Adapt Your Language To Close More Sales

March 19th, 2010

You probably don’t talk to children in the same manner as you talk with adults. Your conversations with close personal friends are likely more intimate than those you have with professional colleagues.

Well, the same holds true for the language you would use to speak with corporate executives as opposed to their employees.

You need to identify the audience you’re working with and the environment you are working in, and then adapt your language and approach accordingly. The areas you focus on and the phrasing you use with end users won’t be the same as those you use with the decision-makers.

You need to understand who your client is and be very clear on what your message to that client is.

The words you use to attract the buyer – the company or the corporation – may be precisely the right words to persuade them to sign on for your services. You may offer them statistics about how poor feedback costs companies a lot of money, how aspects like ineffective meetings waste company time, or how poor communication and personal issues lead to low employee retention rates.

But, these are not the same words you would use when delivering your service to the end user. You don’t want to portray them in a bad light. Essentially, you’ve got two clients. The language that you use to sell your service at one level should be different from the outline of the training that you distribute to the staff.

It’s very important to have that awareness. What is going to motivate and excite the end user – the staff member – does not have the same value or criteria as what inspires the person who is signing the checks. You need to have the flexibility to understand what’s important to both groups and then separately speak to each group in way that motivates them.

The end result is the same for both. Ultimately your objective, and obligation, is to help to improve the company. And you are making life better for the person that attends your course or workshop.

If, for example, you know you can help companies improve the effectiveness of their staff meetings, you would present this to them in a different manner than you would to the employees who conduct and attend those meetings. Everybody wants to participate in more effective meetings, but everybody also wants to blame the ineffectiveness of their meetings on someone else.

In the language to promote the course to the company, you might cite statistics about how ineffective meetings waste X amount of money. You can even evaluate the cost of meetings. One unnecessary meeting could cost an organization thousands of pounds. Then you would sell the specifics of what’s covered in your course.

During the course, your focus wouldn’t be on the cost of meetings to the company, it would be on how employees can make sure meetings stay on track, how to handle confrontational situations or deal with difficult people. The focus would be on making the best use of staff members’ time and talents.

So you are, in essence, presenting the same thing – in this example, a course or workshop – to two different audiences. But, you can certainly structure your language and approach so that it meets with everybody’s approval.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Adapt Your Language To Close More Sales

Finding Your Market

March 17th, 2010

When you’re just starting out in business, one of your biggest goals is to develop the much-coveted client list. That grouping of potential clients to whom you want to market your product or service.

While it’s very nice to already have an existing list to work from, don’t worry if you don’t have a list right now. I myself didn’t start out with a big customer list. Remember, we all have to start somewhere.

There are still plenty of ways to find the market you want to address. As you implement each one, your list will automatically develop and grow.

1. Set aside your preconceptions
If you think you already know who your market is and what they want, you will miss obvious opportunities. Clear your mind of its preconceived notions and your options, and your list will expand tremendously.

2. Listen
The first area you should focus your attention on is listening to the people around you. Hear what people are complaining about and zero in on responding to those complaints.

Think about all the opportunities you have to listen to people’s gripes and grievances. Visit forums. Participate in networking groups. Then, really listen. What are the members worried about? What are they asking questions about?

Look for the patterns. Look for the issues that come up again and again, and that fit your area of expertise and your interests. You may find a market right there under your nose.

3. Survey.
As people begin to show interest in your product or service, delve a little deeper to see what is attractive or important to them. If they visit your web site or sign up for a service or purchase a product, include a second page where you ask them a question. For example, if you are offering a teleseminar, asking for their name and email address will build your contact list. Then, ask them to take a brief survey before the transaction is completed so you can grow your business from the input of your existing clients. Your lead-in page could say something like, “Congratulations! Your registration is almost complete. But because I want to make sure the information I’m covering is most relevant to you, what is your biggest question about…”

4. Present yourself as a leader.
No matter what your area of expertise, being the leader in your field is the best way to sell your products and help your clients. Listen to the market. Pay attention to their needs and problems .Once you identify those needs and problems, establish yourself as the leader who provides help and answers.

Right now, within a ten-mile radius, there are people struggling and suffering with problems that you can solve. By listening to them with an open mind, and finding out their needs, you will find the market that needs you to lead them toward resolution of their problems.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Finding Your Market

Improve Your Capacity To Receive

March 16th, 2010

How good are you at receiving? How much experience do you have with receiving money? Logic dictates that the more experiences you have, the better a receiver you will be.   Your current financial circumstances are merely a reflection of how much you’ve been allowing yourself to receive up until now. To increase your income by becomming a better receiver, you need to create continuous opportunities for people to give you money.   It’s up to you to create those opportunities.

One way to create those opportunities is to put structures in place that allow you to receive money 24/7.  Set systems in place that allow you to make money while you sleep.  For example, by offering products and programs on a web site, you are increasing your ability to receive.  You are giving your prospects and clients the means to give you money.

If you don’t have simple and continuous methods for people to give you money, your capacity to receive is only as big as a pinhole!   You need to turn your receiving pinhole into a wide open chasm and watch your income soar …

Here are a few things to consider:

•    Do you have an ecommerce website yet?

•    Are you in a position where someone can come to your website and find out about you?

•    Can a potential client book a session with you and pay for it on your website?

•    Can potential clients buy something on your website, right then and there?

•    Do you have a way for clients to automatically pay you for your product or service?

By implementing these elements in your business you will increase your capacity to receive, and in turn increase your income.

I’ve often talked about mindset and how it is so important to work on yourself from the inside – to analyze why you are limiting yourself and your capacity to receive.

Well, today I’m asking you to also work it on the outside? How about putting that external structure in place to be the metaphor for you becoming a better receiver?”

Think about how much you have been allowing yourself to receive, but don’t stop at the thinking. You need to act on it. Take the next step to implement the necessary structures in your business. Don’t just analyze.  Thinking and talking about receiving and how you can improve, won’t be as effective as doing something externally. You may hit obstacles along the way but with persistence, the right support, coaching and advice you will succeed!

Yes, work on the inside but also work on the outside.

Continue to step up through those obstacles until the elements for you to receive are in place. Get the advice and expertise you need to make it happen!

Improve Your Capacity To Receive

Authentic Selling Secrets

March 16th, 2010

How to be yourself, have fun and sell a ton on stages and teleseminars!


I want to introduce you to a friend of mine, Lisa Sasevich, also known as the Queen of Sales Conversion.  She’s about to rock the “speak to sell” industry AGAIN with her BRAND NEW teleclass!

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
9pm UK * 2pm Pac * 5 PM East

Lisa is going to reveal a BIG AH-HA she recently had about what she REALLY did to sell over 7-figures speaking last year (and it’s the OPPOSITE of what you’ve likely been taught!)

Here’s what you’re going to learn on this revealing free call:

• Discover the ONE THING Lisa did differently than everybody else that caused her to not only have a 7-figure year but ALSO enjoy the most amazing clients. (She did the opposite of what you’ve likely been taught to do when you speak-to-sell…and it worked!)

• EXACTLY what you need to have in place to putting together a life-altering talk that feels GREAT to share without giving away the store! (AND has your ideal clients WANTING to invest with you.)

• How to instantly create hunger and desire for your products and services without being “salesy”

• Lisa’s BIG secret to attracting 100% of EXACTLY the perfect clients and none of the, well, not-so-perfect ones

• A simple technique that Hollywood uses to capture attention and sell tickets all the time that will work for you too!

And much more….

Here’s the link to reserve your spot in this complimentary teleclass…

http://bit.ly/sellingsecrets

Best Wishes,

Bernadette Doyle
www.clientmagnets.com

Authentic Selling Secrets

Create Irresistible Products

March 14th, 2010

“I want to buy that.” This is the immediate reaction you want people to have when they first see your offering: You want them to have that reaction before they even know the price.

To make that happen, you need to create products that are irresistible. There are a few universal principles to develop truly appealing products.

1. Find a hook. Recognize the “miracle cure” the public is looking for, and present your product as the closest thing possible to that miraculous fix.

One example is Yanik Silver’s Instant Sales Letters product.  Yanik has achieved great success with this product. They are his “miracle cure” for people who need to create effective sales letters, but don’t have enough time to write them. So he put together some fill-in-the-blanks templates to make it easy to prepare sales letters.   Of course, clients may have to do some tweaking to make a template work for their specific purpose. But the point is, they work.  Even if the template needs to be revised, they’ve still got a Sales Letter. And that is very attractive to people with little extra time.  The Instant Sales Letter product is a hook for them – the “miracle cure”.

2. Focus on the content first and the format second.

When you are planning your content, think about what you’re going to cover rather than how you’re going to cover it. Don’t decide that you are going to offer an e-book or a teleseminar until you know what information you will be including.

The format should be secondary. It should be based on what makes the most sense for your market, and what fits best with the product.

As you are mapping out your content, outline everything that your product will cover. You don’t need to include every single detail you know about the topic. Include the information your prospect needs in order to get the results they want. Include the detail that will get their immediate attention because you’re providing the solution they need.

Brainstorm all of the things that your end user will need to get the results that your product will deliver. Write the question “what will they need” in your journal, or put it up in your office. It will act as a prompt for your subconscious mind to come up with the answers.  Use can these answers to create your outline.

3. Use the “why-what-how-what if” format.

Why is each particular point important?
What is the specific item or step in the process?
How will the user implement it?
What if things don’t go according to plan?

Using this format helps you to bring the pieces of your product together.  It allows you to edit as you plan. You are assembling what you already know, putting it together quickly and editing it quickly into a usable format.


4. Be flexible and open to the fact that your outline may change.
That’s okay. You will still have the main outline, the “bones of the structure”.  You can always move the main elements around until you get the right fit.

5. You don’t have to create your product in the order that you’re going to deliver it.

Create your product in the way that will allow you to get it done quickly. Start with the areas that are easiest for you. That will give you some momentum to keep going with the more challenging elements of your product.

Once you’ve paid careful attention to these points, you will be able to quickly create a product that clients will be clamoring to buy because it resolves their needs and wants.

Use these steps to get started on creating your irresistible product.  Give your clients what they are asking for, give them what they WANT!

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Create Irresistible Products

Establish Need and Greed with Your Free Report

March 12th, 2010

“The purpose of marketing is to make selling obsolete” said marketing icon Peter Drucker. If you are seeking to increase attendance to your live events, your goal should be to have prospects seeking you out to sign up, not the other way around. An effective marketing technique which accomplishes this precise goal is the free report.

Write your Free Report as a Sales Letter in Disguise
When the content of your free report is so interesting that the reader cannot put it down, they have likely become so caught up in the content that they didn’t notice that they were being sold to. A master of accomplishing this feat is Richard Schefren, who so clearly accomplishes this in his Internet Business Manifesto. His manifesto effectively works as a sales letter in disguise. How does he accomplish this? He follows the rule of thumb; he establishes need or greed in the eyes of the reader.

Establishing Need in the Eyes of Your Reader
One proven method of selling is to satisfy a consumer’s need. But, how can you accomplish this within a free report? The first step is to help identify the prospect’s need. If you are offering a course in time management, your goal in the report will be to discuss case studies of individuals and professionals who have dramatically improved their lives by implementing time management techniques. By building a clear need in the prospect’s mind for time management techniques, you can offer your solution as the answer they need.

Establishing Greed
The other angle that you can take is to establish greed. When a prospect salivates at the success possibilities outlined in a free report, they often strive to find out how they may be able to accomplish the same results within their own lives. To establish greed, share stories, testimonials and results that can be achieved with your system or by attending your seminars.

You don’t always have to limit your examples to existing clients, or even individuals who have attended your seminars. For example, if your seminar provides valuable time management techniques and you happen to know that Alan Sugar utilizes this exact technique, you can mention legitimately, that “This is just one of the things that Alan Sugar, powerful leader, has used to help him build an 800 million-pound business.”

Consider examples you can draw from to include within your free report to build credibility and to establish greed among your readers. This is especially important when you are just beginning, as you will not have the wealth of stories and examples of which to draw from. But, this fact does not have to limit you. Build a powerful association with your techniques and teachings by including relevant stories into your report.

So, you can utilize your free report to establish need or greed. As you sit down to map out your free report, ask yourself, “What can I include in my report to get people recognizing that they need the ongoing solution that I am going to offer to them?” Or, ask yourself, “What can I be adding into my free report that will get people excited or inspired regarding the possibility of acquiring and mastering the techniques and skills that I will be teaching to them?”

Answer these two questions as you create your report content, and you will be creating a powerful and effective marketing tool.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free with invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease. Register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Establish Need and Greed with Your Free Report

True Personal Value Increases True Market Value

March 11th, 2010

What’s the one thing that you excel in, but you never had to go to school for, attend a seminar for, or sweat your way through testing for?  Do you have a talent that you can’t remember learning, and that was never a struggle for you?  Something you would do for free, just because you enjoy being good at it?  That’s your true value.

Often, it’s easy to believe that if something is easy for you to do, then surely, no one else can benefit from it, or would want it.  We’ve been conditioned to believe that we can only use the things that we’ve worked for, or paid for, for profit.

What’s important to remember here is that what comes easily for you might be highly valuable to, and worthy of payment from, other people.

My friend Veronica is a good example.  Before I had assistants to help me with administrative tasks, my desk was a paperwork wasteland.  When Veronica called on me, early in my career, she found my desk buried beneath a clutter of papers.

Veronica tackled my messy office, and in what seemed like the blink of an eye, it was transformed from a disaster zone to a well-organized, functioning space.  My wonderful friend had offered her true value, her talent, to me in a way that not only helped me, but left me awestruck with her ability.

Organization is not impossible for me, but it’s not easy, either.  Tears of gratitude filled my eyes when Veronica had finished with my office space.  The value that she presented me with was immeasurable.

As I explained earlier, sometimes it’s difficult for the giver of true value to understand the impact they can have.  Veronica seemed taken aback with my pouring out of emotion.  She looked at me, as if to say, “What’s the big deal?”  She had difficulty accepting my thanks.

You can help yourself to market your true value when you:

• Identify your inborn gifts and talents; the things that come easily to you.

• Combine those true values into a package that you can offer to the world – something unique that offers significant benefit.

• Identify a genuine need that can be fulfilled with your true value.

Now, this might seem like a speech you got back in grammar school or high school, but it’s still important to remember:  don’t choose paths because they’re “cool,” or because they’ve been successful for others.  You’ve got to stay true to you.

Don’t think that your abilities are insignificant just because they come easily to you.  In fact, your thinking should be moving in the opposite direction.  You were given your talents by God for a reason.  When you use them purely and fully, you automatically offer something that cannot be duplicated by another.

Because you are unlike any other person on Earth, your unique abilities can be combined to equal a unique contribution.  Everyone’s looking for the next big thing.  Seems to me that if you want to find something unique and valuable, you need only to look inside yourself.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter with invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease – register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

True Personal Value Increases True Market Value

Attracting Prospects to Your Sign-Up Page

March 9th, 2010

Once you have a great sign-up page and an irresistible offer, it’s time to create some traffic. A steady flow of traffic to your sign-up page is essential to your success. Here are several strategies that can help you quickly build traffic to your sign-up page.

Visualize, Focus Your Efforts and Act. To create new traffic, you must first visualize yourself as having a large client list. This is important, because seeing yourself as successful helps focus your efforts. Set a target size for your list and give yourself a time limit for achieving it. Picturing that success can get a process going that will build your list.

Next, learn which forums your target audience frequents and hang out there. Read their questions and comments. It’s a good way to find out exactly what they want.  Post comments and respond to questions, but be careful not to say blatantly, “Sign up for my free report!” Useful comments with your email address, photo and the URL of your sign-up page in your profile can be very effective in attracting traffic.

You can also borrow traffic from someone else’s client list by connecting with people who sell related products. Decide which related products will truly benefit your clients. Look for websites your target audience is likely to frequent.

Consider ways you can benefit those companies by featuring their products, and ask them to do the same for you. Ask for testimonials or links to your products, and return the favor. Doing so can expand your impact significantly. Use this strategy carefully, however. Handing out testimonials indiscriminately weakens your own reputation.

There’s another idea you might not have considered for quickly building traffic to your sign-up page. Run competitions with your existing clients. Reward them for referring others to your sign-up page. If you have a well-written newsletter filled with useful content, your clients will be glad to share it with other professionals.

Award a free copy of one of your digital products to the 1,000th subscriber and also to the person who referred them. Offer a free copy of that product to the existing client who generates the most traffic. It won’t cost you very much and you can gain loads of new prospects on your list.  If you’re hesitant to give away a product you normally sell, consider the long-term benefit. Gaining new traffic for the cost of one product is a good trade-off.

Steady Traffic Equals a Strong List. Building a strong list requires a steady stream of new traffic to your sign-up page. Start by visualizing yourself with a great client list, and then focus your efforts on increasing traffic. Experiment with forum comments, product testimonials and client contests to encourage prospects to visit your sign-up page.

Traffic-building techniques such as these, combined with a well-written sign-up page and an irresistible offer, can put you on the path to a solid client list that sustains your business.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter – If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Attracting Prospects to Your Sign-Up Page

The Information Trade-off – Giving Before You Receive

March 8th, 2010

“Begin with the end in mind.” Stephen Covey

Have you noticed that there seems to be a trade-off in every aspect of marketing and sales?  Whether it’s trading information, trading money for products or even trading a free item for contact information….The reciprocity touches all parts of your business.

One aspect that’s important in reciprocity is that you have to give before you get.

I’ve always encouraged the use of speaking engagements as a way to establish your expertise in your field, generate leads, and hone speaking skills.  All this is done whilst selling your product and offering valuable information to the audience.  But there’s another trade off that can take place during a speaking engagement, and that’s gathering key marketing information for future use.  Not contact information, which is another opportunity in itself, but information that allows you to develop an empathy towards your client’s business.

At the beginning of each speaking engagement, take a few minutes to talk with the audience and establish a relationship.  Ask them what they’re looking to take away from the speech.  Notice the key issues that come up over and over in their responses.

This is valuable information that will help you understand the issues that your clients are facing.  Not only will you be able to develop empathy for them, you will also be able to transfer those issues into your marketing materials as well.  The more you are able to empathise with your clients’ needs, the better you will be able to meet those needs.

The same can be said for overcoming objections.  Empathise with your clients’ objections to your product or service.  It could be the cost factor, or the ‘it won’t help my business’ objection.  Use that information within your speech to address each of these points and detail why they are not valid objections.

When you’ve gathered important, helpful information from your audience, you’re going to be giving the same in return.  Your audience deserves that since they’ve taken their valuable time to attend your talk. At the same time you’re “planting the seeds” of need and overcoming objections whilst offering valuable content.

It is this content that will help people arrive at their own conclusion after your talk.  That conclusion should be that the next logical step they take is to accept the solutions that you present to them.  When a client reaches the conclusion on their own that they should buy your product, it’s so much more powerful than when it’s done through a direct sales presentation.

Setting up your speech to give the audience the opportunity to make their own conclusion will help seal the deal of any special offers that you’ve put together for that event.  Whilst making immediate sales is a nice feature of speaking engagements, the information trade off can be invaluable to your business.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

The Information Trade-off – Giving Before You Receive

Do You Know What Your Market Really Wants?

March 7th, 2010

Before ramping up your marketing when sales are disappointing, take a step back and ask yourself, “Do I know what my market really, really wants?” Being able to answer that question is the key to growing your business. By focusing on what people want, rather than on what you hope to sell them, you can begin to see the kind of success you desire.

If you suspect you’re wasting time by marketing something people don’t really want, here are some principles to ponder:

People buy what they want, not what you think they need.

You’re going to get a lot of resistance to your marketing if someone thinks they’re being shoehorned into buying what they don’t want. No matter how loudly you proclaim your product’s benefits, your market won’t respond if they don’t want the product. To continue doing so is a lot like speaking a different language and shouting to be understood.

People need to feel good about what they’ve bought.

One way to zero in on what your market wants is to develop empathy with that group of people. You must connect emotionally with how they feel about purchasing. When you’ve put yourself in someone else’s shoes, you begin to understand how they feel. What are their hopes and dreams? What do they fear? What keeps them awake at night?

If you’ve done a good job of pinpointing a target market, you should be able to learn these things easily. Until you do, you’re wasting time on marketing that won’t work, because you don’t yet know what products they’ll feel good about buying.

People buy products when they feel they’ve been understood.

No matter what logical explanation someone can give for buying a product, underneath it is the belief they’ve been understood. Someone knew enough about who they were to make a product that fits them.

So, how will you know when you’ve learned what your market really, really wants? You’ll know, because that’s when it all becomes easier. There’s no need to push or shove someone into buying, because they want what you’re offering. It will be such a revelation to learn how easy selling your products can be when they’re what your market wants.

Once that happens, you’ll begin to hear from your clients how grateful they are for your products. Everything about how you do business will be transformed, because you’ve taken the time to learn what your market wants. You’ve made the effort to step into their shoes and understand what makes them tick. And that effort pays off in products that really meet the needs of your market.

So, if you’re still struggling to sell your products, or it feels as though you’re pushing people into buying what they don’t want, it’s time to take inventory. Here are five questions to answer before trying again to sell your products:

  1. What is most important to the people in my target market?

  2. What problems keep them awake at night?

  3. What is the desired end result they’re hoping for?

  4. Does my product help them solve their problems and reach their goals?

  5. Do I need to change my products so that they do?

The process of stepping closer to your target market and understanding that group of people may take time and effort, but it will definitely be worth it. Once you know the people in your market very well, the products you offer them will meet their needs. And that’s what people really, really want.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Do You Know What Your Market Really Wants?