Do You Need To Use Worry About The Osborne Effect?
July 3, 2010
Back in the early 1980’s Adam Osborne, who created the Osborne computer, made the mistake of giving a sneak preview of a newer, lighter model called the Osborne Executive. This decision cost Osborne his business, because buyers wanted the less-weighty computer (25 pounds!) so they quit buying his existing computers and waited for the new one to become available. The story goes that the company essentially died on the vine, for the cash flow from new sales dried up while customers waited for the newer model.
Osborne’s big mistake was to introduce a new piece of technology before it was available for purchase. Tech buyers will immediately cease to buy an older model and wait for the newer one once the word gets out…if you don’t have it ready to sell, your sales plummet. This became such a famous case study that it is still known today as the Osborne Effect.
It is always wise to forego advertising a new model until the model actually exists for purchase? It depends on your industry. The movie industry always advertises new movies before they are released, looking to drive up the buzz and make big hits at the box office on opening day. But that’s a different biz model, because they’ve typically already squeezed sales out of the previous releases long before the new movie is out. (Think Harry Potter or James Bond.)
Generally, though, if you sell a product (jewelry, luggage, clothing, air conditioners, etc.) you don’t want to get stuck with a lot of existing inventory because you have started to market a “new, improved” version of the same thing. And you don’t want your sales of existing inventory to tank when word gets out that in a few months the “new, improved” version will be available. A few months can be a long time to wait for cash flow!
Think about your own products and be aware of the Osborne Effect. Plan wisely for releases of newer “models” of what you sell, and don’t create a thirsty crowd if you don’t have something to sell them. Osborne eventually declared bankruptcy. You and I can learn from his mistake.
How To Waste Time & Money on Marketing
June 20, 2010
I’m often asked to help solo professionals re-vamp old and never-used marketing plans, but I can’t do it without a mindset check first. Why? Because the surest way to waste your marketing budget and your time is to be unclear about what your business is about, what exactly you offer that benefits your customer, and why anyone would want what you are offering.
A few weeks ago I was listening to a potential client voice her concerns that her accounting firm was not “changing to meet the times.” She wanted her other two partners to get enthusiastic about a new specialty for the firm – adding on accounting services specifically for the elderly and the adult children who often end up having to manage their parent’s finances from another state. She has quite a bit of passion about this idea and feels that the demographics support it. She wanted to hire me to help them come up with a new website and 12-month marketing plan for this new part of the business.
After just a bit of questioning, I found that the other two partners didn’t support it. Older than she, they were nearing retirement and felt they had enough work and enough money. They were past the point in their careers where they wanted to build something new. This fact threw new questions into the pot. Would the woman push forward, putting her own time and money into the effort with only luke-warm support from the rest of the firm’s partners? Would she break off from the firm and establish an entirely new business? If she did that, did she have the money to both establish a new firm and build a new service at thet same time? Would she do some of her old work to give her financial footing, and only work to establish the “geriatric” accounting services part time? Was she positioned well in her personal life to take on breaking away? Could she bring the other partners around to her point of view?
While she was impatient to “get started” I was not! The mindset and marketing required to make such a new endeavor pay off would be very different if she went out on her own as opposed to remaining part of the existing firm, which had been together for many years. My experience is that creating and implementing a marketing plan means that the basics are already in place. Otherwise, it’s too easy to spend time and money only to decide that you must go off in a slightly different direction because of the shifting ground of your business and personal life.
My focus for working with the person became helping her envision how her idea might best work, the structure it would take to support it, assessing if she had the personal and professional ground in place (she was recently divorced, had just lost a parent, and had been ill for months with mono). After that ground is firm, we can build a kick-butt marketing plan. But you gotta answer the deeper questions first. Otherwise, you’re going to waste your entrepreneurial energy. And that’s a precious thing to waste!
Pioneer Marketing For Entrepreneurs
May 28, 2010
When I was a kid living (briefly) in Oklahoma, one of my favorite times was the local “Pioneer Days.” Everyone dressed up in pioneer clothing, old Conestoga wagons were brought out of barns, and re-enactments of the early days of the town were carried out in the town square and at the fairgrounds. Everything was “old-timey” — the way it used to be. Some of the men would even grow their hair long and sport the old fashion handlebar mustache and side lamb chops.
I’m convinced that we are now in the pioneer days for marketing. If I’ve read one article about how push marketing doesn’t work anymore and that it is now all about building relationships with the consumer, I’ve read twenty. And every time I read one I shake my head and wonder why no one writes that this is back to marketing’s pioneer days. We now have “Pioneer Marketing.” It’s what our forebears did in every single city and town, and what the best and wisest businesses still do.
Pioneer Marketing (I think I just coined a new term) has one main tenet, and that tenet is infallible. It works every time because it is based on a law of human nature. What’s the law? “People respond positively and in a timely manner when they are treated with respect, courtesy, honesty, and in a way that has their best interests at heart.” That one law, rigidly adhered to, will win out every time. Your attention may be diverted by aggressive and shiny marketing for a while, but in the end you will go where that law of human nature is adhered to.
Simply put, our prospects and existing customers don’t want to be sold into a product or service that serves the seller and doesn’t serve the buyer. They are tired of push marketing coupled with shoddy goods and lacking customer service. And this is one huge reason that you, as an entrepreneur, have it over the big guys. The big guys have used push marketing, shoddy goods, and lacking customer service for so long that they are scrambling right now to turn huge, bloated, bureaucratic businesses around to save their sales. Meanwhile, you and I can “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,” meeting and forming relationships with our prospects, selling our expertise, servicing our customers, and making the transaction into a win-win rather than a win-lose. We have memorable and recognizable faces. Large, bloated businesses give you a new and usually non-caring face every time you walk in their door or buy from them online.
Family-owned businesses, solo professionals, and entrepreneurs can step up and capture market share right now. Most of us have a familiar face to our prospects and customers. Many of the big guys don’t, and now that they realize that, they are all about “relationship marketing,” thinking they have discovered a whole new world. It isn’t a whole new world at all, it’s the world that many small business owners never left, the one that our pioneer forebears lived in. Everyone knew the business owners up and down the street and how they treated customers. Everyone knew who to avoid and who to buy from. Business was good or bad depending on the business owner’s savvy and her ability to form and keep relationships. Reputation was everything, and was based on something real, not something manipulated by copious marketing.
People respond to Pioneer Marketing because it is in our human nature. We are wired for relationships. On the frontier, relationships and trust in others meant survival. In the marketplace, it means survival for you, the business owner. And it is coupled with a sense of trust and satisfaction in our customers, as well.
You don’t have to put on a pioneer costume or grow a mustache to use Pioneer Marketing. Just plaster that one law of human nature up where you can see it, and build your business from that place. Let your marketing, advertising, customer service, and sales be aligned with that law. Couple that with good business skills, and you are good to go. The next time you hear about the new “relationship marketing” just smile. You are already there. So hip, so pioneer. That’s you!
Wish, Hope, Pray Marketing
May 24, 2010
With apologies to one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Gilbert, I want to ask you to assess your marketing with a cold eye and an honest look. Tell me…..is your marketing system based on the wish, hope, and pray method? Here are some signs that it is:
- No one in your organization has a clear mission of responsibility for creating and running a constant marketing system.
- Marketing falls to the back of the list after client services, bookkeeping, scheduling, errands, and dusting the office.
- Networking in the community and on the Internet is catch-as-catch-can and is handed off to the least busiest person.
- You have no idea how many new customers you have gained in the last 30, 60, or 90 days.
- You have no idea how many customers you haven’t heard from in the last 30, 60, or 90 days.
- You don’t really like to market, think it is hard to do, and believe that great customer service alone will do the trick.
- Your marketing system consists of trying to upsell existing clients when they are in (think about the hair salon syndrome….you can’t get out of there without running the gauntlet of hair product, make-up, and spa service suggestions every single time you are there).
If even one of these hits home, you are in the wish, hope, and pray mode and you need to get out of it, fast! Consider your business as a three legged stool, the three legs being marketing, customer service, and expertise. Each of the three legs is completely dependent on the other two, as the stool won’t work without them all.
- Your expertise is what you do, your magic, your passionate purpose.
- Your customer service is all the things you develop and carry out to ensure your customers get 5-star treatment, including how you take care of displeasure and disappointment when it occurs.
- Your marketing is a planned, ongoing, automated system that feeds you a constant flow of potential new customers.
Each leg of the stool is key, and each is as important as the other. If you have sawed off a leg by your disinterest, busyness, or avoidance, I suggest you wish, hope, and pray before you sit yourself on the stool. You may balance for a little while, but in the end you’ll be on the ground. And that’s one place no entrepreneur wants to be.
3 Reasons Why Solo Professionals Often Don’t Use A Business Plan
May 5, 2010
Here’s a little insider secret about solo professionals – less than 1 in 5 have a written business plan. Are you shocked? I’ve worked with smart self-employed solopreneurs for nearly six years now, and in that time I’ve come to understand why you don’t. Here are three of the top reasons:
- Business plan templates often ask for information not relevant to your business, such as detailed plans for capitalization through “old-business” mechanisms such as bank loans and venture capital.
- Commonly used biz plan templates often do not support newer business models such as Internet-only businesses, those with little or no physical inventory, or direct marketed businesses.
- The templates also often short-change the marketing and customer service aspects of the business, arguably the most vital parts of business activity for micro-businesses.
Even though commonly used business plan templates or outlines don’t serve solo professionals particularly well, you still will do better in your business if you have a written business plan. So if the dirty little secret of your business is that you’ve done no formal planning, listen up! You need a plan! Here are just a few reasons why.
- Completing a solopreneur biz plan forces you to become clearer and more succinct about what you offer, and that enables you to talk to prospects (potential customers) in a way that attracts them to your services.
- A completed plan gives you specific goals to hit at specific times, which allows you to review and reflect how you are doing up against what you said you could do 3 months, 6 months, or a year ago.
- Often even more valuable than both of the above, having a plan helps you avoid the “bright, shiny object syndrome” that so many of us have. It gives you a quick way to judge whether the opportunity is a distraction or something that will actually help you hit your goals.
There’s much more that proper business planning can do for solo professionals. And by proper, I mean planning that is crafted specifically for a small, solo business that operates out of the home (or a small solo office). Next Monday, May 10th, I’m doing a totally free one hour teleclass about easy-peasy business planning for solo professionals. I suggest you register for the teleclass and call in. You might be surprised at how simple yet helpful completing a business plan for solo professionals can be. To register, go to http://confidentmarketer.com/site/upcoming-teleclasses/simple-business-plan/. You’ll get good content about what you do need in a solo professional plan, and how to make it usable just for you. See you then!
Is Your Business At The Bottom Of Your To-Do List?
April 25, 2010
If you are a female solo professional, chances are that your business is not making as much money as you’d like it to. Perhaps when you got the thought to go out on your own you held a vision of more flexibility, a freer schedule, and making at least as much money as you were making working for someone else. Perhaps you even secretly thought that you had the chance to make it big, pulling in much more money, paying off your mortgage, easily paying for a child’s college education.
Let me ask you…..where is your business now, compared to that vision? Where is it compared to your secret thought of making it big? Have you given up on that dream?
I read a story about makeovers in a recent edition of O magazine that made me think about how women so often put their business at the bottom of their to-do list. We do it to ourselves and our businesses, actually. We think we’re being unselfish and giving, taking care of others before ourselves. But are we, really? Listen to one comment from the O makeover article:
“With the new looks came a new attitude. What a makeover does for all of us is point out that there are BIG possibilites for us all. Maybe we’ll get the idea that from a makeover, we can take another step toward change in other areas of our lives.”
Lack of attention to one’s self is no way to teach our children to stand up and be counted, is it? Making sure that everyone else has new clothes while we schlep around in last year’s sweats only makes us both look and feel at the bottom of the barrel. Paying for private lessons for our children while refusing to spend the money to take a workshop for ourselves sells ourselves and our business short.
Think about it. If you fail to give yourself and your business the nurturing you both deserve, you send a silent message that you are not worth your own time and care, and that your business isn’t important enough to make a difference in anyone’s life. Is that the truth? I doubt it. But you are showing how little you believe you can make it really big when you continue to play safe and small. You are refusing to serve others with your business, in a way that only you can uniquely serve.
When you really tune in to your business vision what does it look like? Have you forgotten about your early enthusiasm? How can you get it back? And if you did, how much cleaner and better would you see the way to that secret vision you have? How much more freedom would you have to be with your friends and family? How much less worry over financial matters would you have? What kind of example would you set for family and friends and other entrepreneurs if you kick-started your business again and made it provide for you at a high level? It would be a powerful message, wouldn’t it?
That’s just not going to happen if you take care of everyone else’s current needs first. Take care of yourself and your business, so that you have the wealth needed to take care of those you love. You aren’t here to serve your family and friends everything on a platter. In fact, if you do, they will learn directly from you to lean on others rather than themselves. Is that what you want? I heard a quote last week that really made me stop and think. “A strong focus now creates a different future later.”
How do you focus now on your business, so that you can have that different future? Here are three ways:
- Change your lifestyle and your schedule around so that you are spending at least two hours every single day building your business. No excuses. You are in business for yourself, right? Two hours a day is a bare minimum. Otherwise, your business is nothing more than a hobby. You can work part time, but you can’t work no time. Two hours, minimum, every day.
- Create a calendar for the entire year. Plan in your vacation weeks, at least three long weekend retreat times for yourself to focus solely on your business, and time for learning what you don’t know and need to know in order to build your income. If you are running out of hours in the week, get help for the low-level stuff and keep your eye on the stuff that creates future income.
- Get a mentor or a coach. Do I say that because I am one? Nope! Virtually every single wealthy business owner works with someone who can pull them out of the weeds when they need it, give them perspective, and save them a lot of time in mastering new tasks. No excuses. Don’t tell yourself you can’t afford it, tell yourself the cost of doing without is much higher than what you’ll pay. Think return on investment, not cost. That’s how a business owner thinks, after all. Are you one, or not?
Why Do Your Customers Buy From You?
April 11, 2010
Here’s a fun way to figure out why people are willing to get out their credit card to buy. Ready? Sit down and think about why YOU bought the last dozen items you spent money on. You might be surprised at your reasons, and you can use the insight to help structure the offers you make to your own customers.
I just spent over $200 on Magellan’s travel supplies website. Why?
- I got their new spring/summer catalog in the mail. Magellan’s used a direct mail piece, their timing was right (I have several trips coming up), and the catalog renewed my TOMA (top of mind awareness) about Magellan’s. The key here? Timing! I regularly receive Magellan’s catalog and usually throw it out without looking. But I’m excited about upcoming travel, and I needed to refresh a few things. LESSON LEARNED: Keeping in touch with your customers over time is critical, even if they haven’t bought from you in a while.
- A notice on the catalog’s front cover offered free shipping on orders over $100. I figured almost any order would come to that amount, and free shipping saves me money. A deadline on the free shipping (May 9th) spurred me to take action now rather than lose the catalog on my desk. LESSON LEARNED: Make your special offers time-limited, with a relatively short time frame.
Let’s look at what I ordered and my reason for each purchase.
- Spill-proof pouch – because the last time I was on a plane one of my face care products leaked out into my cosmetic bag. This pouch SOLVES A PROBLEM.
- Electronics travel case – I didn’t go looking for this item, but I saw it browsing the catalog. I’m thinking “Hmm, I’m sure tired of all my various chargers and USB cables getting into a big knot at the bottom of my briefcase, so maybe I’ll try this.” This purchase SOLVES A PROBLEM and was a win for Magellan’s because of 1) A GOOD IDEA and 2) SUGGESTED SELLING.
- Personalized luggage strap – This is actually a gift for my husband. His luggage looks similar to many, and more than once he’s picked up someone else’s at the airport. The strap WORKS AS A GIFT and helps SOLVE SOMEONE ELSE’S PROBLEM.
- Extra-large mesh pack-it cube – These things are hard to find in large sizes, so Magellan’s gets a star for carrying them. They allow me to pack clothing inside my rolling duffel luggage and quickly pull out what I need without digging around. If I get stopped for inspection, I can easily pull these out without re-shuffling and wrinkling my clothing. I’ve used 2 gallon kitchen zipper bags, but the zippers don’t hold up to being open and closed over and over again, and the 2 gallon size is now hard to find. These mesh cubes SOLVE A PROBLEM but also GIVE ME A FEELING OF LUXURY. I get to graduate from packing my clothes in baggies.
- Blackberry pouch – When I’m sight-seeing I try not to carry a purse, but I often need my phone and camera with me, and my pants usually have no pockets. This handy little pouch hangs around the neck and will hold both my Blackberry and my small camera. Perfect! Again, solves a problem and makes something easier for me.
- Walkstool – One of the downsides of having a new knee is that it’s still hard for me to stand on concrete for very long without pain. This innovative product offers a sturdy, foldable instant stool but weighs very little, and can hang off a belt, a backpack, a purse, or my shoulder. Next time I think I better not go on a walking tour because we’ll stand and listen to a guide for 15 minutes, I’ll be able to go and know I can sit when I need to. HUGE problem solved for me and a solution I can live with (not too heavy or too bulky, small and easy to pack).
- Inflatable neck pillow – I use one on planes, and foolishly over inflated mine a few trips ago. POW! It burst at 30,000 feet and that was the end of that! I’ve looked around in airports but balked at paying $30.00. Magellan’s had one on sale for $12.99. What sold me? REASONABLE PRICING and PROBLEM SOLVED.
As you can see, I’m a buyer who will spend for solving problems. I also respond to suggested selling and to the feeling of having something a little fancier for myself. But these are not the only reasons Magellan’s got $200 from me. They are smart in how they set up their web site, too.
- Their website is easy to maneuver and loads quickly.
- They offer customer reviews of their products, which talked me into the stool and the Blackberry pouch.
- Their page for each item tells me immediately that the item is in stock. (One of my pet peeves is ordering online only to find that the item isn’t due in for 30 days or so.)
- Their page for each item offers more pictures than the catalog, allowing me to “look” at items in detail.
- Their check-out process is easy.
Take a look at what you’ve spent money on and list the reasons why you bought. You can then look at what you offer to others and think about whether your offers are attractive for those same reasons. If they are not, tweak them and your sales copy, and see if your sales improve. I bet they will!
(c) Sue Painter
Why A Solopreneur Can Offer Less But Make More
March 28, 2010
One of the most surprising things for solo professionals to find out is that their prospects (potential customers) actually will more often make a purchase when they have less choice about what they can buy. It seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? I’ve seen more than one solopreneur run herself ragged, trying to finish many different “product lines” because she believed it was the way to make more money. In other words, if you have 3 e-books to sell, 12 e-books is better because there are four times as many chances that you will make a sale. Or, if you have bookkeeping services to offer, and you also add personal concierge services and web design, you will surely sell more over a year’s time.
Guess what? Neither neuroscience or marketing research backs this up! I remember one of the first things I heard from Ali Brown a few years ago, and I’ve now heard it repeated by several other top Internet marketers. “The confused mind doesn’t buy.” Ali applies this to several situations. She’ll say, for instance, that if your prospect isn’t crystal clear about exactly what next to do to place an order on your website, you will lose the sale. But she also means it when she works with you in creating what you offer. “Don’t make it too complicated, keep it simple and streamlined,” she’ll say. “The confused mind doesn’t buy.”
Sometimes this is tough to take for a solopreneur who is good at many things. Those types of people tend to fight narrowing down their target market like tigers fighting over the last piece of carrion. But the truth is, if you say you are good at everything, you do make people wonder what, indeed, you are best at. It’s wise to narrowly focus, knowing something very well and sticking to offering products and services around that thing. Later on, when you’ve met your market and built credibility, you can add another target or create another offer.
Professor Sheena Iyengar, who teaches at Columbia Business School, has been studying the science of decision for years. If you want to pick her brain on this topic, get a copy of her newest book, The Art of Choosing. She first discovered that children were happier when they were given only one toy to play with rather than a wide choice. Over time, she came to understand that what matters to us is the number of options we have when we make a decision, not just the options themselves.
Another researcher, a professor at Princeton, discovered that after about five to nine items our ability to choose becomes too complicated. This is one reason I teach my business clients to limit packages to three offers for their customers. We can easily wrap our minds around three. If you are a wedding planner, for instance, and you offer a bridge and groom 3 main types of packages, they will choose one and go happily on, perhaps asking you to customize one of the packages a little bit for them. But if you offer that same couple 27 packages, it becomes too complicated and overwhelming. They may well walk away, trying to decide. And BAM! Someone comes along with a simplified version of what you offered, they sigh in relief, and pick one – from the smarter wedding planner.
Here’s my best advice to solopreneurs who are wondering about how to showcase what they offer.
- Keep your offers very simple and clear. If you have several different categories of products and services, label them very differently.
- Offer no more than 3 options of any one category. You can always charge more for customizing one package if that is requested.
- Keep your payment plans simple. Depending on the price point of what you offer, provide options for a single payment and perhaps a two-pay or three-pay installment over one or two months. Keep in mind that you want to collect your money before your product or service is entirely consumed, however.
- Use a matrix (a chart) to show what options are included in each package. People can then see at a quick glance what they are purchasing, and what is not included. It makes choosing easier.
Keeping your selections simple also goes for how you offer your products and services, but that’s a topic for another day. Don’t overwhelm your potential customers, and don’t overwhelm yourself, either. You will make more money in less time, and you will also have more satisfied customers. It’s a win-win all the way around! Less choice = more sales. Strange, isn’t it?
(c) Sue Painter
Five Ways To Use LinkedIn To Build Your Visibility
March 26, 2010
I consider LinkedIn to be one of the “big four” of social media (the others are Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube). But after I read a few recent articles about LinkedIn, I realized I was not using my profile in a very business-savvy way. Here are 3 ways to update your LinkedIn profile that will increase your visibility and help build recognition for your expertise.
1. Change what you have in the fields for first and last name. Instead of using Sue Painter, for example, I kept my first name (Sue) but changed the last name field to read Painter, Owner, The Confident Marketer. This puts your business name front and center and leaves you the next field free for key terms about who you are and what you do.
2. Change the next field (the headline). Most people put the name of their business in this field. But your business name often doesn’t tell people exactly what you do or what you are expert in. And, you now already have your business name above, in the “last name” field. Since LinkedIn is keyword searchable (and is indexed by Google) this is a great place to use your keywords. For example, I used the terms SoloPreneur Marketing Stategist, Mindset Shift Expert, Neuromarketing, Coach, Speaker, Internet Marketing Expert. So now, right at the top of my profile I have much more information about myself and what I do than just my name and my business’s name. Here is the before and after of the very top of my profile.
Before: Sue Painter
Owner, The Confident Marketer
After: Sue (Hawkins) Painter, Owner, The Confident Marketer
SoloPreneur Marketing Stategist, Mindset Shift Expert, Neuromarketing, Coach, Speaker, Internet Marketing Expert
Can you see how much more information that offers someone viewing my profile? And, the keyword terms are searchable within LinkedIn, so if someone is looking for a mindshift expert for solo business owners, I’ll be found more easily.
3. As you build your profile, weave the keyword terms you have used into “Summary” field. It’s your chance to give a fuller explanation of what you do and how you work. Be sure to use your keyword terms again at the very bottom of the Summary field, where LinkedIn asks for “Specialties.”
4. If you are a blogger (and as a solo professional, you should be!) click on the “More” tab at the top of the Linked In page, above your profile, and then click on “Applications.” You’ll see several applications there, the important one links your blog poastings to to LinkEd automatically. You can also add Twitter accounts if you wish.
5. Be sure to hit LinkedIn a few times a week to see what’s new with your connections and to provide an update about what you are up to, as well. Share information about upcoming products, events, and offers.
Personalizing your LinkedIn page will lead those you don’t know toward the “know/like/trust factor, which is very important to building your business.
(c) Sue Painter
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