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
Entrepreneurial Passion, Problems, & Desires
March 8, 2010
Here’s a really short video I did for you today, just before starting 3 1/2 days with Ali Brown, James Roche, and my fellow Millionaire Protegee Club members in Marina Del Ray. Think about this for YOUR biz!
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
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
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
How to Lose a Sell and Hack Me Off!
August 12, 2009
So here’s the story – I’d been looking around for someone to take an old, template-based website I’ve had for a while to an updated look with a slant toward the speaking side of my work. An acquaintance suggested a small solopreneur firm out of town, I e-mailed for some info, looked at some of their work, and decided to talk with the woman. We decided to speak on a Monday, at which time she wanted her team to be on the call to listen to what I wanted. She also mentioned that she’d be happy to chat informally over the weekend to get to know each other a bit. (Point 1 – over that weekend, I noticed, she didn’t call – no biggie, but still, lack of initiative there.)
Monday came, no call from her, so 10 minutes after the hour I called her. She answered, sounding surprised, with dog barking in background. Reporting a sore throat and a visit to the doctor earlier that day, she said she didn’t feel like talking and had e-mailed me a few hours before to reschedule the call. Hmmm….doctor in the morning, but no “let’s cancel” e-mail until 90 minutes before the call (point 2). Feeling sorry that she was ill, I agreed to a call the next day.
Next day, on Tuesday, she called. I quickly noticed that there was no team on the line, only her. We talked and I told her specfically that I wanted a site that I could go in and change easily, the type of links I wanted, and that I wanted a Wordpress blogsite. The website was to be only 4 pages, pretty small, but with a lot of links. The call was pleasant enough, she asked good questions, and mentioned that her company did develop in Wordpress often. She agreed to have a proposal to me by Thursday. I thought that was a little long, but given that her team was not on the call as planned (no explanation given for that), OK. (Point 3 – no team on the call and Point 4, solopreneurs usually can give quotes right then and there or at the latest in 24 hours).
Thursday came and went, no proposal arrived. Late Friday I got an email promising the proposal over the weekend. The weekend came and went, no proposal arrived. (Points 5 &6!) Monday came and went, Tuesday came and went, no proposal. Voila! On Wednesday a proposal came with a suggestion that to move ahead we NOW schedule the call with her team.
Let me tell you, she’d already lost me. Remember that know, like, and trust factor? I didn’t trust her word for beans by now. If it takes 10 days to get a 4 page proposal out of a solopreneur what the heck is it going to take to get a website out of her? I would not have agreed to work with her if the work had been free, truly. But, I opened the proposal and to my irritation, frustration, and total astonishment here’s what I saw:
- A $4900 price tag for a 4 page website.
- A statement that the site would be built in Joomla.
There was more, but I can stop right there. The price tag is, in my experience and opinion, ridiculously high. I have 7 sites and not a one of them cost anything NEAR that money. Secondly, the proposal was for something I didn’t ask for and didn’t want. Never did we discuss Joomla in our phone call.
This is exactly, exactly, exactly how NOT TO SELL. It is a classic case of “let me, the seller, tell you WHAT YOU NEED and HOW IT WILL BE DELIVERED no matter what you say you want or need, because I KNOW BETTER THAN YOU WHAT YOU NEED.” ARGHGHGH. Excuse me while I tear my hair out by the roots! I see people lose sales all the time using this “I know better than you know what you need” tactic. It won’t work! There are ways to educate a prospect and gently suggest considering something else, but to write it up with no prior discussion is horrible, terrible sales technique. It also tells me that SHE didn’t have the expertise to suggest this without talking to her technical help – a bad sign.
This woman could be the most capable, talented person on the planet to do this job, but as I have said a zillion times before, that does NOT matter. What matters is her marketing skills, which to be perfectly frank stink worse than a dead skunk in high heat.
I was already totally un-sold, but now I was both un-sold and hacked off. I’d just had 10 days of my time wasted on this project and been treated as if my wants mattered not one whit. So I wrote a short, polite, two-sentence email that said, “Thank you for the proposal, but it was not delivered to me in a timely manner, nor is it a proposal that matches what we discussed in our call. I don’t want to pursue this further. I appreciate your time in speaking with me.”
Will you even believe that I actually got an e-mail back (this time in less than an hour, not 10 days) that basically said “we know better than you what you need, you will never get what you want using WordPress, my develop is a genius, and I stand behind what he said.” Defensive posturing NEVER works in sales. Nor does telling the prospect that she doesn’t know what she is talking about. Even if this is true, the tactic won’t work!
Take a note – don’t attempt to sell this way. Marketing is about relationship building – and this woman missed her cues about 5 different times. Marketing is about being timely – and she was not. Marketing is about gentle leading – she did not. Marketing is about asking for a budget, she did not. Marketing is about not hacking off your prospect – she did. And when you are told there will be no deal, marketing is about taking the hit and moving on, not answering back defensively.
Ugh, what an icky feel. Makes me sad, though. I like to see solopreneurs succeed, but I doubt this one will.
(c) Sue Painter
Marketing for Entrepreneurs – What is BANTS?
June 4, 2009
Entrepreneurs and solo-preneurs most often are the face of their business. That means YOU are the one out meeting people and talking about what you do to folks who might potentially be a good match for your product or services. I often ask my clients how they “know” someone is a good lead or prospect, and the answers I get tell me that we each develop a vague sense of how much interest or need there is. Vague sense is a good start, but we’ll be more on point and successful if we have a stronger way to classify and prioritize our potential customers.
Large companies often use a system called BANTS. Entrepreneurs can use a simplified version in their own marketing. It’s an acronym that stands for five issues that we usually address informally in sales conversations.
B is budget – is this person willing to set aside the money necessary to purchase your product or service?
A is authority – are you talking to someone who can make a yes decision to buy? And if you aren’t, who is the authority, and can the person you are speaking with introduce you or include that person in your meeting?
N is need – does this person have a need for what you offer?
T is timeframe – when does the person see moving forward, or when must the need be solved?
S is sales-ready. Is this person ready to buy now?
Some companies use the S as size, meaning, how large will this sale be in monetary terms? Is the opportunity large or small?
If you are the marketer for your business, you can use this acronym to quickly see what is lacking when a sell is not moving forward. Maybe everything looks good but budget won’t be in place for another six months. By asking the right questions you’ll know that – and you can make a note to reach out again in 4 or 5 months rather than spending your wheels and getting a constant “no deal.” Try using BANTS or adopt it to your own unique situation. I’ll bet you will more clearly see where things are stuck, and learn to use these criteria to market more successfully. And that will be one more way to make your business thrive!
(c) Sue Painter
Your Business and the Web – Can You Grow Without It?
November 19, 2008
I was a little shocked today to hear that PC Magazine will cease print publication after the January 2009
issue. The magazine is going online only. Last month, I received my last print issue of Scrapbook Retailer magazine – even a magazine devoted to paper artists is taking itself online only. I myself quit snail-mailing newsletters for all three of my businesses well over a year ago, relying only on e-zines.
Last night we punched the button on our built-in microwave oven and it black out and died. This morning, rather than running all over Knoxville looking for a Jenn-Air microwave that would fit into the now-empty hole, I went online, did an online chat with Peter A. of Jenn-Air, talked to a very helpful Sherry, and ordered the replacement microwave and the trim kit. I didn’t even think about driving around in traffic hoping to find a local store with this particular model in inventory.
Seems to me that an online presence for nearly any business is an idea whose times has come. Even if it’s just a simple e-brochure, a website gives you the ability to reach and influence far more potential customers than you will ever be able to do face-to-face, or could afford to do via snail-mail. Internet – it’s here, it’s real, it’s now. if you don’t have a site at all, it’s time to embrace the web.
There are dozens of great web designers out there, here’s a link to someone I trust (you can click this link just to buy a website domain name, too!). The point, though, is to educate yourself about how to effectively use a site to increase the breath and depth of your business. I’ve learned dozens of useful tips from the best designers, here are two that I commonly do not see used on business sites:
- Have a “contact us” or “sign up for our news” block on every single page, not just on the “contact us” page at the back.
- Spread your customer testimonials throughout your site, onto every page. If you have a separate page called “testimonials” few people will take the time to click and read through it. And, match your testimonials with a picture of the person if you can. It adds instant warmth and credibility.
If you want to know more about building a decent website stay tuned, I’ll have more tips in upcoming blogs and will have a web designer talking to my Bet You Build Your Business Mastermind Group soon after the first of the year. Meanwhile, budget site development if you don’t have a site, and budget updating the site if you already have one you don’t visit very often. More about both, later. Web presence is definitely on the list of how to make your business thrive.
Sue P.
Giving Customers the Right Thing
November 2, 2008
I had an early Christmas gift given to me this week. A long-time client brought it, the stylish pink and beige wrapping reflecting the stylish person she is. It was, hands down, one of the most perfect gifts I’ve received for Christmas, ever. I felt this little rush of pure delight when I opened it, and I anticipate enjoying and using it for many years to come. It made me happy and it let me share a moment of pleasure and fun with the giver. The gift and the giving were satisfying to us both.
This early-Christmas event got me thinking about satisfying customers and clients. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this holds the formula for perfectly serving our customers well, creating one of a series of satisfying moments that meet and even exceed our customer’s expectations. Here are the elements that lead to pleasing me (the ersatz customer):
- The giver knew my interests well, having paid close attention over time to what I talked about
- She was vested in giving me something she knew would be on target
- The gift was useful and allied with one of my interests and activities
- It was something new, just out, and not likely to be something I already had or knew of
- It met a need in me for more information on an activity I often do
- It was timely – she gave it to me before I went out and stumbled across it myself
- The gift gave me the feeling that she cared about me and wanted to please me
- I am left with a feeling of anticipation, looking forward to using it
- The giving built an increased sense of connection and pleasure between the two of us
Do you see how the gift giver did what savvy entrepreneurs do? Following her formula, we’d hit the nail on the head with our customers every single time, and do it in a way that proves to the customer that we are useful to him (or her). We would have a full stable of loyal customers who looked to us to know them and be able to meet their needs. What else could we ask for? We’d be happy, they’d be happy – just like my gift giver and I were.
Over the next month, try serving every customer as if you were seeking and giving them the perfect gift. The step back and evaluate. I’d bet you’ll find that this is another way to make your business thrive.
And to Anna, many thanks.