More Clients - the Online Marketing Newsletter
for Independent Professionals
from Action Plan Marketing
and Robert MiddletonIn This Week's Issue: In This Week's Issue: You need to do more than get attention and interest, you need to prove you're the solution.
Prove You're the Solution
Last week I talked about the pitfalls of putting your marketing focus on getting prospects to understand what you do.
But that's hardly the whole story.
We generate attention and interest by focusing on results, not process, but that's not enough to make the sale. The initial reaction we get from our marketing message is key. But then our analytical minds tend to kick in and start to ask questions.
"How does this work?" "Will this work for me?" "How long will it take?" "Is that really possible?" "Who else has done it?" "Can they prove it?"And, if you don't answer those questions, you're in deep trouble.
Last week I got a cold call from a VOIP provider. This is telephone service over the Internet. I'd heard a lot about it and it costs much less than regular telephone service, so I was interested. They already had my attention.
But then I asked the question that was most important to me, "Is the sound quality of VOIP as good as my regular phone line? Saving money is important to me but not if the cost is a loss of quality, since I do so much business by phone."
I waited for them to prove it to me, and I was disappointed.
The best they could do was, "The quality has increased quite a bit recently." Boy, was that persuasive!
Now who knows? The quality might have been just fine. But they did a very poor job of proving it to me. So I said, "No thank you!"
When you're marketing your services, the biggest problem for you to solve shouldn't be getting someone's attention. That's relatively easy. The biggest challenge is to prove that you can produce the results you promise.
And when most Independent Professionals are challenged to prove that they can deliver results, guess what happens? Believe it or not, they once again revert back to process. They talk about how they do what they do.
Your prospect: "You can reduce employee attrition by 30%? OK, how do you do that?"
You: "Well we use Jawarski's Attrition Reduction Protocol that identifies the seven drivers of employee dissatisfaction and maps them on a grid to determine your primary mitigation strategies."Well, isn't that interesting... Not!
I assure you that a prospect for your services is not looking for that kind of answer - almost never! That's not proof. In fact, it sounds more like a smoke screen. Instead, they want to know:
What companies you've reduced attrition by 30% or more?Were these companies much like their company?
How long did it take to get results?
Was the process relatively easy or long and involved?
How did they measure the actual results?
If you can't answer questions like this, as far as they're concerned, you have no proof that will turn them into clients.
You need to answer their question, "How do you do that?" with an answer that persuades. The good news is that the most powerful way to do that is through "Success Stories" which make a solid case for your services.
Something like this...
"The best way to answer that question is by telling you about a client we worked with recently. They were in the same industry as you and were frustrated that they'd been losing their best talent. We did some assessments (the Jawarski's Attrition Reduction Protocol - but don't tell them that!) and then helped them make some changes that would retain their best talent."Within six months we'd turned around the attrition problem and by conservative estimates saved the company $987,000 in costs to hire new managers."
Now I don't know the results, facts and figures for your particular business, but I'd spend a lot of time developing and practicing these Success Stories until you can relate them with confidence and clarity. Your success as an Independent Professional just may depend upon it.
* The More Clients Bottom Line: Once you have your prospect's attention and interest, prove you can produce results through carefully crafted Success Stories that are hard to ignore.
Listen to two TeleClasses on proving you're the solution
Now that you understand the concept of proving you're the solution, listen to me (on two recorded TeleClasses) coaching four Independent Professionals on developing and improving their marketing conversations.
These two TeleClasses were held yesterday as previews to my upcoming workshops in New York and London. They were recorded so that you can listen to them and apply the coaching to your business as well.
Click here to listen:
http://www.actionplan.com/mtgoffer.htmlIf you're thinking about attending the workshops, you can take advantage of a special offer that's good only until Wednesday morning (see below for details).
Get a $109 Bonus for Enrolling in the Workshop
What if all your marketing conversations were productive and moved you closer to turning a prospect into a client? This is what the Cracking the Marketing Code Workshops are designed to do.
If you've been thinking of attending but have been putting it off, I'm making a special offer that's good for just one day. (until Wednesday morning.)
If you enroll in either workshop by 10 am Wednesday, Pacific time, you'll also receive my six-CD set, "The How to Marketing Series" with complete transcriptions online free if you enroll now. This is a $109 value. This CD set includes interviews with top marketing experts on key marketing topics:
Your Marketing Message with Michel Neray
Networking Strategies with Bob Burg
Generating Referrals with John Jantsch
Building an Email List with Bob Serling
Speaking as a Marketing Tool with Vickie Sullivan
Selling to Big Companies with Jill Konrath
Here's how to make your reservations in the workshops:
The dates for New York are Sat, July 16 for the Workshop and Sun July 17 for the Intensive.
http://www.actionplan.com/wkp/nywkp.htmlThe dates for London are Sat, July 23 for the Workshop and Sun July 24 for the Intensive.
http://www.actionplan.com/wkp/uk05.html
Attend a marketing workshop in your home
I know everyone can't attend a workshop. The next best thing is the 12 CD set of my Marketing Mastery Workshop from last year. It's one of the best workshops I've done and it was all recorded professionally. You can order it with the InfoGuru Manual or by itself and participate from the comfort of your home.
http://www.actionplan.com/infoguru.htmlIf you already have the Infoguru Manual you can order just the CD program on the same page.
Until next week, all the best,
Robert Middleton
ACTION PLAN MARKETING
Cracking the Marketing Code for Independent Professionals~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
210 Riverside Drive
Boulder Creek, CA 95006
831-338-7790© 2005 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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