I just received the latest issue of Tessa Stowe’s ezine in my email box and today’s feature article was titled, “Are You Making It Hard To Buy from You?”. It was really good so I just had to share it with you. I’ve added some annotations in blockquotes so they stand out and you can skip them if you feel the interfere with the flow.

Are You Making It Hard To Buy from You?

©Tessa Stowe, Sales Conversation, 2009

One of the reasons you may be finding it difficult to sell your products and services could be that you’re making it hard for prospects to buy from you. Without realizing it, you are slowing down a sale or even preventing the possibility of a sale, even if a prospect desperately needs what you are offering.

So are you making it hard for a prospect to buy from you?

Ask yourself these five questions and you’ll soon find out:

1. Can you clearly answer the question, “Why should I buy from you over your competition?”

If you aren’t conveying the answer to this question throughout your sales campaign, then you are leaving it up to your prospect to work out the answer. Working out the answer will take your prospect considerable time and effort, so most prospects won’t bother to do a thorough job. As a result, they’ll probably be unaware of a lot of your value and differentiations and will just see you as the same as everyone else.

Carma’s note: I was just listening to the pre-calls for “The Money Talk” with Kevin Nations and Lisa Sasevich and the way they put this concept really made sense to me. Your clients aren’t investing in you, they are investing in themselves through you. It is your job to communicate the transformation you offer so they can make the right decision for themselves.

2. Do you have a standard, one-size-fits-all, presentation or demonstration?

Your solution has lots of features and functions, and only a subset of those features and functions is of relevance and interest to any one prospect because only a subset will solve his or her specific problem. If you give a one-size-fits-all presentation or demonstration, you are leaving it up to your prospect to work out which features and functions are relevant. Your prospect will just feel overwhelmed and confused after your presentation and demonstration, and overwhelmed or confused prospects delay making decisions.

Carma’s Note: I believe what she’s saying here is that you need to understand the needs of your clients so you can tailor your sales presentations. So, how that translates to the online arena? I would think that you should “chunk” your solution into individual modules or mini-solutions. That way clients can pick and choose from your buffet of products and services the ones that are right for them.

3. Are you selling your product or are you selling an end result-an outcome?

Your prospect is not interested in buying your product but in buying an end result – an outcome – and your product just facilitates that outcome. If you sell a product, you will be leaving it up to your prospect to work out whether and how your product will deliver the outcome he or she wants. Again, this will take your prospect time and effort and, again, most prospects won’t bother. Focus on how your product helps your prospect achieve a desired outcome.

Carma’s Note: You’ll find plenty of information about this topic in the “Benefits & Features” category of this blog. Also, I dedicated a few calls to this topic in Volume 1 of the Turbo-Charge Your Marketing program.

4. Do you work out the financial justification with your prospect?

Before your prospects will buy your solution, it needs to make financial sense. If you leave it entirely up to your prospects to work out the financial justification, your sale will be delayed until they get around to doing it. What’s more, even if they finally do the financial justification, they will not be aware of all the areas in which your solution can benefit them, so the financial justification will not be as strong as it could be if you laid it out for them.

Carma’s Note: One way of doing this is by, as Yanik Silver would say, comparing apples to oranges. In other words, compare what you offer to something that is similar but different. For example, comparing an exercise program ebook to a gym membership.

I hope you are seeing the recurring theme in my comments about the first four questions: If you leave it up to your prospect to do certain things, they may or may not take the time to do them and, because they don’t know your solution as well as you, they will not come up with the best answers. The more things you leave up to your prospect to do, the more you will slow down the sale, risk the sale-and even prevent it.

There is one more question you need to ask yourself and, in some ways, this is the most important one:

5. When you are talking to a prospect, is your intent to sell your products and services?

If your intent is to sell, your prospects will know it and clam up. They will sense that it’s all about your making a sale, whether it’s in their best interests or not. Your intent to sell can actually slow down and prevent sales.

Alternatively, if your intent is to help your prospects get what they want and need – whether it is your solution or not – they will be more likely to open up to you and give you the information you need to help them. They will sense that you have their best interests at heart and will be more open to your questions and ideas. Your intent to help them, rather than to sell your product, will actually speed up the sale if your product is what they need.

Carma’s Note: Have you noticed this concept showing up a lot lately? I’ve been hearing it everywhere and I love it. I’ve never much liked selling, but I certain do like helping people. Lisa Sasevich mentioned this in “The Money Talk” pre-call I mentioned earlier. When you come from a place of helping your prospect help themselves, even if they choose not to buy from you, you will have made a good impression. The person may buy from you later or refer others to you who will buy. It may sound trite, but, really, it’s all good.

If you want to make it easy for your prospects to buy from you, your intent should be to help them. Then, in alignment with that intent, do ALL the work for them in terms of making it clear why they should buy from you over your competition, what features and functions of your product fit their needs, how your product leads to their desired outcome, and how your product can be financially justified – because you are the one best equipped to do so.

About the Author

Tessa Stowe teaches small business owners and recovering salespeople simple steps to turn conversations into clients without being sales-y or pushy. Her FREE monthly Sales Conversation newsletter is full of tips on how to sell your services by just being yourself. Sign up now at www.salesconversation.com.

It seems nowadays every marketing guru and their brother-in-law has a “deadly sins and how to fix them” book, ebook or at least an article! But apparently nobody is reading this stuff! How do I know? Because nine out of every ten businesses continue making the same marketing goof-ups.

The most amazing part is – they are convinced their marketing is great and their phone will be ringing off the hook any moment now!

Time for a reality check! Are you guilty of these four marketing sins? Find out how to fix it!

Deadly Marketing Sin #1

Not Standing Out From Your Competitors

You want to be one in a million not one of the million. In the marketing jargon it’s called a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). I call it a HUB – Hot Undeniable Benefit of doing business with you. Your HUB sets you apart from the crowd. It tells your customers why you are special. And it answers the question your customers are asking themselves, which is: “Why should I do business with you versus anyone else?”

So how do you go about discovering your HUB? Do you know what makes you different from others offering similar product or service? The more competitive your industry the more important it is to emphasize even the smallest differences. Do you cater to a specific group of people? Are you better than others in addressing a specific issue? Do you guarantee your work?

How about the one thing no one can duplicate – what makes you – you?

If you can’t find anything unique right now, look for unresolved problems in your industry and become an expert in providing a solution to them. Here is good example. You’ve heard of a small parcel delivery company called FEDEX, right? Do you know their USP? It’s: “When you absolutely, positively need it overnight. Guaranteed.” Funny thing is they are no longer the only company doing it – but they offered it first.

Discover your HUB, articulate it in all your marketing messages and watch your results soar.

Deadly Marketing Sin #2

Assuming Your Customers Know As
Much About Your Business As You Do

Small business owners are a very special breed – we walk, talk, breathe, eat and sleep thinking about our business. Listen, just because you think about your business all the time doesn’t mean your customers do the same!

Fact is, I can count on one hand the businesses I became exposed to in the last twelve months that didn’t fail to educate their customers on how they solve their problems and meet their needs and wants.

Your customers don’t really buy products and services. They buy SOLUTIONS to their problems. Use articles, presentations and case studies to educate them about WHAT you do, HOW it works and WHY it’s the only logical solution to their problems.

And don’t just do it once. Frankly, if you don’t have a way to consistently and automatically keep in touch with prospects, customers, centers of influence and strategic partners – you are missing the boat!

Deadly Marketing Sin #3

Wasting Time and Money On Marketing
Strategies That Don’t Work!

Do you know which of your marketing efforts result in new business? Do you ever calculate the time, money and effort it takes to get a new customer from each promotional strategy you use? Why? Because if it is working – you want to do use it more often! And if it isn’t – you need to stop wasting your money!

Case in point; most professionals believe that networking is the best way to get new business. And it can be – but not always and not for everyone. Find out for yourself. Add up the amount of time you spent networking last month. Put a dollar value on it based on your fees. Add the actual price you paid to attend those events. Then divide this total amount by the number of new customers your networking produced. Are you happy with your results? Or is it a shock to see what it actually costs to get new clients by networking?

It doesn’t matter if it’s networking, advertising, referral or joint venture strategies – if you don’t know your ROME (Return On Marketing Efforts) I guarantee you are wasting money doing things that don’t work! Every marketing strategy can be tracked and measured. So figure out what works best for you!

Deadly Marketing Sin #4

Missing Out On Repeat Business

You’ve heard about the back-end-sales, haven’t you? Are you doing it? It’s astonishing how many small business owners do not develop strong relationships with their customers and have no plan for generating repeat business.

You see, one of your biggest costs of doing business is marketing and getting new customers into your funnel. And once you’ve done a great job for them, and then you nurture the relationship you’ve developed, it’s so easy to ask for more business. But you have to develop different levels of products and services to offer to them.

Listen to your clients and develop new offerings to respond to their needs. Create assessments to uncover hidden opportunities for additional projects. If you can’t or don’t want to offer those new solutions – partner up with someone who does. McDonald’s made a fortune on “supersizing” their fries – time for you to start thinking about supersizing your business with each client.

Bottom line is this: when I hear businesses talk about bad economy, clients not having money and overall complaining about how tough it is to make a sale I can always pinpoint their poor performance to at least one of those marketing sins. Frankly, there is no such a thing as a shortage of business – there is a shortage of knowledge how to get that business.

In the movie, The Prestige, one of the main characters dissects the elements of a magic trick.

You start by showing the object you’re going to manipulate in some way (i.e. make disappear).

You manipulate the object, in this case you make it disappear.

Then, you bring it back. This is the prestige. It’s not enough to make something disappear. You need to bring it back.

In essence, what he’s talking about is closure. You need to bring closure to whatever you’re doing or it will feel unfinished. This is true for a lot of things in life, including your marketing and copywriting.

How do you do this? Well, let’s look at how people buy. For the most part it looks like this:

• Someone has a problem
• They look for a solution to their problem
• They determine the best source for their solution

So, to give you an example of this, let’s say someone wants to lose weight.

• Their problem — they want to lose weight.
• The solution — they want a diet and exercise program that will work for their specific solution
• The source — they look for the best nutrition/fitness person to give them that solution (whether it’s a book or a home study course, work with someone one-on-one or something else).

If you look at a sales letter, many times it mirrors this process:

• Outlines the problem
• Agitates the problem
• Explains the solution
• Emphasizes that the business writing the sales letter has the best solution

See how this works? Okay, so let’s look at another copywriting example — how you write benefits.

First, what is a benefit? In a nutshell, benefits are what people buy. It’s the “what’s in it for me.” It’s what gets people excited about buying your product or service.

As an example, if we go back to the weight loss example, people aren’t really buying losing weight. What they want is the BENEFITS of losing weight — i.e. they look good, they feel good, their health improves, etc. Think about it, if someone didn’t care what they looked like, how they felt or if they were sick or not, why would losing weight or maintaining a healthy weight be a priority in their life?

They want the benefits of being thin, not so much being thin for thin’s sake.

So, with that in mind, when you write a benefit, you can work in both the problem and the solution. For instance:

Frustrated because the scale has been stuck at the same number for MONTHS no matter WHAT you do? You’ll learn my secret for smashing through that plateau and getting back on the weight loss track.

It’s not enough to simply talk about the problem. People need to know they’re going to get a solution. They already know the problem, they want to know they’re getting a solution. You need to bring it back, show the prestige.

Now, why do you want to go through all of this? Because providing closure feels comfortable to people. And the more comfortable you can make them in the sales process, the more likely they’ll become a customer.

”But this won’t work” said Steve. “I’ve tried it in the past and had no response.” Does this sound familiar? My newer clients often resist implementing certain strategies based on past experiences. However, I usually find out that it wasn’t the strategy itself – but how it was implemented that caused the dismal results.

So whether you are designing a simple flier or developing a plan for a strategic partnership you can increase your chances for success by following these five tips.

1. Develop Your Marketing For Your Potential Clients – Not Yourself.
What looks good to you may not necessarily be appealing to your audience. It’s OK to ask your friends and associates for feedback – but their comments are only relevant if they are members of your target market. Also – just because everyone else advertises in a certain way is not a proof that it works.

2. Provide Answers To These Three Critical Marketing Questions:

QUESTION 1: What’s this about?
Check that your materials immediately and clearly communicate what you offer, who it’s for and what’s the next step you are asking them to take.

QUESTION 2: What’s in it for me?
Don’t make your audience guess about what’s in it for them by leaving this information out or hiding it in the small print at the bottom. Use clear language free of industry jargon. Describe your offering not from the perspective of what you do but in terms of what the clients will receive and how they will be better off as a result of it.

QUESTION 3: Why should I listen to you?
How will you establish credibility with your audience? Include your photo and prominently display your contact info. Present case studies, statistics, endorsements, testimonies from satisfied clients. If people don’t believe you they will not respond to your offer.

3. Always follow the proven A.I.D.A. format.

ATTENTION
Use a powerful headline that grabs attention. Don’t try to be cute, don’t expect that your prospects will take the time look for a deeper meaning in your clever slogans – they won’t. So be as direct and to the point as you possibly can. If you can boil the essence of the benefits you are offering to just one short sentence what would it be? That’s you headline!

INTEREST
Now that you have their attention you must quickly build your prospects interest. Use subtitles, questions and short stories to illustrate and communicate how well you understand their needs. This is a good place to allow your audience to connect with the pain their problems are causing them.

DESIRE
Technical descriptions and numbers provide information but don’t incite action. Your marketing must arouse in your prospects the emotion of desire. Show your audience how a solution is available and achievable to them through doing business with you. Offer powerful performance promise and eliminate the risk of giving you a “try” by a strong guarantee.

ACTION
Without this part your marketing is like a salesman who gives a great presentation but forgets to ask for the order. Give your prospects a compelling reason to take action. Make your offer so incredibly irresistible they simply cannot refuse!

4. Follow up, Follow Up, Follow Up…
Over 80% of all sales are made after the prospect has heard from you at least seven times. Yet a typical business person gives up after just one or two follow up contacts.

Plan your follow-up steps in advance. Use a combination of mail, email, telephone and personal visits as your follow-up strategy. At each opportunity provide your potential clients with value – this way they will forgive you the intrusion.

5. Develop a System

Most entrepreneurs and professionals waste their time and money on one-shot, fragmented promotional tactics. They practice “hit and miss” marketing system; they try a strategy and abandon it before it has a chance to produce any results.

Instead of developing new marketing strategies look for ways to improve the ones your are currently using. When you find a promotional strategy that works for you build a system around it so that you can consistently implement it over and over again.

Following these tips will make all the difference in the world between struggling to get clients and becoming wildly successfully in marketing your services. They are worth investing your best efforts and getting the support you need to implement them effectively.

There will always be people who value information they can hold in their hand over information they acquire over the Internet — no matter how much they paid for it. There is something to the visceral experience of holding something in your hand that increases the perceived value of a product.

Therefore, it makes sense that your continuity program would provide offline, physical benefits to its members. Some examples include:

• Newsletters printed on paper.
• CDs of the monthly call.
• DVDs of the monthly video.
• Binders to hold the newsletters.
• Special reports.
• Membership card.
• Members-only paraphernalia, such as T-shirts, mugs and key chains.

But why would you go through the added expense of not only shipping these things, but producing them, as well?

In short, increased perceived value.

You can charge more for your membership when you include physical products — much more. For example, let’s say that your membership benefits include a monthly informational call with guest experts. If the membership is virtual, you could probably charge anywhere from $15 to $35 for monthly fee.

Now add to that membership a recording of that call on CD, along with a hard copy of the transcript and a binder to keep it all nice and neat. This would probably cost you around $5 a month to produce and ship. But, you could now charge anywhere from $10 to $30 more per month!

By adding a physical benefit, you’ve increases the value of the membership way more than you increased the cost of the membership.

Not only that, but your membership retention can be much higher, as well — making your income potential that much more predictable.

Now that’s a benefit I’m sure you would like for your business!

NOTE: One of the topics that will be covered in Volume 3 of Turbo-Charge Your Marketing is membership sites and continuity programs. Be sure to sign up for the free live calls so you don’t miss out!