Client Magnets Official Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Selling’

Do you have excited, hungry prospects – knocking at your doors, just waiting to get a piece of what you have on offer?   Or does it feel more like your prospects are suffering from a touch of sluggishness, or a loss of appetite for your offerings?

Your prospects should be jumping at your product, and if they are not, it’s time to do some serious “tweaking” to your current marketing efforts.

Step 1:  Give Your Prospects A Reason To Buy

Let me ask you — Are you motivating your prospects enough, or in the right manner so that they want to buy what you’re offering? If your prospects aren’t acting, perhaps you’re not giving them enough compelling reasons to do so.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself (and answer them honestly) to discover new ways to motivate your prospects …

•    “How can I present my product or service differently?”

•    “How can I ask my prospects, in a new way, to change the way they operate, to do things differently?”

•    “What alternate forms of motivation can I explore?”

•    “How can I communicate the rewards differently?”

•    “How can I more clearly communicate the high cost of doing things the old way to my prospects?”

•    In short, “What do I need to do differently?”

Step 2 :  Get Clear About The End Reward

For the benefit of yourself and your prospects, it can be helpful to paint a mental picture of the end reward.  Often, prospects cannot be motivated to purchase unless they can gain a solid grasp of how their lives will change once your product or service is integrated.

Step 3 :  Challenge Negativity, Focus on the Positive

Often, our human nature dictates that when we come upon an obstacle, or obstacles, we tend to fall into dialogue that sounds like, “It’s hard,” “This is difficult,” or, “It’s impossible.”

Many times, conversation among professionals can further negative attitudes about obstacles.  If you’re hearing things like, “No one’s moving right now,” “Nobody takes professionals like us seriously,” or “They don’t know what they’re missing,” you run the risk of being pulled into that mindset.  And from that mindset springs prospect inactivity.

This phenomenon has been referred to as the “conspiracy of mediocrity,” and there’s really no better way to describe it.  After all, what better way for your competition to pilfer success than to convince you that your own hopes of success are unlikely to be realized.

When you encounter these attitudes, it can be helpful to remove yourself from the pervading negativity, and to instead focus on how you can make your company the one that’s breaking through that negativity.

Don’t allow yourself to be sucked into the conspiracy.  In order to reap rewards for you (and your clients), it’s imperative that you begin to challenge common beliefs that pervade the air of your particular niche.  Determine for yourself whether a principle is true or false.

If you want to motivate your prospects to buy, you must relieve them from the burden of listening to the same old song.  You must play a new tune, change the key, or even invent a new type of music.  If you take the time to really listen to what they’re asking for, and answer those needs, it won’t be long before they’re back on their feet, feeling better, and jumping on your bandwagon (which is, by the way, quite handy at steering around those pesky obstacles).

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

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Marketing Mastermind Call:

Boost Your Speaking Sales with “The Invisible Close”

Tuesday, 27th July, 2010

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

It’s a disservice to let interested consumers walk away without securing the benefit of your fabulous products or services. They came to buy from you. Give them what they need to say “YES!”

Join me and my guest Lisa Sasevich, the “The Queen of Sales Conversion, for this action-packed call where we will be covering…

• Exponentially grow your platform sales using Irresistible Offers

• Get massive results without being “salesy”

• Maximize your profits with no marketing budget!

• Simple, no-cost things you can do to instantly double or triple your sales conversion.

• The secrets to inspiring someone to act now…without being pushy or “salesy”!

• How to craft your “Irresistible Offer” to support Big Sales and your Big Life!

• And most important, how to share the wealth of your wonderful and unique talents and receive wealth in return!

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 click here to join the Marketing Mastermind Group today so you can take advantage of this call and all the other member goodies each and every month.

I look forward to “meeting” you on our call.

Best Wishes
Bernadette Doyle
www.clientmagnets.com

PS – Even if you can’t make the call, all Mastermind members receive a FREE CD of the call as well as a digital version of the audio and transcript! Take advantage now.

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What is your definition of opportunity?

Imagine that it’s a typical week for your website – the one that you have planned, designed, to which you have driven traffic, and through which you have made booking and registrations possible. Let’s assume that during a given week, 100 visitors cross into the realm of your site; 2 of them make the decision to purchase; however 98 of them leave without investing in your product.

What number captures your attention in the above example? Is it the 2 buyers? Will you wait for another 2 buyers next week? Will you count on luck, or “spray and pray” to deliver a sprinkling of voluntary customers next month, and next year?

Or, do you view the 98 departees as 98 new opportunities for sales?

In truth, your best profit potential lies in the 98 visitors who chose not to buy. If you plan well, after they leave, you will have 98 names and addresses that can lead to potential sales. All you need to do is have a plan for following them up. Just think – if you can get even 2 of those 98 to say “yes,” you have converted a larger percentage than you did with your sales page alone.

Here are some points to show why you should be following up:

• When you follow up with website visitors, you are targeting prospects who have already expressed an interest in your product. They clicked, which means, at the very least, that they are curious. For my regular readers, you know that this means you have gathered an audience of people with “raised hands.”

• Targeted follow-up correspondence answers questions that many of your visitors are not willing to ask (and many people have the same types of questions). Every time you answer a question, you take the opportunity to dispel an objection or a fear.

• Follow-up breeds interaction, which begs conversation. Think of your follow-up e-mails, postcards, and teleseminars as ice-breakers in a conversation that everyone wants to have, but no one knows how to broach.

• Marketing research doesn’t lie. It tells us that more follow-ups equal more conversions. Stay relevant in the minds of your prospects, and you’ll be the first person they turn to when a problem arises.

• Follow-up is a circular phenomenon. It gives you the information you need to devise better methods of follow-up. When questions are posed, and objections voiced, you are given valuable insight into the minds of prospective clients. With this information, you can plant more seeds and dispel more fears.

• Follow-up contact is an invaluable vehicle for conveying the idea of urgency. If a conference is set to take place 6 months from now, people will put off registration. But, if you can communicate a special offer through follow-up correspondence, you will light the fire to sign up. Often, discount deadlines and space limitations work well.

To increase conversions and increase your sales, it’s absolutely necessary you follow-up with all your prospects – even the prospects that don’t buy from you. You cannot follow up too often – you just need to vary your medium to keep your prospect engaged.

Don’t hesitate to use the invaluable follow-up for attracting and retaining clients. Leading prospects to your door is never enough – you must give them the incentives to revisit, and to invest.

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

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Consider your role as a consumer. When you’re shopping, do you look at the products first, or the price tag first?

If you looked at the price tag first,
retailers would pick up on that and simply offer a collection of price stickers inside the front door. You would choose what you could afford, and then the actual product would be a surprise – possibly an unpleasant one.

You don’t shop that way, and neither do the people that you have identified as your perfect clients.

Prospects want to know your prices, but unless your prices are preceded by the benefits that you’re offering, consumers will have nothing to gauge those prices against.

Follow these four steps to eliminate your fears in revealing your price. Gain the confidence you need to make the most out of your requests for cash:

1. Present what you’re offering. Answer the timeless questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Keep it simple. If you make it too complicated, those raised hands might start to return to laps.

2. Summarize the benefits. Because you’re offering specific solutions to specific problems, this step should turn on light bulbs in your prospects’ minds. This is the step in which you convince them that you are their answer.

3. Introduce the price. By now, your listeners or readers are absorbed in what you’re offering. The benefits are foremost in their minds, as is the question of price. Reveal your pricing while the question is still in their minds; and before it reaches their lips. Perfect placement of price revelation makes it comfortable for you and acceptable to your audience.

4. Map out a direct route for the money. Make it crystal clear how easy it will be to sign up, jump on, or join in on your program. Prospects should leave your teleseminar, your sales page, or your conference without any questions about how to participate. Or, better yet, they should leave already having signed on. Make it possible for them to sign up immediately. Make it easy for them to do so.

When your appeal is placed correctly, while all of the most fantastic points of your product or service are fresh in the minds of your audience, you will not only feel more confident in asking for money, but your prospects will have more confidence in their spending.

After you identify your sea of raised hands (those people whose problems you can solve, and whose interests you have piqued), you’ll need to devise an effective method for telling them how much cash they will need to jump onboard.

The steps I’ve outlined here make up an excellent plan for starting to ask for money. As you proceed, you will learn to tweak your own presentation to meet the needs of the people in your particular niche. You will learn to identify the exact moment in time when they are most receptive to pricing, and when your presentation best complements that revelation.

When considering how to properly sandwich your asking for money in your presentation, consider your own shopping habits. You see the product. You consider how it could benefit your life. You look at the price tag. You proceed to the check-out. You leave the store with the satisfaction of knowing that you fashioned your own shopping experience.

Give your prospects that luxury. Take the time to learn about what price placement gets the most lucrative results for your business. You’ll soon discover that timing is everything – especially when it equates to money on your pocket.

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

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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

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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

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No matter what you’re selling, whether it’s a training course or a marketing seminar or a physical product, you’ve probably spent a long time agonizing over price. Sellers almost always spend more time than they need to thinking about and setting a price. In reality, sellers think price is a lot more important than it actually is. The next time you’re pricing a product, keep these things in mind.

Price Isn’t as Important as You Think
Sellers almost always spend far too much time thinking about the price of a product. They agonize over whether they’ve priced their product appropriately for their market. In most cases, sellers actually under-price their products. When I work with people one-on-one, I almost always find that sellers are charging too little for what they’re offering. I spent a lot of time telling people to raise their prices.

While sellers may think that price is the most important aspect of marketing an event, that’s simply not the case. Research has shown that less than 10% of buyers are actually influenced by price as a primary factor when they make a decision. Realistically, it isn’t the price that matters, but how well you market the event.

Present Your Price Effectively
Many sellers think that if they price a product low enough, it will virtually sell itself. Sellers think that low prices are easy to justify in consumer minds, so consumers will want to take advantage of the low product and make the decision to buy or register. In reality, it isn’t the price that influences peoples’ decisions to buy; but rather, how well you present that price. If you don’t present your price effectively, the sale is over before it’s begun.

Beware of Sticker Shock
Sticker shock is a phenomenon that occurs when people present their prices too early. You don’t start off a presentation by telling people how much something costs, because then they’re fixated on that price. If they feel that the price is high, they’ll stop listening to whatever you have to say, and you’ve lost the sale. Instead, present the price toward the end of the sales presentation.

Build Your Product Value
To effectively sell your product, you must establish your product’s value. You must spend time showing your potential buyers why your product is a must-have product. Explain what they get from buying your product. Show them how your product solves a problem they just can’t seem to resolve, or how it does so better than anyone else’s product. Once you’ve established that your product has value, you can present the price of your product; after your buyer is convinced enough of your product’s value to listen to your value proposition.

In Summary …  Charge More, and Present Your Price at the Right Time
Don’t undercharge for your product. A low price won’t sell your product – good sales copy will sell your product. Price your product appropriately, and spend time establishing the value of your product before you reveal the price to your sale prospects. With the right value proposition techniques, you can increase your conversion rate and let your product sell itself!

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

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The most effective marketing materials speak directly to your audience. Effective marketing materials are developed with your audience in mind, and they answer your audience’s questions, solve their problems and overcome their reservations about attending an event. In order to create the best targeted messages designed to speak directly to your audience, you must know your audience, and you may need to develop multiple marketing materials.

Identify Your Target Audience
When you begin planning any marketing campaign, you must identify your target audience. Many people find when they begin this process that they don’t have a clear idea of who their target audience is, in which case they must begin to identify a target audience. If you don’t know your audience, your event may not be as well-attended as it could be, or you may find that there’s not a high demand for the product.

If you don’t have a target audience, make one. You may need to tweak your product or event to appeal to this audience, but you’ll always have more success with a targeted marketing campaign than a campaign that isn’t addressed to anyone. If you don’t have a target audience, your product or event may need more refining, which gives you a good opportunity to define your scope or re-evaluate your product to make it more effective.

Target Your Message to Your Audience
Once you’ve identified an audience, target your marketing message to your audience. Dan Kennedy calls this “message to market match.” Answer your audience’s questions, and develop a call to action that speaks directly to your target audience. You can use a general marketing campaign, but a general campaign won’t give you the same success as a targeted campaign. It’s perfectly acceptable to use the same techniques in multiple campaigns; particularly techniques that have brought you success; but tailor those techniques to each marketing campaign that you run.

Consider Creating Multiple Marketing Materials
If you find that you have multiple target audiences, consider creating multiple marketing materials to more effectively reach those audiences. For example, if you’re conducting a dating event that may appeal to both men and women, you might want to create targeted marketing materials for both groups; one for the men, and one for the women. If you’re creating a business event for people in different industries, you might want to create a set of marketing materials for each industry.

By targeting your specific market, you can ensure you create a clear, compelling message. If you use a general marketing message, you may find that your message becomes diluted, or lacks the clear call to action you can create in targeted marketing materials.

Remember that developing a clear call to action is your key to great success with a product or event. You can create a highly successful event! You have the tools at your disposal, so all you have to do is create a targeted marketing campaign to reach the right audience, and you can realize success beyond your wildest dreams!

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

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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

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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

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