Client Magnets Official Blog

Posts Tagged ‘sales strategy’

Individuals look at products all day – on television, in newspapers, and in magazines – but unless you can find a way to make your product or your service appeal to the needs of those viewers, your efforts will score little more than halfhearted viewership.

I’m often approached by business owners wondering how they can make their businesses visible to as many people as possible. My immediate response is always, “Have you first thought about what your audience wants?”

You cannot convince prospects to want what you have to offer simply by being visible. You must quench a thirst. You must satisfy a need.

Here’s an example that I often use to illustrate this point:

A dog food conglomerate recently found itself, despite being a leader in the promotion category, losing market share. Puzzled by this turn of events, the company’s new chairman called a mandatory meeting of every salesperson, marketer, and researcher within the corporation. His face reddened, his fist pounded…someone needed to figure out where they were going wrong. Did more money need to be committed to promotion? Were they reaching the wrong audience with their marketing efforts?

The seasoned business men and women were unable to muster the courage that it took to voice the root of the problem. But one young tenderfoot intern had the audacity to announce, “Mr. Chairman, the dogs don’t like the food.”

The dog food company’s audience was hungry for a better tasting food, not a new promotion approach. No number of banner ads, coupon offers, or endearing commercials would resurrect what had been lost to taste. This mistake bore the sole responsibility for the market share loss. More PR, advertising, promoting, and marketing would prove to be bottomless money pits for the already declining dog food shares.

If you find yourself in a situation such as this, or if you simply want to avoid falling into a similar situation, consider the following:

Get to know your end user. Do the grunt work and the research that it takes to really get to know your consumer. When you know that person, you can better solve his or her problems.

Promotion is important, but try not to be sidetracked with becoming visibly dominant too early in the game. You must have the goods to back up all of the hype. You must be able to deliver on promises, or customers will not return.

Remind your consumer about their problem, and how you are going to solve it.

You can’t market the unmarketable. Ignoring substandard products or services that don’t solve a real, modern-day problem can never end well. It can be difficult, but often, business owners need to back up and reroute from their original product vision.

Find the value in what you’re offering. If the biggest selling point doesn’t appeal to your ideal customer, then nip and tuck that product or service until it satisfies a wish, a want, or even better yet, a necessity.

When you’re honest about your product, like the young dog food business intern, you tackle the root of a problem that has the potential to rear up and cause havoc in your business.

Promotion is tedious. It not only takes large amounts of your time, but it can seem like an Olympic-level sport. It’s expensive; and if it’s embarked upon too soon, it can seem fruitless, leaving business owners exhausted and disheartened.

I’ll always believe that your product is ultimately your biggest selling point…not brightly colored ads or once-in-a-lifetime deals. It can take a while to learn this. Even some of the most successful business owners had to learn the hard way.

I don’t want to see misplaced promotion negatively affect your bottom line or your energy level. Find a need. Quench a thirst. And do it all with your product – not empty claims. This is literally your first step to success.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Comparing apples to oranges is one of the most common and most successful price justification techniques you’ll find in any well-written sales letter. Comparison is a valuable sales tool, but many people have trouble learning how to utilize it successfully. It’s easy to see a comparison sales technique once you’ve learned what this technique involves, but it might not be so easy to see how that technique can work for your niche or product. If you’re having trouble seeing how the comparison technique can work for you, think about presenting things in a few different ways.

Comparing Related Products
One way in which you can justify your price is by preparing your product to related products, but highlighting how your product differs in order to justify your price. For example, if you’re giving a copywriting workshop for $200, you might compare that to the cost of a copywriting book at $20. The copywriting book could provide prospects with some static information, but a copywriting workshop would provide prospects with coaching and insight into applying good copywriting practices to a specific business to boost sales. A copywriting workshop is like taking the book to the next level, so it’s logical that it would cost more than the book. Alternately, if you’re selling the copywriting book, compare it to a workshop to emphasize cost savings.

Comparing Seemingly-Related Products
Another useful comparison technique is to compare seemingly-related products that aren’t actually related. For example, if you’re offering the copywriting workshop, you could compare it to the cost of an English or Communication degree from a four-year college. It’s really not the same thing, but a copywriting workshop would be much cheaper, and would provide people with a focused skill set to boost their business in just a weekend, as compared to a four-year degree. With the right language, you can make a copywriting workshop seem like the only practical solution, and one that’s much more useful than a degree program.

Comparing Unrelated Products
Even if you can’t think of something that is related to your product, you can use the comparison technique to compare your product to unrelated products. For example, with a copywriting workshop, you could also compare it to how much prospects spend on business expenses every year, how much they spend on advertising, or even how much they spend on vacation. The idea is to point out that people spend a fair amount to a lot on other things in their daily life, so spending on your product is inconsequential compared to their spending in other areas. Combine the comparison to other expenses with the return on investment for purchasing your product, and you’ve got a ready-made sales pitch.

You can be as creative as you need to be with comparisons in your sales pitch. You can compare your product to related items, seemingly related products or even completely unrelated products. Don’t worry about having trouble thinking of related comparisons; any comparison can help sell your product. All you have to do is present a good value proposition, and utilizing the comparison technique can help you boost your sales!

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Everything that you do for your business, everywhere you go, you should always be thinking about getting people onto your mailing list. Building that list is so important to the success of your business.

But, you can’t stop with simply adding people onto your mailing list; you’ve got to take it a step further and get them to actually buy from you. A thousand people on your mailing list is certainly promising business potential, but you need to focus hard on how to convert some of them into paying business.

While you don’t try to sell to anyone and everyone, you do want to try your best to sell to those people on your mailing list. Naturally, they’re your best chance for a sale because they’ve expressed an interest in what you’re offering.

You’ve heard the expression, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink? In a sense, you have to look at the prospects on your list in the same way. You’ve led them toward your business, and while you can’t make them buy, you can make them very thirsty for what you’re offering.

In order to do this, one of the things that you need to think about – even before you start building your list – is what your sales process is going to be.

Once people have joined your mailing list, what will you put in front of them that invites them to get their credit card out?

That first offer should make it easy for them to say yes by having a low financial cost and a low emotional cost.

If you set the bar too high, if the only way people can spend with you is by shelling out a lot of money or committing to a long-term program, you are making it harder for them to say yes. It’s just too big a jump.

Think of your business as a ship and your prospects are on the dock. You wouldn’t expect them to jump onboard straight from the dock – you’d at least put out a gangplank to help them come aboard.

Before asking them to take a huge leap, make a big change, a big investment and a big commitment, give them the opportunity to know and trust you first. Extend the type of offer that will make your prospects feel less vulnerable. An initial low payment offering is fine – just make sure to present something they can buy.

Keep this in mind, as well: The best time to have someone buy is immediately after they’ve signed up for your free offering, whatever that may be. When they sign up for it, they automatically join your list.
The instant that happens, put an offer in front of them. That will separate the people who are serious – the ones who are willing to invest – from the browsers.

The prospects who are willing to invest are proving themselves to you, and should get better and more offers from you.  Don’t spend too much time on the browsers until they indicate that they’re serious.

So think about a low-cost, low commitment initial offering, and then present it to people right after they join your list. That’s the time when most of them are ready to buy.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Event registration can be a nerve-wracking process. Registration is typically a cyclical period of peaks and valleys that can be both inspiring and depressing. With the right mindset and some insider techniques, you can safely navigate the event registration cycle and reach your target number of attendees.

Approach Registration with a Positive Mindset
Event registration is a cause for apprehension in both experienced event planners and newcomers to the event world. No matter how many times you host an event, there’s always a question of how well-received the event will be, and whether you’ll get enough attendees. Over time, you learn the normal cycle of event registration, and the peaks and valleys in registration matter less. But the key to dealing with the event registration process in a rational way is to approach your event with a positive mindset, and the confidence that you can successfully market your event.

Dealing with “the Dip”
There comes a point during every event registration cycle where there’s a dip in registration, and numbers aren’t where you want them to be yet. It’s normal at this point for doubts to creep in. Event organizers may wonder if they’ll get the numbers they want for registration, or whether the event itself is worthwhile. The key to successfully navigating “the Dip” is to maintain a positive mindset, and recommit to marketing the event.

When the dip happens, get creative with your marketing. Send out another touch. Try using a different marketing avenue to reach potential clients you haven’t touched recently. Recommit to marketing your event, and the dreaded “Dip” will sort itself out. And remember – this is a normal part of the event registration cycle.

Consider a Preview Tele-seminar or Event Materials
If registration isn’t quite where you want it to be, consider a creative way of reconnecting with your audience and convincing them to register. One thing you can try is a preview tele-seminar. During a tele-seminar, you can talk about things you’ll cover during the seminar, or invite people who have attended a previous seminar to come on and speak about their experience. A preview tele-seminar can generate the buzz you need to overcome a lull in registration.

Alternately, or as a companion to a tele-seminar, you can review the materials you’re including with your event. If you’re planning a low-budget event but you’re giving away a lot of manuals and handouts, it can actually suppress ticket sales. Conversely, if you’re planning a high-budget or multi-day event, you’ll want to provide a thick, chunky manual so people feel like they’re getting a value in what’s being delivered. Consider adding or subtracting event materials to boost registration.

The keys to successfully navigating through the event registration cycle are to maintain a positive attitude and get creative with marketing. Don’t let a dip in registration discourage you; instead, re-commit to marketing your event in creative new ways. By adding new touches, you can boost registration and reach potential attendees you might not have encountered previously. Most importantly, keep telling yourself that you can throw a successful event, and you will throw a successful event!

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Value is a subjective term, a relative feeling.  If someone perceives the value of a product or a service to be high, he or she will naturally be willing to sacrifice more (time, money, etc.) to take advantage of its value.

So along that vein, if you want to build the price tag of your teleseminar (and I’m sure you do), you must increase its perceived value.  Consumers naturally think in a “what’s in it for me?” manner.  When you create a belief that what they’re getting from your teleseminar will greatly outweigh their investments of time and money, you have managed to increase the perceived value of your event.

Here are some ways to accomplish that high-value factor:

• Promise to disclose secrets. True secrets would be those things that aren’t common knowledge.  Or, even better, they are those things which you have discovered; things which you invented or uncovered that can make your teleseminar participants’ lives better.

• Promise to divulge your mistakes. Some failures, especially small ones, are inevitable, and can be instrumental in learning for success.  But if you can share the mistakes that you’ve made, to save your audience the time and grief that can come when they make those same mistakes, you will increase the perceived value of your teleseminar.

• Save your audience some time. When the information that you have compiled for disclosure on your teleseminar will save your participants hours, days, or weeks of research, you move them toward their goals more quickly, which is for most, invaluable.  For instance, if you can offer succinct, successful methods for doing something on a 30 minute call, for which people would normally spend 2 or more hours researching, you have created value.

• Quantify the cost. Ask yourself how much it would cost participants to unearth the information, on their own, that you’re planning to convey.  Consider resources they would have to buy, the traveling they might have to do, the phone calls they may have to make, and the time away from revenue-building that they would have to spend.

• Limit participation. If you limit the number of spaces on your teleseminar to 10, for instance, you will increase value.  Registrants will know that they won’t have to compete with 100 other people during question-and-answer time, and they’ll attach a noted value to that opportunity to have a voice.  You may have only expected to get 10 people on your call anyway, but by making a statement of limits, you increase perceived value.  This not only ensures that you get 10 people who are very interested in your topic, but will allow you to convert a stumbling block into a selling point.

• Offer extras. Gifts like transcripts, reports, templates, memberships, e-mail support, participation in a follow-up question-and-answer session, critiques of participants’ work, etc. will add perceived value and increase your revenue, as long as the gift you’re giving doesn’t out-cost your price tag differential.

Remember, if you create a high perception of value before your teleseminar, you must deliver on your promises.  Some of your best teleseminar customers will be repeat ones, so you’ll want to make sure that you do everything that you say you will, or your offerings will be viewed as fraudulent.

Success with higher price tags is all about perceived value.  Offer your audience what they’re looking for in a teleseminar, and incorporate the tactics outlined above.  Doing so will raise their perceptions of value…in a direct, upward relationship to your bottom line.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

What comes to mind when you see that the majority of your sales page visitors have left without purchasing?  You may choose from two schools of thought: you may consider them to be lost to the click-away, or you may consider them to be interested prospects that simply need to be followed up with.

Everytime a prospect visits your website – whether they purchase from your or not -  is an opportunity to increase your revenue and grow your business.   The key is in following up with each and every visitor.  But how can you do that?

You must first capture the information necessary for following up, and then you need to implement a plan that makes meaningful, targeted contact.

Your squeeze page, or opt-in page, is an invaluable tool for gathering contact information from your website visitors.  You can’t follow up with people unless you have the information necessary for doing so.    The best way to collect names, addresses, and other data is to make it a prerequisite to entering your site.  On your opt-in page, you ask for their details.  This information will then be used by you for following up with buyers and non-buyers in one or more of the following ways:

• E-mail Follows Ups. Your first contact with website visitors should be immediately after they register their details – a sort of “welcome to the club” message.  Autoresponder programs are more readily available, and less costly, than ever – and are the easiest way to accomplish e-mail follow ups.  You can try to orchestrate follow-up emails on your own, but it won’t be long before you find yourself buried under the weight of this task.

E-mail follow-ups shouldn’t stop after initial contact.  In fact, you should use your email list to stay in contact, to gather questions, to respond to feedback, and to stay relevant in the minds of interested parties.

• Snail Mail Follow-Ups. Standard mail is still relevant.  In fact, it can be a valuable tool for “switching things up.”  When a prospect finds you via the internet, and then receives a postcard with valuable information in their mailbox, you instantly establish yourself as a well-rounded and versatile business person.

Services are available, much like those of autoresponder companies, that can do this for you.  Traditional mail can be a great tool for driving traffic back to your sales page.

• The Teleseminar. In your chosen follow-up method, make the offer of free participation in a teleseminar.  This will give prospects the opportunity to hear your voice, ask questions, and to voice concerns.  The dynamic that occurs when you speak to a number of people at once is one that can electrify the transfer of information.  Additionally, you can use your teleseminar to make special offers to your listeners  – a limited-time offer, for instance, or an offer that’s only available to teleconference attendees.

Don’t fall into repetitive sales tactics.  Mix it up – send a welcome e-mail, then a special offer postcard, then an invitation to an exclusive teleseminar – keep them guessing.  No matter your follow-up plan, ensure that you gather all of the information necessary to facilitate it when your website visitors register their details.  You can’t send postcards without physical addresses, and you can’t send e-mails without e-mail addresses.

Use your site visitor statistics to your advantage.  Don’t view those who walk away as failures in conversion, but rather, as opportunities to follow up and build your turn-over numbers, and 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

Have you ever ordered an item online or from a shopping catalogue? If you have, you probably know that feeling you get when your anticipated purchase arrives in the post. The satisfaction of finding a great product is nothing compared to the thrill of actually laying your hands on it.

If there is any potential to present your business offering in the form of a product that your clients can physically see and touch, you need to take some time to explore this option.

By physical, I mean something that is in a box, something that you can physically send to a client’s home or office. Physical products can be anything from books to audio recordings to DVD video. Your physical product might very well be in multiple formats, where you offer a combination of audio, video, and written material.

It may require considerable time and effort on your part, but creating a physical product can make a huge difference in your business revenue. Here are six strong reasons for you to seriously consider creating your physical product:

•    One of the major benefits of producing a physical product, or any product for that matter, is the fact that you do the work once. But, that one product can sell over and over and over again. While you’re sleeping, enjoying dinner, shopping or vacationing, your product can continue to make money for you.

•    You can charge more for physical products. It’s less expensive to download an ebook or mp3 recording than it is to purchase a hardcopy, printed book or a CD. By their nature, digital products have a ceiling. Clients are not going to pay £500 or £1,000 for a digital product. But, people absolutely do pay that much for physical products. The client’s perception of the value of the product is changed when it’s physical. They’ve got something to have and to hold.

•    A physical product also increases your brand awareness. Because your product is in some way, shape or form, concrete and tangible, clients will have some ties to it. They have to handle it.

•    In a sense, your physical product is serving as built-in follow-up for you. Your best prospects are always those people who have actually bought from you already. They’re the people who are most likely to buy from you again. Your product, out on their desk, will constantly remind them of you when they look at it. Being reminded of you through your physical product is a good way to continue your relationship with your clients.

•    Physical products increase the user’s consumption. It’s easy to download a digital product from the internet, which I am a big proponent of. But often, clients will read the information when they get it, store it somewhere on their computer and never go back to it again. You don’t want people just buying your products, you want people using your products and having success with them. It makes sense to physically create and send products. Even if it’s just a CD sitting on the corner of their desk or on their bookshelf or in their car, it’s sitting there as a reminder. “You bought me, use me.”

•    A physical product increases your exposure. Someone may see it on your client’s desk and inquire about it, or it will be fresh in your client’s mind to share their discovery with others. Word-of-mouth sharing is your best and least expensive way of advertising.

It’s well worth your time to assess your business, and take into account all of the criteria to see if physical products make sense for your market. Physical products can be complex to create, but there’s nothing complicated about their payoff.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

If you have a great idea or product to share, how do you get it in front of the rest of the world? How do you make sure that the knowledge and expertise you have to offer is discovered by the people who need it?

While you could present your service to individual people in individual settings, booking endless appointments and traveling from one location to another, that strategy is very time-consuming and certain to diminish the quality of your life.

You may charge and earn very good money for presenting your services this way, but there are only so many hours in a day. You will only earn the amount of money you can make in those hours and you likely won’t have a lot of quality time for yourself. In addition to this, you are limiting the number of people you can serve and help.  All this gives you very good reason to productize your services.

What I mean by that is for you to take the knowledge and expertise that you personally deliver to clients and convert it into a product or programme that can deliver the results for you.

By creating products and programmes, you will do the work once, and then get paid over and over and over again.

For example, if you offer a workshop that draws a large attendance and earns high revenues, don’t stop there. Turn that single event into a product that continues to earn money. Record the workshop and sell DVDs on your website. You will compound your initial earnings exponentially, just by creating a single product.

Take yourself out of the delivery process, in the physical sense. But leave all of the information and expertise and character traits that make your offering unique.

Do this effectively so that your product is truly reflective of your services, but be efficient as well. Don’t get overly caught up in trying to create the perfect product.

Product creation is not about product perfection. It’s about getting your product on the market. You can always tweak and revise it as you go along, which will give you an upgraded product to add to your offerings later on.

Here’s a philosophy to live by. An okay product that is out there serving your clients while making you money is better than the best product that is still in development. That latter one won’t put any money in your bank account.

The best product idea ever is still just an idea. It isn’t going to earn you any revenue. You don’t need to spend months getting your product ready to go on the market. Get your product up and running – quickly.

Spare yourself the time slaving over yet another round of editing documents or perfecting of audio files. Focus on the profits that are waiting for you by getting your product out there now.

Put your time and creative energy into developing your products and programmes.  Make sure they are representative of the qualities that make you so special. Then get them onto the market as quickly as possible to start generating revenue.

Developing products and programmes will not only increase the number of clients you are able to help, and increase your income, but also give you more free time to enjoy a quality lifestyle.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, then sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Want to charge thousands of dollars for your information?

You’re invited to join me and my special guest, Kevin Nations for this special call. Together we will show you step-by-step how you can EASILY integrate Big Ticket Offers into your Business – leaving you with more clients and more money!

Kevin will share strategies that will help you to move from charging hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars for your information (and have your clients THANK you for it!)

Don’t miss this call!

MARKETING MASTERMIND Call

Tuesday, 27th April, 2010

8:00pm UK Time (3pm EASTERN, 12 noon PACIFIC)

TOPIC:  *How To Create Big Ticket Offers*

http://bit.ly/SellingSuccess

This call is FREE for my hundreds of Marketing Mastermind and Stepping UP! members. They also get the CD and transcript of this call at no extra charge, plus a tonne of other member benefits – such as access to our online members forum.

Not a member?  Then join the Marketing Mastermind Group today so you can take advantage of this call and all the other member goodies each and every month. http://bit.ly/SellingSuccess

When you’re planning a live event, one big consideration is price. You want to set an appropriate price; a price that’s low enough to fill the room, but high enough to show that you mean business. Many people who are planning a live event for the first time aren’t sure how to price their event. Fortunately, you can use specific strategies to set your price point for maximum return, in a way that is consistent with your goals.

Pricing a Live Event for Selling a Product
The purpose of your live event plays a big role in how you’re going to price it. If you’re creating or selling a product, the price of the event itself isn’t necessarily your biggest revenue stream; it’s the product. In those cases, you’ll want to set the price at a rate that is low enough to fill the room, because you’ll get more benefit out of maximum exposure. If you set your prices too high, you could miss out on potential buyers who might be interested in your product, but unable or unwilling to pay your high event fee.

Free Versus Paid Events
One mistake that many people make when planning a live event where the purpose is selling a product is to create a free event. People mistakenly believe that if the event is free, people are more likely to attend, and that free events attract a bigger audience. That’s simply not true. Free events require just as much effort to get people in the room as in paid events, but paid events yield revenue for that effort. Even with free events, you still need to advertise and go through the same processes as if you were filling the room at a paid event, so you might as well make it a paid event and get some return for that effort.

Pricing a Live Event as a Platform for Coaching Programs
Live events are a great way to launch a coaching program. Pricing live events for these coaching programs, however, is more important than any other live event pricing. You must price a coaching event in a way that is consistent with the cost of your coaching program.

Offering a $20,000 coaching program to people who pay $200 for tickets to your event is a mismatch of expectations. $200 ticket-buyers typically won’t be prepared to spend $20,000 on a coaching program. A good rule of thumb is to price your live event at roughly 20% of the cost of your coaching program. If you’re pitching a $20,000 coaching program, price your live event at $2,000. You may get fewer attendees, but those attendees will be more qualified and prepared to spend the money to utilize your program.

Charge More than You Think
When planning a live event, charge more than you think you can charge. If you think people would pay $20 for your event, charge $50. When planning a live event for the first time, people almost always undercharge. Charge more than you think you should charge, and you’re probably closer to a realistic price tag for your event.

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