The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [38]
With this in mind, let’s put you back in that stadium. Right before you walk out there, the audience is told: “You had to come, but you don’t have to stay. If this person [you] talks about something that is of no interest to you, you can simply get up and leave.”
If you walk out there and say, “I’m here to tell you why we have the greatest office equipment in the world,” you’re going to have 90 percent of the audience get up and leave. And anyone who’s ever spoken in public knows that you do not want that to happen.
So now let’s rethink that stadium title. What could you say that would keep virtually every one in their seats? This is important because whatever that title is that would get all those potential buyers to stay and hear more is the same approach to use in your advertising, direct mail, or Web site. What can you write as your stadium pitch title or ad, for that matter, that would appeal to the entire pyramid of potential buyers?
Let’s imagine that you sell office equipment. It’s your turn to give your speech and the audience is full of CFOs. If you’re a little strategic, you might go with something like “The Five Ways Our Office Equipment Can Benefit You.” Again, an approach like this appeals only to those who are “buying now,” and possibly those who are “open to it,” but pretty much 90 percent of your audience is leaving.
So what title would have a broader appeal? How about “The Five Ways You’re Wasting Money in Your Operations and Administration”? I’m not saying this is going to rivet the executives to their chairs, but they’re not leaving either. They’ll stay to hear a little more. This is also true for an ad with that headline. It’s definitely going to appeal to the top two tiers, but it also appeals to every one in that stadium. Everyone is interested in saving money in their operations and administration costs. Certainly every CFO is interested in that, so they’ll stay in the stadium. And if every thing that follows has some substance to it, you’ve now taken your marketing and selling activity to an entirely new level.
The hardest thing we need to do today is grab the attention of potential buyers and keep their attention long enough to help them buy your product. This approach of offering some education of value to them gives you a significant opportunity to attract more buyers and build more credibility. I call this “education-based marketing,” and here’s a line you should write down: you will attract way more buyers if you are offering to teach them something of value to them than you will ever attract by simply trying to sell them your product or ser vice.
As another example, I had a merchant ser vices company as a client. They primarily target retail stores. So in the stadium pitch scenario, their audience are retail store owners. If they walk out there and start off with, “I’m going to show you why our merchant ser vices are better than anyone else’s,” the 90 percent are leaving since they are not in the market for merchant ser vices right now. So what could you say to keep every retailer in the stadium to hear a little more? Here’s a great title: “The Five Reasons All Retailers Fail.” The tactical executive reading this is already saying, “But if all I really want to do is sell merchant ser vices, then why would I bother with all this?”
Here’s the answer:
Offering an education that helps the buyer is going to get more buyer interest.
If the information is actually good and useful, it automatically repositions you in the mind of the buyer as much more of an expert than all your competitors. (You’re teaching them things about their own business that they might not know.)
If you think and plan strategically, you will find a way to weave that information in such a way that ultimately sells your ser vices far better than you could ever sell them by simply flat-out pitching