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More Clients
- the Online Marketing Newsletter
for Independent Professionals
from Action Plan Marketing
and Robert Middleton

In This Week's Issue: How do you charge more for what seems like
a look-alike service?

 

Adding Value

Last October when my wife was on an extended vacation, I hired
my next door neighbor, Hope, to pack my manuals and duplicate
and send tapes to the Action Group participants.

During that time, Hope took an interest in the marketing ideas
I shared with the group and soaked up what she could by listening
in while handling the mail. Hope is not your garden-variety office
assistant. She's an entrepreneur as well.

She'd recently quit her job and was doing odd jobs while she got
her new business off the ground. Hope entered the wild and wacky
world of dog walking and pet sitting in the Santa Cruz Area.

Hope's Pet Care is now a thriving business, so busy in fact that it's
hard for her to fit me in anymore! She created great business cards
with a color picture and flyers to match which she posted everywhere.
Calls started coming in and she set up an initial consultation where
she sold almost every client she met with.

But now that she can't take on one more dog or cat, she's caught in
a time trap.
How can she increase her income if she can't add any
more business? She's not interested in employees, so there's really
only one solution - raising her rates.

Not as easy as it seems, as pet sitting can be seen as a commodity
business. And although she knows she's good, it's hard to see how
she could charge more.

Hope and I will sit down soon and brainstorm how to do this, but I
hope you see yourself in this scenario. Are you too caught in the
time trap and wondering how you can also raise your rates?

There's one answer I want to explore and that's "Adding Value."

Most Independent Professionals fail to add any meaningful value to
their services and thereby end up getting lumped in with every other
consultant, coach or trainer out there. Here are three value-adding
stories:

A Powerful Guarantee

A sales training company offered a comprehensive and expensive
sales training program. It took several days and included all kinds
of follow-up. They had a very powerful guarantee that went like this:
"After the program is done, we invite you to evaluate the effectiveness
of the program by ANY criteria you choose. If you feel it has not met
that criteria, we will come back at not additional cost and do more
training until those criteria have been met."

This was enough to convert many prospects into clients. But some
prospects asked them if they could do a little less training and
somewhat less follow-up at a lower cost. The training company owners
said, "Yes, we can do that... with one caveat... it won't come with the
guarantee."

As Alan Weiss says, "Clients are happy to cut back on prices but not
so happy to cut back on value." Not many of the training company's
clients took the scaled-back package.

Free Bonuses

If you've spent any time perusing the Internet, you've seen various
ebooks and other online programs for sale. What almost all of them
include are free bonuses. These are usually additional reports,
real-audio recordings or teleclasses.

Do bonuses add enough value to increase sales and also create a
higher perceived value for the main product? Absolutely! In fact I've
often ordered an online product more for the bonus than for the
main product offered.

When I created the InfoGuru Marketing Manual I added a bonus that
was actually worth more than the manual itself - membership in the
InfoGuru Support Forum where you can get any question you have
about marketing answered by a knowledgeable InfoGuru.

Sales continue strong three plus years after launching and the
InfoGuru Support Forum is now one of the most active and vital
discussion groups on the web with over 500 posts a month.

A Unique Model

We've all heard a lot about branding, but what does that mean for
an Independent Professional business? Over 20 years ago my friend
Joe Meissner changed the outplacement business in the San Francisco
Bay Area by employing a marketing model instead of a psychological
model for outplacement.

A model, unique approach or method of doing business can be your
brand - something meaningful that makes your offering more valuable.
It isn't a matter of coming up with a fancy logo, name or process,
but developing something that has both validity and impact.

Joe called his company "Power Marketing, The Outplacement Alternative"
and positioned his business unlike any in the Bay Area. He proved that
his approach was a major advantage to the client and turned a two-person
office into a million dollar business in a few short years.

I don't know exactly what we'll come up with for Hope's Pet Care, but
when we're done, clients will be more than willing to pay more because
they'll know the value is there.

More on "Adding Value" in Marketing Flashes below.

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Two Good Reasons

For several weeks I've listed more than a dozen reasons to order the
InfoGuru Marketing Manual.
This week, I'm listing just two - from
testimonials I've recently received (one by email, one by card). Both
from England, by the way.

Long-Term Impact:

"Your InfoGuru Manual and More Clients eZine have been inspiring,
advising and motivating me for almost two years. I'm now in my third
year working for myself and doubt that I'd still be going if I didn't have
Action Plan. In fact, I'm so busy with clients that I don't have time to
apply more than 10% of what you have taught me!" - Richard Groom, UK
http://www.pcbonline.co.uk

Short-Term Results:

I downloaded the InfoGuru Marketing Manual two days ago because I
had to put together a proposal and didn't know where to start. I followed
your advice and have just won £216,000 worth of business over the next
12 months with the client. Coincidence? I don't think so. Let me know if I
can help you in any way." - Paul Browning, U.K. -
http://networksinc.co.uk

Sure there are 23 chapters, 288 pages, hours of Real Audio and hundreds
of pages of articles and loads of other goodies (not to mention the InfoGuru
Support Forum) included with the Manual. But it could be just one idea that
pushes your business over the top. Are you ready for the next step in your
business?

Check it out today:

http://www.actionplan.com/infoguru.html

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Marketing Flashes on "Adding Value"

* Add value by clearly communicating who you are, how you work
and how you are different. I know from the experience of working
with hundreds of InfoGurus that just by having a crystal-clear
marketing message you automatically add value.

* Add value by having a killer web site. It's not as hard as it may
seem. With nine or ten pages of detailed information about your
services and free value in the form of articles and an eZine you
can stand head and shoulders above the competition.

* Add value by offering a meaningful guarantee like the one for
the sales training company. Meaningful is key. If a guarantee is
too restricted or too legalistic it won't help you much. Ask yourself
what kind of guarantee would assure you.

* Add value by isolating the biggest problem or complaint your
clients have with your kind of service. Then deliver a service that
puts an emphasis on solving that problem and resolving that
complaint. You'll look both different and valuable.

* Add value by the way you take care of your clients. This may be
the hardest one of all, but the one with the biggest long-term
impact. Look closely at everything you do (or don't do) to serve
your clients and commit to upping the ante.

Until next week, all the best,

Robert Middleton

ACTION PLAN MARKETING
Helping Independent Professionals Attract More Clients

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www.actionplan.com

210 Riverside Drive
Boulder Creek, CA 95006
831-338-7790

Contact by email

© 2004 Robert Middleton, All rights reserved. You are free
to use material from the More Clients eZine in whole or in part,
as long as you include complete attribution, including live web
site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear.
The attribution should read:

"By Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. Please visit
Robert's web site at
http://www.actionplan.com for additional
marketing articles and resources on marketing for professional
service businesses."

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