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Do this and you don’t need to be good at selling

Posted byIan Brodie on August 2nd, 2015.

When you're selling services or “virtual products” like online courses or coaching it's incredibly difficult to give your potential clients a real feeling of what it would be like to work with you and the results they'd get.

As a result most don't buy, not because they don't want what you're offering, but because they're not sure it would work for them.

Do you really get results? Could they work with you? Will it work in their specific situation?

All tricky questions. All questions they suspect that any seller would say yes to if they asked, but how can they really know?

There are two routes you can go down.

One is to describe to them what they'd get. Make the benefits come alive. Share vivid stories of previous clients. 

The problem with this route is that it requires you to be really good at marketing and sales.

You have to be able to write really compelling copy or to be great at face to face selling to make the results you'll get with them come alive and seem tangible without them ever experiencing it. And to give them confidence in what it's going to be like working with you.

Great if you can do it. It's a wonderful skill.

But most people don't have it.

The other route is to actually give them that experience. Find a way of them working with you and getting results on a small scale either for free or at low cost.

It's why I offer my Re-Ignite program at low cost to new subscribers.

It's not that I don't think the program is worth much. Far from it: I've had people who've bought it email me to say they've had results within days.

In fact I specifically chose the course to focus on areas that delivered results fast. Because I want to give the people who buy it such a great experience that they'll quickly get the confidence to go on to buy one of my main programs.

Now you could argue (and many people do) that offering some of your best material at low cost or for free means that people won't need to buy your higher end courses or services.

I've not found that to be true.

Sure, there will be some people for whom the free or low cost material will be enough. Or that go hopping between providers getting freebie after freebie.

But those folks would hardly have been great clients anyway. And most are just never going to buy anything.

But what you do by giving people a chance to experience you at low cost is that you win over the people who could be great clients but just aren't sure yet.  

It's a big decision for most people to stump up hundreds of dollars, pounds or euros to buy a course they're not certain about.

But it's an easy decision to buy a course for $7, for example.

And if that course blows their socks of and gets them results quickly, chances are they”ll upgrade to something bigger that gets bigger results.

All without you having to be brilliant at marketing or selling. The offer and then your product itself does all the hard work.

Of course, if you can get good at marketing and sales too, then your results will be multiplied. That's what I teach people in Momentum Club.

But if you're looking for a way to get more clients or sell more of your virtual products without needing to be great at marketing and selling then find a way for your potential clients to experience what you do.

It's your very best sales technique.

More Clients Memorandum

This attitude has a major impact on sales

Posted byIan Brodie on July 26th, 2015.

Since I do most of my work online I don't get out much :)

But this week I spent some time in face-to-face meetings with a handful of people with what I found to be rather surprising results.

You see, I met a couple of lovely people. Both were smart, pleasant, full of great ideas.

And yet there was a big difference between them.

One spent most of their time complaining about people and things. Their kids' teachers were useless. They'd had rubbish customer service at the bank. The government didn't understand small businesses.

The other was positive and upbeat. Not in a cloying, desperate-to-please, look-at-me-I'm-a-lovely-person type way. It was just that what they chose to talk about and focus on were the good things that had happened to them, not the bad things.

Surprise, surprise, I came out of one meeting feeling energised and the other feeling drained.

In fact, over the years my tolerance for “moaning minnies” has shrunk to pretty much zero. Life is short, let's not waste it grumbling about things.

Who are you more likely to buy something from? Someone who leaves you feeling energised and upbeat, or someone who co-opts you in to their moaning about life?

A few years ago we were staying at my parents over New Year and after a few drinks one of their neighbours said to me “you know what Ian, I've known your Dad for 30 years and I've never heard him say a bad word about anyone”.

That struck me at the time as a very good way to live your life and I resolved then never to let myself by drawn into moaning and whinging. If I have a discussion with someone I want it to be about something good that's happened, not a good old moan.

I've found that doing that leaves me feeling much more energised and positive afterwards. 

When I speak to potential suppliers or business partners I never willingly choose to work with people who give off a negative complainy vibe. I just know they'll drain my energy if we work together.

How do you come across when you meet people? I promise you, if you focus on the positive you'll not only sell more, you'll feel better too.

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How to win big clients when you’re a little guy

Posted byIan Brodie on July 22nd, 2015.

When I was headhunted along with a few colleagues to help start up the UK arm of a US consulting firm back in 2006 we ran into a whole bunch of problems.

In my previous role with a large global firm we found it relatively easy to get into the diary of client executives. We either had an account manager in place who knew the key people, or we used our team of cold callers to set up meetings.

When I moved to my new role we basically tried the same tactics and they failed miserably.

And by miserably I don't just mean a minor failure. We didn't get a single meeting.

We used pretty much the same lists and the same scripts to try to get meetings, but this time it just didn't work.

With hindsight the problem was that we were unknowns.

Back when we were part of a big global firm the executive clients had either had personal dealings with us, or knew of us. So a meeting with us was a relatively safe bet.

With our new unknown firm there was a big risk they'd be wasting their time or end up being pitched at.

And, of course, time had moved on. Our target clients were ever more pressed for time and so were having fewer meetings generally.

And since they could find out so much more online than before they were cutting out a lot of the meetings they used to have just to hear what was going on in the market.

The end result was our miserable failure to get meetings. In the 18 months I was there all our clients came from our existing connections and referrals. We just couldn't break into anyone new.

When I set up business by myself I was in the very same situation. In fact worse as I was targeting a different set of clients.

That's when the power of giving value in advance was really brought home to me.

One of the projects I started, almost on a whim, was to initiate some research into business development best practices for law firms.

I had targeted law firms as good potential clients locally but had struggled to make any headway getting meetings.

After all, the senior partners in the big firms I was trying to meet had no incentive for meeting me. They didn't know me, I had no track record to speak of. So from their perspective a meeting was unlikely to bring them anything useful.

But my research project changed all that.

The prospect of getting exclusive access to the detailed results got them interested in meeting me to take part in the research. And the research results were a great door opener to senior clients in other firms.

Because I had something of value to offer in the meeting itself, potential clients were much more interested in meeting me than they'd ever been when I was trying to get on their agenda to talk about working together.

But, of course, once we'd had that value-adding meeting they were much more likely to consider working with me.

It still amazes me how much time I'd wasted worrying about the perfect methods or scripts for getting meetings, when the key all along wasn't how I asked, it was the value I offered. 

Now my business has moved on a long way since back then and I'm much better known in some fields.

But the same principle still applies. If the value you can add in a meeting is clear, you're much more likely to get one.

And we're not talking about the future value they might get from working with you. We're talking about the immediate value they get in the meeting from the useful information and insights you bring.

That need to add value in advance is especially important when it comes to trying to get meetings with corporate executives. They're pushed for time and protected by a whole series of gatekeepers. It has to be very obvious to them that they're going to get a lot out of a meeting with you before they'll agree to one.

So, what value do you offer in advance that makes it worthwhile for a potential client to meet with you?

If you can answer that question well, you're on your way to getting many more of those meetings.

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Do you have a big idea?

Posted byIan Brodie on July 19th, 2015.

David Ogilvy famously said that “unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night”.

I've become increasingly convinced that big ideas are at the heart of all great marketing, not just advertising.

We all try to make our marketing speak to our potential clients. To capture some kind of benefits they'll get from our products or services.

But a big idea goes further than that. It captures the imagination. It gets people salivating. It's memorable.

I think I've had a couple of big marketing ideas in my time. The first was “pain free marketing” which focused on teaching professionals how to market in ways that didn't make them feel pushy or uncomfortable but instead added value to their potential clients.

Those ideas are still at the heart of all the marketing I do.

More recently I released my “21 word email that can get you more clients”. Quite a bold claim that by sending out a simple email to a very specific audience it could get you sales meetings within days.

It works, by the way, but that's not my point here.

What's important is that it's a concept that's simple to understand, has huge appeal, and is easy to remember.

Often our marketing is far too complex. I sometimes read website home pages or hear how people introduce themselves and I still have no clue what they actually do or how it might help me.

The essence of a big idea is that simplicity. It should be immediately obvious what the big benefit is, why it works, and who it's for.

Do you have a big idea that captures the imagination of your ideal clients? Often we kind of have the germ of one, but we need to put much more thought into making it really resonate. Stripping away all the fluff so the idea really shines.

It's hard work to shape big ideas. But well worth it.

More Clients Memorandum

Run a mile if someone tells you this

Posted byIan Brodie on July 12th, 2015.

Have you ever read an email or piece of sales copy that begins…

“You've been lied to…”

or “It's not your fault…”

Chances are that email or sales letter will then go on to tell you that the reason you're not as dazzlingly successful as the author is not for want of hard work. Nor is it that you're not smart enough.

Nope. The “real” reason is that you just don't know the “secrets” that they do. The magic shortcuts to whatever wonders they're promising you.

Of course, it sounds ludicrous when I put it like that. Who would fall for that?

But of course, we all do.

We all wish there was some simple way we could achieve our wildest dreams without hard work, without having to be brilliant or learn a difficult skill.

So when someone tells us the reason we're not doing as well as we'd like is simply because there's a secret we're not privvy to, and that knowing the secret could unlock something we truly desire without taking a ton of hard work we're typically all ears.

We shouldn't be. We should run a mile.

I don't know anyone who's built a successful business that hasn't had to work hard at it. Even the guys I know who've built big businesses “in their pyjamas” on the web have worked (and studied) incredibly hard.

Now I'm not saying shortcuts don't exist. They absolutely do. 

But shortcuts make things easier, not easy.

I wish I could say that the “you've been lied to…” and “it's not your fault…” peddlers aren't successful in the long run but sadly many are.

They make their money by targeting the weak and needy. The people who desperately want to hear the message that it'll be easy once they know the secrets. All they need to do is fork over their cash to learn them.

We're all weak and needy sometimes. So make sure you immunise yourself and don't fall for these lines.

And of course, make sure you don't use them yourself.