Lie #7: 'If you want to educate customers about new ideas, you have to buy 'em all doughnuts, lunch or dinner, and do a big dog & pony show.'
Is your product or service something that's really cool, really useful, and really helpful to people -- but the problem is, nobody realizes how much they need it?
There was a new technology that I sold at two different jobs. Basically it was another one of those 'great ideas' that could solve lots of problems for people, but nobody knew they needed it.
So it was very hard to sell!
I would go into companies, buy lunch for all their people, and give enthusiastic, informative presentations about this really cool new technology that could make their lives infinitely easier.
Ever done that before?
They'd file in, consume my pizza, listen apathetically to the presentation, and file out. They'd go back to their cubicles, I'd go back to my office, and they wouldn't spend a single dime on anything. The whole situation really sucked.
Then I heard about a guy named Jeff Paul in the financial planning field who'd figured out how to solve the entire problem by charging people for seminars.
Here's what Jeff did: He used low cost advertising and direct mail to get people to fork over real money to come to his tax seminar. Then he charged them another fee if they wanted to meet with him for a private 'consultation.' On top of that, he got paid the usual commissions on the financial products they bought. Not only did he make money every step of the way, he
closed twice as many sales as he did before, and his customers followed his financial plans more carefully. He built an enormously successful practice, because he was positioned from square one as the expert that he truly was, instead of a peddler.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? 'What if that could work for me???'
So... I put together a 3-day, $1500 training course for this technology. I wrote a 4 page sales letter that 'sold the sizzle' and *really* explained why it was worth the time and money to show up and really, really learn this stuff.
Two months later, Fortune 500 companies were sending their employees to this class, learning how to use our equipment, and paying for information that I formerly couldn't give away with free pizza. A major trade organization even licensed our new
course and started selling it to their entire membership. We were getting paid to teach prospective customers how to use our products! Our competitors were HACKED OFF. You can probably do something similar in your business. It's a lot easier than you might think. And your competitors will be really mad at you, too.
Since the Internet can deliver information to people for very low cost, and sometimes for almost nothing, it can be the key to doing "missionary work" for cutting edge products very inexpensively.
My favorite tool for doing this is a White Paper. A White Paper is your statement about how a problem should be solved. A well-written, well-promoted white paper is worth its weight in gold, because it educates customers about your way of doing things cheaply, and it's a terrific tool for generating sales leads.
Original Source: Perry Marshall
Is your product or service something that's really cool, really useful, and really helpful to people -- but the problem is, nobody realizes how much they need it?
There was a new technology that I sold at two different jobs. Basically it was another one of those 'great ideas' that could solve lots of problems for people, but nobody knew they needed it.
So it was very hard to sell!
I would go into companies, buy lunch for all their people, and give enthusiastic, informative presentations about this really cool new technology that could make their lives infinitely easier.
Ever done that before?
They'd file in, consume my pizza, listen apathetically to the presentation, and file out. They'd go back to their cubicles, I'd go back to my office, and they wouldn't spend a single dime on anything. The whole situation really sucked.
Then I heard about a guy named Jeff Paul in the financial planning field who'd figured out how to solve the entire problem by charging people for seminars.
Here's what Jeff did: He used low cost advertising and direct mail to get people to fork over real money to come to his tax seminar. Then he charged them another fee if they wanted to meet with him for a private 'consultation.' On top of that, he got paid the usual commissions on the financial products they bought. Not only did he make money every step of the way, he
closed twice as many sales as he did before, and his customers followed his financial plans more carefully. He built an enormously successful practice, because he was positioned from square one as the expert that he truly was, instead of a peddler.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? 'What if that could work for me???'
So... I put together a 3-day, $1500 training course for this technology. I wrote a 4 page sales letter that 'sold the sizzle' and *really* explained why it was worth the time and money to show up and really, really learn this stuff.
Two months later, Fortune 500 companies were sending their employees to this class, learning how to use our equipment, and paying for information that I formerly couldn't give away with free pizza. A major trade organization even licensed our new
course and started selling it to their entire membership. We were getting paid to teach prospective customers how to use our products! Our competitors were HACKED OFF. You can probably do something similar in your business. It's a lot easier than you might think. And your competitors will be really mad at you, too.
Since the Internet can deliver information to people for very low cost, and sometimes for almost nothing, it can be the key to doing "missionary work" for cutting edge products very inexpensively.
My favorite tool for doing this is a White Paper. A White Paper is your statement about how a problem should be solved. A well-written, well-promoted white paper is worth its weight in gold, because it educates customers about your way of doing things cheaply, and it's a terrific tool for generating sales leads.
Original Source: Perry Marshall
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