7 Ways To Get More Clients To Attend Your Events
March 11, 2010
One of of my clients who lives overseas is in the midst of marketing his year-long high level Mastermind group. We’ve been through setting up the sales copy for his website, and he’s pulled together some introductory workshops to give his potential clients a taste of what he does and how he works. Still, he wants to do all he can to maximize enrollment, so he asked if I had more suggestions for him. Sure do! Here are 7 ways to fill your events:
- Be clear about how many people you want. What size does the group need to be to function well, let connections and bonding take place, but still remain manageable? Share this number with your potential members, and spend a little time actually envisioning the group in your meeting place. See the faces as you look around the room. Clarity and visualization are two ways to manifest what you want.
- Leave yourself enough lead time to schedule more than one “preview” workshop for something that is as big as a year-long higher priced offering. Choose a different location. It’s rare to attract all the people you have potential with for just the one single day you have planned.
- Schedule at least one teleseminar, and preferably 3. Use these hour-long open and free calls to provide valuable, useful content to your listeners. Have them sign up to gain access to your call through your website, so that you gain their name and e-mail address in return for sharing a sneak preview of your content. Talk about the what, but not so much the how. Take a break before the end of your call to spend a full 5 minutes making your offer for the big event. Talk about the benefits, not what you plan to do. Talk about the pain points you feel your listeners have and what can happen when these pain points are eliminated from a person’s life or work.
- Review the stories of the people who have already signed up for the big event, and ask yourself why they opened their wallets for you. These early adopters can tell you a lot about what other people are feeling, too. Change your sales talk and copy slightly if you need to, in order to cover and emphasis these benefits since you already know that they are strong selling points for you.
- Consider offering a half-price ticket to the spouse or business partner or assistant of someone who has already paid full ticket price for a seat. This can be a very effective way to fill your seats. Essentially, you are upselling the already-registered client. It’s a great benefit to them to bring someone along, and a great benefit to you to have another person at the event. (Be sure, however, that you are covering your costs with this 50% person.)
- Be wise in the use of experiential work in your one-day workshop previews. People buy on emotion, not logic. So bring the emotion up at these workshops and when it is high, make your offer.
- Make sure that your offer is time limited. You can offer the half-price “second person” ticket for a limited time. You can offer an early-bird discount for a very brief time. You can offer a bonus but only if the person registers for your big event within the next 24 hours.
Filling the seats at your events and longer-term programs takes persistence and the use of multiple marketing strategies. Using these can help you gain visibility and build excitement for your big event. Let me know how it goes!
(c) Sue Painter
Matching Your Target Market – A Lesson From Mexican Entrepreneurs
February 16, 2010
How to reach your peeps is just about always on my mind – it comes with the territory of being a marketing therapist. So here I was, two days ago, lounging around on the public beach in Puerto Vallarta. And I ended up, no big surprise, watching the vendors who sell up and down the beach. It is a great case study of how to figure out what to sell to a specific target market.
In the space of two hours we were visited by quite a number of beach vendors. Here’s a list of the items we were offered:
Cooked skewered shrimp, topped off by one of the limes hooked onto a separate skewer.
Heavy blankets in various colors that could be used on the beach or as a rug at home.
Brightly colored large pitchers that looked like ceramic but were actually wood.
Toys and gum from a basket.
Tuba-tuba, which is a chilled coconut drink served into a cup from a huge hollowed out double gourd.
Lace shawls.
All sorts of jewelry – silver, shells, beaded.
Elaborately carved cold fresh fruit, your choice, from a head-balanced platter.
Music from a 3-group band, complete with voice and instruments (including a bass fiddle)
Music from a two-person steel band percussion group, a 4-foot long instrument that unfolded and sat on a table, complete with sound system (battery operated).
Sunglasses
Bracelets hand-woven with your name on it
Straw hats
Large silver and mother of pearl fish which are jointed throughout the body so that the fish “swim” when wiggled.
I’m not quite sure this is everything, but the list covers most of the vendors we saw drifting by.
OK, let’s say that your job is to be a beach vendor on a warm Mexican beach. Some of your potential customers will be sitting in chairs under palapas, some will be already sitting in restaurants along the beach. Your job is to sell as much as you can from what you are offering. Can you name the top two things to sell? Can you name the bottom two things to sell? Remember that your target market is beach goers, some of whom are foreign, some of whom are locals, all of whom are on the beach, and some of whom are eating or drinking in restaurants. What are your picks for the two best things to sell to this market, and the two worst things?
Keep in mind, too, that you have to carry what you sell, walking in the sand, up and down the beach for miles and hours a day.
My two picks for the worst? The brightly colored large pitchers, which look like ceramic but are made of wood. They are awkward to carry, the vendor can’t actually carry more than about 4 at a time, and who on the beach wants one of these pitchers right then? Even if a potential customer was not on the beach, the pitchers are too large to easily carry home if you are a foreigner, and more than likely the locals don’t even use them as they don’t hold liquid. I think the guy who chose to sell the pitchers needs a few marketing lessons!
My second choice for the worst to sell, although a close race, is the steel band percussion. The instrument was huge to carry (requiring both persons) up and down the sand, hard to set up, and had to be hauled along with a fold-out table and the battery-operated sound system. That’s a lot to set up and take down for just one song, even if you had good luck selling the music to a lot of people. Plus, many people besides the one person who paid for the music can hear it, so you aren’t exactly going to sell music to the next person, are you? And frankly, most beach goers are busy sleeping, reading, riding the waves, or walking up and down the beach…..they don’t really have hearing live music on their minds.
My two choices for the best things to sell? Straw hats, because lots of beachgoers get to the beach thinking they won’t need a hat. But when they get there, they realize they do! The hats are relatively light to carry (I saw one vendor with a stack of about 50 straw hats on his head). As I watched him sell to someone on the sand, I realized he also had an upsell! He took leather braided bands out of his pocket and offered to add one to the hat for just a few more pesos. Smart guy – beach goers need hats, and they didn’t wear him out to carry.
My second choice for the best thing to sell is the cold, fresh fruit. It both gives a beach person something to eat and quenches thirst. It’s colorful and appetizing, and very noticable since most of the fresh fruit vendors carry the trays on their heads. It’s not expensive, it’s healthy, and even the kids seemed to like it. It’s probably one of the easiest things to carry on the beach, and the tray actually gives the vendor a little shade as he walks.
The point to this is that there are many things to consider when you are deciding what and how to sell to your target market. You do have to consider the pound of flesh it takes out of you, the costs you have in obtaining the product, and, of course, what you believe your market will want.
This doesn’t apply to the beach vendors as much as it does to you, but one way to quit guessing what your market wants is to ask them! Use a brief survey, talk to a subset of your prospects now and then, keep your ear to the ground. You’ll be more apt to design something that is wanted and needed than if you just put something on your back and start walking.
(c) Sue Painter
Can You Really Describe Your Ultimate Target Market?
February 7, 2010
One of the real “rookie” mistakes made by new entrepreneurs is to completely fail to know her target market. This is something that is very easy to spot. A few of the signs are:
- Her business is not thriving, meaning she needs more customers and she is not financially successful.
- When asked who she works with, she replies “Oh, I work with just about anyone.”
- If asked to thoroughly and completely describe her target market, she is flustered and can’t give more than a sentence.
The “Oh, I work with just about anyone” response is one I’ve heard from both new and not-so-new entrepreneurs many times. So many times, in fact, that it now drives me a little nuts. When someone says that, they are setting no boundaries for who they work with, which is a deadly thing. Let me ask the “just about anyone” entrepreneurs these questions:
1. Does it matter to you if a customer stiffs you?
2. Are you open 24/7?
3. If you were, for instance, a seller of curtains and blinds, would you drive 400 miles to sell a set of blinds to someone?
Of course, the answer to each of these is almost always NO! And that’s a good, thing, because that entrepreneur has just started on a path of better describing her target market. Her target market are people who have the money to pay for her products or services, she works with those who contact her during specific days and hours of business, and she has a limited geographical area in which to sell her blinds. This isn’t a complete description of her target market, but it is a start.
You can picture the creation of your target market as setting fences and gates around a specific group of people with whom you really want to work. You might not be as blatantly obvious about it as the gatekeepers are at hot night clubs, where one must stand outside on the sidewalk and get personally picked to go inside, but that is one very good example of a business who is very picky about who they want to serve.
I’ve learned about finding your niche and describing your target market from 3 or 4 of my coaches and mentors, but the one who made me work the hardest to describe my market, hands down, was Suzanne Falter-Barnes. She has a very long list of questions that one must answer to get through one of her platform building classes. The first time I saw that fat list of questions I just about fainted. In fact, the document she proposed I fill out to describe my market was 17 pages long! Still, Suzanne knows her stuff and I was there to learn, so I plowed into the questions. At the end, I felt like I’d invented something akin to a kid’s secret playmate. I started getting actual pictures of how my target market person looked, how she dressed, what she spent her money on, and more. I got so familiar with her in that 17 pages of ruthless questioning that I decided I knew her well enough to name her, for Pete’s sake! And that is what I strongly suggest you do, too.
My suggestion is to sit down with your computer or a piece of paper and describe a “sample” person from your target market as if she (or he) is a character in a book you are writing, and it’s up to you to fill your reader’s head with a detailed, specific, colorful image of the character you are writing about. Describe age, education, the kind of work she does, where she lives, her likes and dislikes – anything you can think of that will add to the picture in your head. This may lead you to dig around on the web for demographic or other information.
Spend quality time here, for it pays off in the end. Ask yourself (with pen and paper or keyboard nearby) “who is the most perfect customer for me?” If you have a hard time doing that, prime the pump by listing the characteristics of your most favorite or best customer so far. From there, dream on. Who would be delightful to work with? Who would you dread working with? What characteristics drive you crazy? Who have you worked with who bugs you so much you hope she never calls you again? You get the picture – and that’s whole point. For here is a secret about financially successful entrepreneurs:
Those who describe and visualize their target market well have started the process of manifesting exactly that type of customer for themselves. You now have a vision of who you want to attract, in detail. Put that right on your business vision board and keep it in your mind’s eye, for who you focus on tends to come your way.
Having this vision and description on hand also makes it easier to walk away from business that isn’t right for you, doesn’t truly interest you, and has a downside to it. (The downside being that while you are spending time with uninteresting client A, you cannot very well be also working with or running into very interesting and exciting client B. This is called “opportunity cost.”) Realize that it actually COSTS YOU to work with the wrong customer, for you are giving up the opportunity to work with who is just right for you.
Taking the time to dream up your ideal target market person makes finding that type of person much easier. You now know where to focus your efforts. If you are spending a lot of time and money networking in a group of direct marketers, and these are not your target market, it’s time to make a change. Pull your time and money from the wrong group, and go find the right group. You’ll find more and better business in the new group and waste less of your precious time.
When you are creating marketing plans, writing sales copy, or pulling together a presentation you’ll be able to keep your secret target market person right with you, writing to them. There will be less agony over creating these things.
And finally, when you have the opportunity to build a relationship with a potential customer, you will be much more at ease because, after all, you will pretty much feel as if you know that person in a way. You’ll be confident that you’ve spent time with someone who has a much higher chance of needing what you offer. This will shorten your sales cycle and make you more money faster. I don’t know of any entrepreneur who doesn’t want that!
So, get that blank paper or computer screen and get going. Breath some life into your target market, and you’ll breath new life into your business, as well. It’s a win-win for every entrepreneur.
(c) Sue Painter
Does Your Business Suffer From Perfection Syndrome?
January 28, 2010
Perfectionism will kill your business. The goal that you have as a solo professional is to provide a service that solves the problem your customer has. If you do that, you’ll succeed. Notice that I don’t say you have to PERFECTLY solve your customer’s problem. In fact, if you push for a perfect solution you run the risk of putting your customer off, because you will begin to nit pick at tiny little things you are offering, and you’ll lose focus on the big picture.
This thing about perfectionism is controversial to talk about. We are taught to find the “perfect solution” to our customers’ problems. But here’s the thing, and it’s important to remember. Life changes for that customer almost daily. The customer herself can’t really articulate a “perfect” solution. She may think she can, but once her “perfect solution” is in place, things will change and she’ll find that she needs to tweak it a little bit over time.
The big truth is that there IS no ongoing, perfect solution for your own business or for your customer’s business, either. You plan a resolution to an issue and execute it, and after that you see what worked and what didn’t work. You change it around the edges a little bit and go again. Finding what works for yourself or for a customer is not a straight line. It’s a curving line, sometimes curling back on itself, sometimes meandering where you never dreamed it will go. To hold that as true and faithfully watch when changes are needed is the best practice for a solo professional. It’s the best practice for larger businesses, too, but they often become too inflexible and stodgy to execute in that way.
Here are two big problems I see with solo professionals who are trying to establish a business that makes enough money to be viable.
1. Fear of making mistakes, which manifests as failure to take timely action.
2. Trying to decide everything by logic rather than feeling into what might be best for their business or their customer’s business.
I’d much rather see a solo professional try something and fail, and then learn from what went wrong, than to be paralyzed from the fear of failure. Almost all successful business owners have made mistakes, and there’s no sin it in. The sin is in burying the mistake and failing to look at it closely so that one learns. I literally have to re-train a good portion of the clients I work with to actually tell me when something goes wrong! We get into this practice of trying to hide our mistakes, which doesn’t help us in the end.
Additionally, there is a great benefit to using your feeling sense to help make decisions for yourself and your customers. You might also think of this as using your intuitive sense of things rather than depending solely on logic. You can ask yourself a question, close your eyes, and get a gut feel or sense of the best answer. The more you practice this, the better you will get. It is a great addition (and sometimes a replacement) for deciding only by logic alone. In fact, most of the millionaire entrepreneurs I’ve interviewed over the past years tell me that when the chips are down and it’s decision-making time, they trust their gut. Not the figures, but the gut. That’s a great confirmation of using your feeling sense to help you made decisions. Sometimes things will not seem logical at all, but you have a strong sense it is the right path to take.
The truth is that there IS no perfection in this life, so trying to run our businesses from that place will never work. That is the wisdom that successful solo professionals have come to know. the next time you feel yourself fearful over making a business decision, take a breath, check your gut, and move forward. You’ll find that you will do better in the end than waiting for perfection to come.
Three Ways To Boost Your Income This Month
January 12, 2010
The new year is off and running already! Is your business off and running, too? I don’t know many business owners who would say no to making more income right now – before the end of this month. Here are three ways to boost your income, and if you implement even one of them, you’ll have extra money to show for it.
1. Increase the number of clients or customers you have. This means letting folks who are new to you and your business know about you and the problems you solve. How can you do this quickly and efficiently?
- Ask existing customers for referrals
- Find a business networking group you’ve not been to before and attend
- Send out an e-newsletter and ask recipients to forward it to one person who might benefit from your services
- Ask friends and family to specifically mention your business to one person this week
- Post helpful resources and advice to your social media accounts
- Revamp any existing paid advertising and look for a higher return on investment
- Partner with an aligned business to advertise or do a quick special promotion
2. Increase the average transaction value for existing customers or clients. This means that you offer more value and get a greater price than you are currently getting from your customers. Here are a few ways to do this:
- Raise your rates
- Bundle several of your products or services together and offer them at a special price
- Create a VIP customer category and charge for access to VIP status
- Offer an add-on to your existing product or service. For instance, if you sell jewelry offer a color consultation (for an additional price) with each jewelry consultation or purchase.
3. Increase the frequency of repurchase by existing customers. This means that you devise options designed to encourage customers to come in more often (or order more often).
- Let customers know the benefit of increased services (massage therapy more often than once a month actually boosts the immune system, for instance).
- Package services for frequent buyers. Personal trainers, for instance, might offer a special rate for those who purchase a quarter’s worth of training three times a week.
- Let customers know about new inventory as it arrives to encourage more frequent visits to a retail shop.
- Point out that more frequent services can lead to faster results
The point is that boosting your income quickly doesn’t take months of agonizing over how to do it. Pick one of the three options that you feel will work best for you and get started right now to implement one or more strategies for it. Income doesn’t increase when we THINK about what we might do, income increases when we actually IMPLEMENT something new.
When clients come to me wanting to increase their income quickly they usually are holding that wish as something that is hard to do, scary, or impossible. One of the secrets to boosting your income is to change your own attitude about how easy it is to make more money. If you take action, it happens. If you worry about how you are going to take action then nothing happens and you continue on the gerbil wheel of “how can I do this?”
Do you want to make more money this month? Go look at yourself in a mirror, smile, and declare out loud “I”m off right now to make a bunch more money this month.” It’s pretty tough to do something you don’t believe you can do, so quit thinking you can’t and start telling yourself you can. The how-to’s are right here for you. Pick one, work on it, and let me know how much more money you have in your pocket at the end of this month. 
(c) Sue Painter
Ten Basics of Consumer Behavior That Will Help You Make Money, Part Two
December 28, 2009
In Part One of this article, we covered five of the basic tenets of consumer behavior. Understanding how and why people buy helps business owners craft their sales offers in more successful ways. Part Two talks about the second set of five tenets.
Tenet Six: Buyers are loss adverse. They want to shield themselves against loss as much as possible. So, you want to make offers that take into account the buyer’s fear that they will lose. It’s a fact of how humans think that we fear loss more than we are happy by gain. You can offer money-back guarantees as one way to make buyers feel safe against loss. The fact is, few buyers will actually ask for their money back, but buyers like to know they can if they really want to. They like the reassurance even if they rarely act on it.
Another way to combat fear of loss is to offer a small trail period. Cable companies often do this by offering a few free months of a premium channel. The strategy works because when the trail months are over, a buyer will continue the channels because – guess what? – she doesn’t want to experience the loss of the channel! Maximizing potential gains and minimizing potential losses will always help you to sell more, because buyers constantly worry about this.
If you are going to give something away for free, be sure to value it by listing it as a part of the purchase agreement and stating its worth. Otherwise, you are giving it away and gaining no perceived value with your buyer.
Tenet Seven: In your sales copy, write to the product or service’s benefits , not the features. This is so basic, yet I see people miss the mark on this all the time. Tell a buyer what problem will be solved if she uses your service, not how the service works. What will a buyer have or get rid of after they purchase from you?
Tenet Eight: The frame you use to make your offer has a big role in success. By frame, I mean how you say something. If I say to you, “You can make more money by coaching with me” it doesn’t paint a very succinct picture. The phrase “more money” is relative, isn’t it? But if I say “You can take your business past the six figure mark this year” the frame is specific and much more powerful. Research shows that if a bank says “you’ll make 5% on your savings” the reaction is favorable. If a bank says “you’ll make 5% on your account” the reaction is much less favorable. “Account” is less tangible and less emotion-laden than the word “savings.”
A subset of framing is something called priming. Priming is a fancy way to say that the environment you make your offer in will affect the results of the offer. Here are some examples:
- Back of the room sales at a big event are primed by the upbeat, motivational conversation and the excitement generated by the speakers.
- A wine shop will sell more French wine if it plays French music in the store, or more German wine by playing German music.
- At a live event, making an offer for a high-level coaching program that costs five figures will go better if it’s made in a Ritz-Carlton than in a Motel Six.
- Brokers and insurance agents usually have very nice offices, their environment helps to reassure you that they are successful and their products are successful, too.
Tenet Nine: Know your connectors. Connectors are people who have a great deal of social influence. You can get a great education about connectors and how important they are to businesses in Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point. Connectors are influential not just because they know a lot of people, but they also naturally link people together. They connect people, ideas, and things across broad lines.
A sub-tenet of knowing your connectors is understanding peer pressure and how it influences buying decisions. Buyers will conform to what others purchase so as not to stand out. We also believe that if we purchase what others buy we are reducing our risk. If your product or service becomes the “in” thing, your sales will come to you more easily over time. If buyers see several people rush to your booth to purchase a product, chances are they will also come by to have a look. Have you ever peered into the door of a restaurant that is new to you, to see how many people are in there eating? If it’s not reasonably crowded, you probably walked away. This is an example of peer pressure buying.
Tenet Ten: Social exchange breeds more loyalty and a stronger bond than economic exchange. How does this translate into your business? Offering a service to buyers without regard to getting paid for it will help to build a bond, which in turn will eventually lead to sales. For instance, you might offer to make an introduction to someone. You might offer a morning coffee meeting for 3 or 4 business owners who are potential buyers and would benefit from knowing each other, too. You might offer to come by and water the plants for someone who is on vacation.
Companies use social exchange to build loyalty. Saturn had big reunions for all Saturn owners back in time. Hyundai’s Assurance program will pay your car payment for six months if you lose your income. These social exchanges built strong bonds to both brands. Years ago, McDonald’s would fill your coffee cup for free if you bought one of their special ceramic McDonald’s cups. At the time, I worked in an office next door to a McDonald’s. We all walked over there twice a day for coffee for years, never thinking to go anywhere else. And, of course, we bought other food to go along with the coffee more often than not.
Tracking consumer behavior is fascinating, but more to the point it helps you know how to make your offers and become more profitable in your business. Sit down with all the products and services you offer in a list, and see how many of these ten tenets you can put to use to sharpen your offers. It will impact your bottom line in a good way!
(c) Sue Painter
Ten Basics of Consumer Behavior That Will Help You Make Money, Part One
December 28, 2009
A good way to start the business year is to remind ourselves of how unpredictable consumer behavior is. The more we understand about why people purchase what they do, the better we can design our marketing messages. There are 10 basics of buying behavior that can help you make money, in today’s post I’ll cover five of them, and in Part Two I’ll talk about the second set of five.
Understanding why people purchase when they do is no easy task, however. The field of behavioral economics indulges in marketing research and can give us some insight. Here are ten things we know about consumer behavior, and how you can put them to use as a small biz owner.
Tenet One: The need to express one’s individuality is a critical factor influencing the choice of brand that someone will buy. What does this mean? Well, if you’ve got this type of consumer on your hands, you want to offer a product or service that seems unique and very individualized to the person. If you are selling braided leather bracelets, for instance, this person is going to want a leather bracelet that isn’t braided, or a colored leather, or a braided bracelet with a customized charm at the end. If you are selling your cleaning services, offering a menu of tasks you do and asking this person to personalize it to their own home will make them feel they are getting a unique “brand.”
Tenet Two: Keep it simple. Too many choices confuse a buyer, and as I’ve preached for years now, a confused mind does not buy. If you offer 17 different products and services, simplify it down to no more than three. Group your products and services by broad category and let the buyer choose what she most needs. A few weeks ago, I met a concierge service owner and asked about her business. To my horror, she enthusiastically told me “we can do anything you need.” That doesn’t help most buyers, who will quickly glaze over and not be able to think about what they need at that particular moment in time. A better answer would be, “We handle shopping for gifts, office organization, and party planning.” The buyer’s mind will then sort and land on something she recently needed that falls into one of these large categories. Give a buyer a place to land and you’ll do a better job of selling.
Tenet Three: Use decoys when you package your options. Let’s say you are offering three different options for house cleaning. Make the middle option the package that you really most want to sell. Most people will select the middle option, not wanting to go with the absolute lowest cost option but then not being willing to spring for the very highest, either. So make the middle option the one you really want to sell, the one that is the most profitable for you. The others are, in essence, decoys.
Another way to use a decoy is to actually use a competitor’s product or service up against your own. Point out the added value or benefit that you have, and that your competitor doesn’t have. For instance, you may sell a face care product not that different from another product – but yours may offer 20% more product for the money. Or, it may have an added benefit that the “decoy” competition doesn’t have.
Tenet Four: You set the anchor for your price. In retail operations, the suggested retail price is the anchor, the price at which you want a buyer to compare your goods with others they may buy. In nonprofit organizations, you set an anchor by suggesting levels of giving in a campaign. It’s also possible to re-anchor prices and change a buyer’s expectation. One of the most familiar and successful examples of re-anchoring is when Starbucks began. Starbucks re-anchored the price of a cup of coffee much higher than it was in any other coffee establishment by convincing buyers that the coffee and the experience was of much higher value than in a McDonald’s or a Dunkin’ Donuts.
Tenet Five: How you package what you offer makes a big difference. In marketing research, this phenomena is called sensation transference. It means that buyers will transfer the sensations they have about the packaging of a product or service to the actual item itself. For instance, people will report that the food served on a paper plate doesn’t taste as good as the very same food served on a china plate. The “packaging” of the china plate transfers a better sensation. Brandy and perfume manufacturers heavily depend on sensation transference. You’ve probably heard before that the design of a bottle of perfume is often more expensive than the actual design of the perfume itself. The packaging makes all the difference in the success or failure of that particular scent.
There are many ways you can use packaging to help your sales. If you are a residential developer, packaging may include a fancy entrance to your neighborhood. If you are a coach, packaging might mean the extra little bonuses you offer people to work with you – things like a personalized planner, a private forum, a special event offered at no charge as part of the “package” of the coaching offer.
Think about how you can put these basic tenets to work for you, and in Part Two you’ll discover the last five tenets.
(c) Sue Painter
How To Craft Sales Offers That Work Easily and Often
December 4, 2009
You might recall the old saying “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” I’m not sure that holds true for everything, but I do know that it’s the truth when it comes to crafting your sales offer. Many different studies using split testing have proven that changing the marketing message changes the number of sales. So what’s the secret to crafting sales offers that work easily and often?
The biggest mistake that I see business owners make is trying to sell on logic rather than emotion. Logic tells but emotion sells. When people say they buy on logic they are almost always mistaken. We buy based on our emotions, and then we proceed to justify what we’ve just bought based on logic.
I saw a great example of this just recently when I was in Mexico with some friends. They have long held negative feelings about the many timeshare offers proffered along Mexico’s beaches, stating over and over again that they would absolutely never do a timeshare deal. For at least 4 years now they have visited Mexico’s beautiful beaches and attended numerous timeshare presentations, taking the free gifts offered but never biting on the presentation. But this time around, they bought! I was shocked at first, but then I began to apply what I know about sales offers to what happened with them. Why they bought then became crystal clear.
The couple attended a presentation and were asked a question they’d never been asked before. “How do you feel about the hotel you normally stay in when you are here?” That simple question unleashed a torrent of frustrations and complaints from the couple, who had seen their favorite hotel at the beach change from a great resort to an ill-maintained and understaffed property. The crowning blow was the outdoor hot tub, which had been broken the entire two weeks of their stay.
What did the sales agent’s question do? It brought up the couple’s emotions. All he did was sit and listen – and then he led the couple to a five-star, brand-new timeshare unit. Talking to them about the property’s seven-year maintenance program while he showed them brand-new pools, and gorgeous two-bedroom units with big closets and full kitchens, he only had to structure a price and payment schedule that met their financial circumstances to do the deal.
What I noticed, though, was that once our friends came back to the hotel to join us, they didn’t quite know how to explain what they’d done. After all, they’d adamantly told us for many years that no one in their right mind would purchase a timeshare. So, they started telling us all the logical reasons they bought, which to me was comical. This couple did not buy based on logic. They bought on emotion and then tried to justify with logic what they had done. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with buying a timeshare (or anything else) if that’s what one wants and what one can afford. The point is, this was an emotional purchase – and almost all purchases are exactly that.
A second mistake I see business owners make is related to the first. I so often see business owners talk about what they have to offer from a logical standpoint, trying to be professional and without emotion. It just won’t work! You want to make an offer that does one of two things. It either helps the person get what he is passionate about, or it solves what the person is in pain over. Simply, your offer must do one or the other. The most compelling offers do both. An example? Think of a parent whose child is sick. The parent is passionate in their love for their child, and is in a great deal of emotional pain that the child is hurting. Whatever that parent is offered that will feed their passion and cure their pain will be a winning offer!
Often, a business owner can talk about passion or pain from their own perspective, telling their own story and how they came to be offering what they do. “I once had an Internet business that made no money at all, and I was determined to figure out what I was not doing right. I’ve studied, gone to workshops, and spent hours changing things around. I can quickly and easily tell you what you need to know so that your website makes money, too.” That’s an example of a story that evokes pain.
A third mistake I see business owners make is creating vastly different copy (or script) for their offers depending on how the offer is made. But if you stop to think about it, you want to make your offers fit what the prospect wants or needs (their passion or pain) more than you want to change it around based on how you make your offer. If your sales copy “bones” are good, they will work no matter if you are selling one-on-one, from the platform, in a teleclass or teleseminar, or from an Internet sales page. You might change the length of the offer, but the sales copy can remain much the same. If you make the mistake of writing completely different copy for each type of sell, you run the risk of making the simple hard and losing sight of what your prospect’s passion or pain is. It’s important for all your sales methods to showcase a consistent message.
Here’s an easy way to get started writing (or speaking) sales copy. I owe this to John Carlton, who taught me this in a sales copy workshop. Begin by filling in the blanks of this sentence:
I help _____________ to do _________________ even though _______________________.
For example, I help solo professionals build six-figure businesses, even though they have been in business a while and not been profitable yet. Or, I help bald men grow more hair, even if they have been bald for a long time. Or, I help overweight women get fit, even though they may never have exercised before in their lives. The beauty of this sentence is that you already highlight what a prospect may have in his head as an objection, and take it away. Additionally, you begin to evoke emotion! Emotion sells, remember?
Sometimes I work with clients who insist they cannot find any emotional triggers that apply to the product or service they are offering. This tells me one of three things:
1) You don’t have something that is saleable.
2) You are looking at what you have to offer from the wrong angle, and need to change your perspective completely to come at it from the prospect’s point of view.
3) You need help in understanding what you offer and the problem it solves, quickly!
If you are using the right emotional triggers for what you have to offer, sales will move right along. You can check this by thinking about why your most recent customers bought. If they’ve done testimonials for you, review them and make a list of the underlying emotions . Change your sales copy to reflect these emotions and test it out – you will probably increase your sales! Remember to talk about the problem you solve in terms of passion or pain relief, and you are on your way to frequent and easy sales.
(c) Sue Painter
How Putting Off Planning Costs You $$
October 25, 2009
Something I often encounter from budding entrepreneurs is strong resistance to spending the time and money to slow down, sit down, and seriously dig into their financial situation and future planning. Two people I worked with not long ago give me great examples of the high cost of putting off “taking a good look” at how things are and could be.
Entrepreneur Number One (we’ll call her Melinda) has been in business a few years now but finds herself unwilling to face the new skills she needs to learn in order to handle the big growth that could come her way. Eventually, the pain of not looking became stronger than the pain to look, so Melinda booked a day with me, fearful though she was. One of the costs of her waiting was that her energy, enthusiasm, and belief in her business success had flatlined. Melinda had taken on some debt to grow her business, but then because she felt guilty about the debt and didn’t really want to face it, she’d failed to keep up her bookkeeping and had no idea where she was in terms of sales, expenses, and accounts receivable. Her guilt drove her to describe herself as “in debt and making no money.” Yet she really didn’t know if that were true or not. As we talked about this, her emotions came to the surface and she realized that constantly telling herself that she was in debt and a failure had drained her faith in herself – a far greater cost than actual financial debt. Melinda needed to step up and act like the successful entrepreneur she is. In her case, that means getting a weekly cash flow statement from her bookkeeper, keeping her pulse on her true operating costs, and letting go of trying to do everything herself in a wrong-headed effort to save money. As we developed a comprehensive list of business systems that Melinda will put in place, she came up with an idea that not only would save her own staff production time, it could easily be a product that she could sell to others in her industry. This one idea will more than reimburse Melinda for the day she spent with me – and more to the point, with sales to others she can probably erase at least half of her debt. Melinda paid dearly for putting off this day – in energy, self-doubt, overhead that was increasing because it wasn’t being watched, production time for her staff, and a missed opportunity to sell to others.
Entrepreneur Number Two (we’ll call her Amy) mentioned to me that she had been wanting to go on a personal retreat to do business planning for a long time. “How long,” I wondered out loud to her. “Six months, at least,” she replied. Amy’s willingness to let everything else come first before she took personal time for herself and her business came close to costing her the chance to more than double her income. It’s not what you will SPEND on your personal retreat, it’s how much it costs you to remain in the same place and fail to take action for moving ahead. Amy tole me that she wants to hit six figures in a year. She has the capability to do that, but not if she doesn’t change her mindset and her business model quickly and drastically. For instance, one reason she has put off going for a 3 day personal retreat is that she doesn’t want to lose work that in essence pays her about $25 per hour. But during her “business makeover” retreat time, she can easily generate ideas and plans that pull her up to an average hourly fee of $100. Until she plans it, that higher hourly fee won’t happen, and neither will her six figure income. It COSTS MONEY to stay stuck. Doing what you have always been doing is only going to get you the very same result you are getting now. So, if you want a different result in your business, take the time for that personal retreat. Set your goals, make your plans, and get on down the road. Your bank account will thank you in the end!
(c) Sue Painter
Key Business Functions for Solopreneurs
September 21, 2009
I promised in my last post to list for you the key business functions for solopreneurs. It’s understandable that people who work “alone” think they are all there is to their business. Understandable, but wrong – to have the reach you need for financial success, you must be a manager as well as a visionary. Take a look at this list and you’ll see the point I’m making!
Key Function: Visionary – you are the creator, the one who imagines, who sees the “need in the niche.” But unless you gain publicity for who you are and what you do, the most wonderful vision the world has to offer won’t ever be shared, and the people who need that vision won’t benefit. So……
Key Functions: Marketing. Whether you are Internet-based or not, you need copywriting so that you can tell about your business in presentations, speeches, and brochures (in the simplest forms of marketing). To make your copy interesting and available to those whose English isn’t strong, you need graphics, too. Are you counting? That’s 3 key functions in addition to your visionary function.
Key Functions: Web design. If you have a website (and who doesn’t these days?) you need copywriting and design for your site. You’ll also need to use the graphics you developed for your print media, perhaps slightly tweaked for web use. Your site is of no use, however, if no one can find it. So, as part of the web design you’ll also need keyword research and search engine optimization. These take time and experience to master, and few solopreneurs have the skills right off the bat. Your business is at stake, so you don’t want to fool around and experiment on your own success, do you? Count them up – that’s three more key functions!
Key Functions: Content writing. Along with copywriting (sales copy) you will need write what it is you offer. If you are a coach and you work from a particular system, you’ll need content that explains your system and how you use it for the benefit of a client. If you are selling a “how to” skill (how to negotiate, for instance) you’ll need content. Content writing is often what a solopreneur wants to do for herself, because, after all, she is the expert and holds the vision of what she wants to say. During or after the content writing, however, you will improve the content by having a copy editor review and help you revise and strengthen your message. We rarely can do a great job of editing our own copy. So, two more key functions identified here.
Key Functions: Sales. If you sell only in person, you are likely, at least at first, to be the sales person. This means that you are now wearing the visionary hat, the content writing hat, and the sales hat. And, since you are smart and know you need a team, don’t forget the manager hat. Surely by now you are realizing you cannot do this all by your lonesome self. You need a personal assistant at the very least, someone who can help you coordinate these key functions. She can help you find and install the merchant account system you need in order to support your sales. Your merchant account system will require telecommunications, your bank, and maybe a clearinghouse that acts between your bank and the merchant account.
If you are selling through the Internet, you will also need a shopping cart. Your shopping cart will integrate with your merchant account system and bank, and you’ll also need to set up a clearinghouse if you don’t already have one. Shopping carts require some technical expertise to set up, so at least at first, you will probably need to have someone handle this for you. If your personal assistant can’t do this, another team member can do this for you. You’ll also need copywriting for the autoresponders in your shopping cart (the e-mails that thank people for their order, give them shipping information, and so forth.)
Social media is an integral part of marketing, public relations, and sales in today’s world, whether you are an Internet-based business or not. Using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn (to name just a few) can be effective, but it’s also a place where you can waste a lot of time. As you grow and get more demands on your time, you will need to use your personal assistant or another team member to handle your social media campaigns. I count 8 key functions here.
Key Functions: Accounting. Your bookkeeping system is vital, because it lets you know exactly where you stand in your business at any given time. I recommend reviewing a cash flow report weekly, usually at the end of the week. To be financially successful, a solopreneur has to be profitable, sure. But you also want to be aware of cash flow, accounts receivable, your operating costs (your overhead), and the return on investment for advertising and other costs. This is one area that I often see solopreneurs struggle with, because they frequently want to “do it themselves.” But you’re not in business to sit at your computer and do bookkeeping, are you? And when you get busy (a sales opportunity) the first thing that falls behind is keeping up the bookkeeping. Before you know it, you’ve lost your handle on the money. I strongly recommend that you let go of the bookkeeping, AND get yourself an accountant who specializes in small businesses. Getting these two key functions in place is vital. Your bookkeeper can provide you with a weekly cash flow statement by e-mail. Do this and you’ll always have a good pulse on your money.
Key functions: Strategic alliances. As your business grows, you will want to form collaborations (often called joint ventures) with other business owners. In fact, you may decide to let other businesses affiliate with you and sell your products or services. It helps to have other business owners to think about these strategies with, so over time you’ll probably want to work with a coach or coaches. You might also want to be in a Mastermind group. These can be invaluable to you, so be clear about exactly what you want, and choose carefully. But DO choose – refusing to invest in your own growth is a sure path to keeping your business small.
You could also end up needing a business manager who handles customer service, designs customer appreciation campaigns, and special events. Sometimes a partner ends up fulfilling these functions. The key is to remember that these are important to your success, so if you don’t get around to them, it’s time to get help. I count 4 key functions here.
Key Functions: Home. My position is that having help at home is key to a solopreneur’s business success. If you decide to keep handling housekeeping, yard maintenance, and errands for yourself, keep in mind that there is an opportunity cost. One of two things will likely happen. You’ll make the excuse to stay home and take care of all home maintenance, missing opportunities to connect and market. Or, your home will get messier and less maintained because you are so focused on business. Both have costs to you and your business. It’s well worth it to have support in keeping your home a wonderful place for respite and work. I count 3 key functions here.
You can count these up for yourself, and get the point that it takes a team to grow a business. Thinking small keeps you small. Thinking you can do it all yourself is both grandiose and unwise. Remember that you’ve got four major hats to wear no matter what – you are the visionary, the sales person, the manager, and the content writer, at the least. You dilute your focus when you decide to take responsibility for much more than these core functions, and fuzzy focus leads to failure. Take some time to set up your key functions and who is going to handle them now – and watch your business flourish!
(c) Sue Painter