. Others who also had a FTM moment.
So my questions to you are:
- Do you know what your buyer’s FTM moments are?
- How deep have you gone inside the mind of your buyer to know their situation?
- How often have you actually put yourself in the shoes of your buyer to really EMPATHISE with them. To know when their FTM could be?
- When it happens for the buyer in your industry, will it be your company they turn to?
If the answer to these questions is ‘I am not sure’ then take a step back and rethink your approach. You maybe haven’t done enough research into the buyer’s world or you (maybe) haven’t communicated with enough quality or regularity with the buyer to build awareness in their mind.
Whatever the situation and whenever it comes, you need to be ready for the FTM.
It takes some people days and others years but in reality, when it does arrive, will they choose you to escape their feeling of frustration and misery?
I hope it is you and your company but if it’s not, then don’t say you weren’t warned.
When the FTM happens for your buyer, be the company or person they turn to.
There will come a time when eventually enough is enough for the buyer and they decide they have to change.
