Business Secrets for Entrepreneurs: How to Educate
Your Customers and Increase Profits in 12 months Flat?
By Chet Holmes
You can attract far more prospects to take a look at
what you have to offer by offering education than
you'll ever get by offering your product or service.
For example: Let's say you sell telephone systems,
like Company X. Before discovering this concept,
Company X would call hundreds of companies per day and
ask if they were interested in talking about a new
telephone system (product offer). They had four
salespeople making hundreds of calls per day. They
would get about 3 appointments per week.
First of all, every company that has a phone system
that is five years old or older can probably benefit
from a new phone system in some way. More than 15
major providers of phone systems just ten years ago
are now OUT of the phone system business. Yet the
companies that have these systems, as long as they are
working and they can still get used parts, might not
think they need a phone system.
So here's a company making hundreds of phone calls per
day asking: "Would you like to talk about maybe
getting a new phone system?"
Three steps to double sales.
Step 1. The first thing they did was target bigger
companies. The bigger the company, the bigger the
phone system.
Step 2. The salespeople called the 2000 largest
companies in their market with two simple questions:
"Hi, we're doing our annual telephone system survey. I
just need to know two things: What is the model of
your phone system and how old is it?" In two days, the
salespeople had a list of 508 companies with old phone
systems.
Step 3. We had the sales reps call on these larger
companies with one offer: "We have a new educational
program entitled: The nine ways you're wasting money
on your voice and data spending." They would go on to
further say: "We've been in the telephone business for
ten years now and we've found that every company
wastes money on their voice and data spending in at
least nine areas. So we put together this educational
program as a way to teach companies how to stop
wasting money and start saving money. We do this as a
public relations effort. If you ever need any help at
all with your voice or data needs, or telephone system
needs, we want you to know about us. So this is simply
us putting our best foot forward."
This approach increased their appointment setting ten
fold, from three appointments per week to 30
appointments per week. This company did $3 million the
year before using this approach and put $9 million in
their pipeline for the coming year within just six
months of using this strategy.
What kind of a free education could YOU offer that
would make your prospects want to meet with you? Or
respond to your ad? Or take an interest in your direct
mail approach?
Important point: Sales is about building rapport, not
breaking it. When you SELL, you're breaking rapport.
No one wants to be "sold." When you EDUCATE, you are
building rapport. In fact, studies show that your
credibility increases significantly when you begin all
meetings with data that is of value to the prospect—
start all your meetings by teaching your prospect
something, or by giving them data that establishes
that you've done your homework.
A newspaper company had fallen 40% in gross revenues
and lost all of their profits. They used to call up
clients and say: "Hi, we'd love to come and talk to
you about advertising in our newspaper." They were
quickly shut down and shut out.
They started providing a "community educational
service to help local businesses succeed," which
resulted in a significant increase in not just getting
in to see prospects, but in sales as well. This client
went up $100 million in sales in a single year.
If your local newspaper called you up and offered to
teach you the seven things that make all businesses
succeed, you'd probably find that pretty hard to turn
down. They'd still have to talk you into the meeting,
but it would be an easier sell than talking you into a
meeting to try and pitch your advertising.
Naturally, there's more to this and the subtleties are
where you succeed, but if you embrace the concept of
"educational-based-marketing" you will out-market your
competitors at every turn. Think about this; what
makes this strategy so powerful is that it attracts
buyers before they are even thinking about buying.
Educational- based marketing casts a wider net,
attracts more buyers at every turn and closes a higher
percent of prospects if the "education" you give is of
true value. This is the least expensive, most
effective marketing concept you will ever use.
To learn more about this strategy, including a 16 page
detailed report on the concept, you can go to
www.howtodoublesales.com.
Chet Holmes is the CEO of Chet Holmes International, a
training company that specializes in helping companies
experience fast growth concepts.
