MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

I just had a reader post the fol­low­ing com­ment below our post on “How to Get from 20 Mil­lion to 100 Mil­lion in Online Sales”

I don’t usu­ally pub­li­cize com­ments. But this is an excep­tion. As I was read­ing this com­ment and the strat­egy the writer shared, it kept remind­ing me of some lessons I learned from the book “The Ulti­mate Sales Machine” by Chet Holmes. It’s a seri­ously good book and has a spe­cial place in my busi­ness library.

Well it turned out the com­ment was from Chet or from a diehard fan. It linked back to Chet’s web­site HowToDoubleSales.com.

In any case…this is a beau­ti­ful sales strat­egy and one worth shar­ing. Here’s the comment.

Pow­er­ful Sales & Mar­ket­ing Ideas of $100 Mil­lion Dol­lar Com­pa­nies

So let’s imag­ine that you do sell office equip­ment and it’s your turn to give your speech and the audi­ence is full of CFOs. If you’re a lit­tle strate­gic, you might go with some­thing like: “The Five Ways our Office Equip­ment Can Ben­e­fit You.” Again, an approach like this appeals only to those who are “buy­ing now,” and pos­si­bly those who are “open to it,” but pretty much 90% of your audi­ence is leaving.

So what title would have a broader appeal? How about: “The Nine Ways You’re Wast­ing Money in your Oper­a­tions and Admin­is­tra­tion.” I’m not say­ing this is going to rivet the exec­u­tive to their chair, but they’re not leav­ing either. They’ll stay to hear a lit­tle more. This is also true for an ad with that head­line. It’s def­i­nitely going to appeal to the top two tiers, but it also appeals to every­one in that stadium.

Every­one is inter­ested in sav­ing money in their oper­a­tions and admin­is­tra­tion costs. Cer­tainly every CFO is inter­ested in that and, there­fore, they would stay in the sta­dium. And if every­thing that fol­lows has some sub­stance to it, you’ve now taken your mar­ket­ing and sell­ing activ­ity to an entirely new level.

The hard­est thing we need to do today is grab the atten­tion of the poten­tial buyer and keep the atten­tion long enough to help them buy your prod­uct. This approach of offer­ing some edu­ca­tion of value to them gives you a sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­nity to attract more buy­ers and build more cred­i­bil­ity. I call this “edu­ca­tional based mar­ket­ing” and here’s a line you should write down: You will attract way more buy­ers if you are offer­ing to teach them some­thing of value to them than you will ever attract by sim­ply try­ing to sell them your prod­uct or service.

As another exam­ple, I had a mer­chant ser­vices com­pany as a client. They pri­mar­ily tar­get retail stores. So in their audi­ence are retail store­own­ers. If they walk out there and start off with: “I’m going to show you why our mer­chant ser­vices are bet­ter than any­one else’s,” the 90% are leav­ing as they are not in the mar­ket for mer­chant ser­vices right now. So what could you say to keep every retailer in their seats to hear a lit­tle more? Here’s a great title: “The Five Rea­sons All Retail­ers Fail.” The tac­ti­cal exec­u­tive read­ing this is already say­ing: “But if all I really want to do is sell mer­chant ser­vices, than why would I bother with all this?”

Answer:

1. Because offer­ing an edu­ca­tion that helps the buyer is going to get more buyer interest.

2. If the infor­ma­tion is actu­ally good and use­ful, it auto­mat­i­cally repo­si­tions you in the mind of the buyer as much more of an expert than all your com­peti­tors. (You’re teach­ing them things about their own busi­ness that they might not know.)

3. If you think and plan strate­gi­cally, you will find a way to weave that infor­ma­tion in such a way that ulti­mately sells your ser­vices far bet­ter than you could ever sell them by sim­ply flat-out pitch­ing your product.

For more infor­ma­tion visit www.howtodoublesales.com

Last 5 posts by

• The Enlight­ened Entre­pre­neur Expe­ri­ence: How To Expe­ri­ence The “Turn­ing Point” And Com­plete Free­dom In Your Busi­ness — Jan­u­ary 25th, 2010
• Tribal Mar­ket­ing: Sur­pris­ingly Eth­i­cal Ways to Sig­nif­i­cantly Reduce Your Unsub­scribe Rate And Eas­ily Boost Prof­its — Jan­u­ary 19th, 2010
• Break­ing the Silence — August 7th, 2009
• How Rela­tion­ship Mar­ket­ing Trumps Tra­di­tional Direct Mar­ket­ing (and Why the Social Media Craze Is Mostly Hype) — March 31st, 2009
• MindValley’s Social Media Mar­ket­ing Unveiled — Decem­ber 2nd, 2008

About the Author

Vishen is a co-founder of MindValley. Before MindValley, he was an exec in Silicon Valley and New York for several internet and technology firms. He turned bedroom entrepreneur at 27 and by the time he was 31 had founded 6 web businesses and never had to work a conventional job again.

Check out other posts by Vishen Lakhiani

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