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*Don’t* overcome objections

Posted byIan Brodie on June 25th, 2017.

Remember last week when I said that highlighting the benefits of working with you and the results your clients get isn't enough to win potential clients over.

You also have to convince them that they'll actually be able to get those benefits in practice themselves. You have to overcome the concerns they have about whether they'll really get those oh-so-wonderful results you keep talking about.

I'm going to suggest that the best way to overcome concerns isn't to overcome them after they've arisen. It's to pre-empt them. 

Or more specifically, to pre-empt concerns before they're vocalised.

Sales trainers will tell you objections are a good thing. They mean the potential client is interested (no interest = no reason to object, so objections imply interest).

And while that's true to some degree, the problem with concerns and objections is that once a potential client raises them, everything you say about them from then on feels like an excuse. An argument.

No matter what kind of nice words you put around it or “clever” techniques like “I understand why you might feel that way. Many of my clients felt the same way until they found…” – you're essentially saying “you're wrong”.

And what happens when you tell someone they're wrong (even subtly)?

They start trying to prove they're right.

It's much better to have them discover for themselves that their concerns are unfounded before they ever think about them deeply or vocalise them.

How do you do that?

Well, you can't realistically do it for absolutely every possible concern someone might have. But you can do it for the big ones I got you to list last week.

What you do is take each of the major concerns, write down why each one isn't true or isn't something to worry about, then find a story, example or case study to “prove it”.

Next, take those stories and find a useful tip or insight or piece of information in each one that, in and of itself, would be valuable to your potential clients.

For example: let's say you were a social media trainer who works primarily with business to business (b2b) clients. And a concern you expect from many potential clients is “social media marketing doesn't work for b2b”.

Think of an example of a client you worked with who originally thought that, but who ended up getting great results.

Then think of any useful tips or ideas you can glean from that example that would be valuable to potential clients. For example, perhaps they discovered that using Twitter to communicate with potential customers didn't work, but it worked really well to communicate with other influencers in their field who were then able to introduce them to potential customers. 

You can use that tip about connecting with influencers in your marketing in presentations, in webinars, in articles, blog posts, emails, etc.

And if you explain the tip by introducing the example like “I worked with a client recently who initially was worried that social media marketing wouldn't work for business to business. And he was right, the normal ways of using social media don't. But what we did was run a campaign to connect him with influencers in his marketplace. From those initial connections, he built relationships that turned into hugely valuable referrals. So to succeed in b2b social media marketing, you need to focus on influencers, not just customers”.

That's a useful tip (obviously it would be longer in real life with more details and more colour). And anyone hearing it who themselves are worried that social media marketing won't work for them as a b2b organisation will begin to think “oh, it might work for me. These guys kind of know what they're doing”.

You've pre-empted the concern.

Wait for them to vocalise it and tell you “I don't think social media marketing will work for a b2b organisation like us” and no matter how you answer the concern (even if you use the same example), it will always come across as defensive.

They'll always be thinking “well, you would say that wouldn't you? You want me to hire you”.

But address it before they say it, let them “discover it for themselves” and that concern will be put to bed.

Of course, it's a bit of work to come up with genuine stories and examples and weave them into your marketing.

But I promise you, it's well worth doing.

More Clients Memorandum

Are you forgetting to emphasise this?

Posted byIan Brodie on June 18th, 2017.

I'm sure you've done the same training as I have that tells you to focus on the benefits, not the features.

Tell your potential clients about the results they'll get from working with you. Paint a picture of what their life will be like.

Except…

Well, that's not enough.

I can promise you I can see the benefits of winning the lottery really clearly. I can easily visualise how my life might be different with 10s of millions more in the bank. 

But that's not enough to make me go buy a lottery ticket. 

The problem is, I just don't think I'll win. 

I can't see the lottery “working” for me. 

And often it's the same with your clients.

Yes, you have to start by focusing on the benefits they'll get from working with you. Without those there's nothing to motivate them to hire you.

But you also need to understand what's holding them back.

Salespeople call them objections but I think that's the wrong word as it then leads to the abomination of “objection handling”. Trying to talk them out of those objections.

But the things that are holding your clients back from hiring you usually aren't amenable to being dismissed by a few words. Usually, they're genuine, deep-rooted concerns.

How do they know for sure you're the real deal and can do what you claim?

More importantly, even if you've got results working with others, how do they know it will work for them? (I know others have won the lottery, I've seen them on the TV. I just don't think it will happen to me :) )

How do they know they've got the necessary skills, attitude, perseverance, intelligence, EQ, grit or whatever it takes to succeed working with you?

Benefits alone don't get people to hire you. Helping them overcome their concerns does.

Your task for this week: write down the main concerns people have that stop them from hiring you even though they recognise the benefits.

Next week we'll look at the best ways to address those concerns.

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Questions to help you find your difference

Posted byIan Brodie on June 11th, 2017.

Last Sunday I said that one of the best ways to differentiate yourself in the eyes of a potential client is to have a unique method or approach you use to deliver your service to them. 

Often the key is to articulate what you already do in a way that makes that difference clear.

Here are 10 questions you can ask yourself to help surface what your real difference is. You won't be able to answer all 10 easily, but working through them will generate some great ideas for points of difference which you can then refine.

1. What are the common mistakes and misconceptions your clients (or a subset of them) often have about their business in your area?
2. Where do you disagree with accepted wisdom in your field and/or your competitors?
3. What are your “go to” methods and approaches that you use regularly that you have honed and improved over the years?
4. What are the most overused phrases, angles and selling points in your industry right now that you can take the opposite view on?
5. What do you do that clients are the most surprised by or didn't think would work?
6. What's your best-kept secret of what you do to get results for clients?
7. What are the biggest “lightbulb moments” you've had yourself that have led to changing how you do business or what you advise your clients?
8. If you had to educate your clients about just one thing that would make a huge difference to their business, what would it be?
9. Are there any big new trends in your field  or learnings from other industries that you've adopted that haven't yet or are only just beginning to affect your clients more generally?
10. Do you use any new scientific or field-based research findings in your work?

The answers to these questions will help you understand how the way you work is different to your competitors and can be used as a strong point of difference. Obviously, you need to focus these questions on areas where you work that are of high value to your clients: no point in being different in ways that aren't valuable to your clients!

Have fun with this :) 

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How are you *really* different

Posted byIan Brodie on June 4th, 2017.

Spotify has just started playing Dexy's Midnight Runners as I type this. Not that I'm a huge fan, but some music just lifts your spirits :)

This week I've been thinking about what make us – all of us – different from our competitors.

Whenever you read something about USPs or differentiation, the focus is almost always on the end result. Nine times out of ten you'll hear about Dominos Pizza and how they offered delivery within 30 minutes or your money back. Apparently back in 1523 when they started up, no one else was offering that.

But today, things are different. Everyone offers fast delivery Pizza. More importantly, as a service provider, chances are that most people in your field promise something very similar to you.

Do you claim to improve your client's leadership, reduce their costs, get them more clients, give them more confidence?

What do your competitors claim? My guess is something pretty similar.

It's almost impossible to differentiate based on what you claim you can do in a service business these days. It's so easy for competitors to make the same claims.

What you can differentiate on is how you prove that claim. How you give your potential clients confidence that they'll actually get what you say they'll get.

You can prove your claims through testimonials and case studies.

You can prove your claims through your experience and background.

You can prove your claims through giving value in advance – proving you can improve things for them by actually improving things for them.

One underused approach is to use a unique method or approach to prove your claims.

It's a bit like the way the ads for L'Oréal and other cosmetics often go heavy on the “science” behind the product. They know you've been promised younger looking skin or whatever claim they're making a thousand times before. Why should you believe them this time? It's because of this amazing new ingredient only recently uncovered by science ;)

In most of our businesses clients have been promised better leadership, reduced costs, more clients, more confidence many, many times before. Why should they believe you when you say you can really deliver it?

Probably the previous times they heard plenty of testimonials and track records too.

But if you can show that you genuinely do things a different way that's more likely to lead to results, that can give them confidence.

If they can see that your way is different and makes sense, then it's something for them to hang their hopes on to. 

So, what is your “different way”? Do you genuinely do things differently to your competitors?

Not just a weak “we're better” or “we're easier to work with” or “we really listen”. Your competitors say those things too.

What can you say about the way you do things that your competitors can't or don't say?

That can help you stand out in a tough marketplace.

More Clients Memorandum

How to stay ahead of the curve

Posted byIan Brodie on May 28th, 2017.

In last Sunday's email I encouraged you to share your expertise and your journey with your audience, making the point that you don't have to be the world's #1 authority in an area to have useful expertise to share.

Of course, your journey needs to be a couple of steps ahead of where your audience is. No one pays rapt attention to someone doing something they've already done themselves a bunch of times before.

One way you can stay ahead is to keep a watchful eye on what's happening in other fields outside your own. 

I typically don't advise jumping on the latest silver bullet technique that marketers keep trying to sell us. But what I do like is seeing what's effective in other areas that are perhaps a bit more advanced than our own and experimenting to see if they will work for us.

A simple example of this is the fiction writer Mark Dawson. Mark writes detective and spy fiction and sells upwards of 300,000 copies of his books every year. Pretty outstanding for a self-published author.

The reason he does so well is that he learnt how to use Facebook Advertising and spends $370 per day on ads and has built a 40,000 strong mailing list of people interested in his books.

In parallel to continuing to write, Mark also created a training course on using Facebook Advertising to sell fiction books which was hugely successful.  

It didn't contain anything earth-shattering or unique that hadn't been seen in Facebook Advertising courses in many other industries. But Mark was the first to take that knowledge, apply it to the world of fiction writing, tweak it to get it to work, and then share it with other authors. 

He got 2 or 3 steps ahead by watching what was going on in other sectors.

You can do the same too.

Learn from other fields. Crucially: test it out and tweak it to make it work in your field. Then share it.

More Clients Memorandum

How Bruce Henderson became an authority

Posted byIan Brodie on May 24th, 2017.

Back in 1963, Bruce Doolin Henderson was asked by the Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Company to set up a management consulting division.

It started off as just Bruce, a small office and a phone. Pretty much like all of us started up our business. Though no fancy Apple Macs in those days.

Within a decade, the renamed Boston Consulting Group were the premier strategy consulting firm in the US. And Henderson had become known as the leading strategy consultant of his generation.

When he died in 1992, the Financial Times said he “did more to change the way business is done in the United States than any other man in American business history”.

Now not everyone agrees with Henderson and BCG's ideas on business. And he was reputedly a rather difficult man to get along with.

But there's no doubt he was a pioneer and an Authority. When he spoke, people listened.

But back in 1963 that was far from the case. BCG's billings for their first month were just USD $500.

Henderson faced the same challenge that most small advisory firms have when they start up: they're unknown. 

Even though he had personal connections from his time at AD Little, and even though his parent company had clients they could introduce him to, he was still an unknown quantity to most.

Other consulting firms such as McKinsey had a 45-year head start on him and had an established reputation, a strong client base, and an alumni network of ex-consultants in high places in industry who regularly hired their old firm to work for them.

But what Henderson had was ideas.

Lots of them. New and interesting ideas about how business should be done.

He knew that BCG would struggle to get hired based on track record because they had none. And their relationships would never stack up against McKinsey and the other established firms.

But his ideas could go toe-to-toe against anyone's and win.

So he started publishing his ideas in a little pamphlet called Perspectives. A pocket-sized booklet that senior business executives could carry around with them.

He didn't wait to get a big publishing deal and spend years writing a book.

He didn't wait to get approved by the editors of the top business publications of the day (who all had relationships with his competitors anyway).

He just published his ideas himself and sent them directly to his target clients: senior executives in large corporations.

And he didn't just write about things he thought would be acceptable to those executives. He called his Perspectives a “Punch Between The Eyes” and decreed that:

“Statements that senior executives would find believable are not supported. Only provocative material is argued. the subject matter is chosen to be deliberately provocative, significant in implication, and relevant to the policy decisions of corporate competition.”

The rest is history.

BCG are of course, huge today. And still known for their thought leadership.

But it all started with Henderson making a decision to get his ideas out directly to his target clients.

And today it's never been easier to connect directly with potential clients.

You can still use direct mail. But you can also advertise on Google, Linkedin or Facebook. Each one can get you directly to a potential client depending on your market.

And with email marketing, you can follow-up consistently to deepen your authority. 

My guess is that if Bruce Henderson had been around today he'd be running a hugely successful online consultancy from that tiny little office :)

If you have great ideas it's something you can do too.

More Clients Memorandum

You CAN do this

Posted byIan Brodie on May 21st, 2017.

A lot of my advice on marketing is about sharing your expertise with potential clients to position yourself as an authority. 

Sometimes I hear from people saying that they're worried that they're not “expert enough” or that no one will be interested in what they have to say since they haven't written a best-selling book, run a major corporation or lectured at Harvard. 

If that's something you worry about too, this little story might set your mind at ease.

Back in the 2000s, one of my big hobbies was playing poker. I still have about 50 books packed away in our attic filled with poker theory, tutorials and biographies.

It was difficult for me to find a regular game back then since poker wasn't all that popular in Europe. But when I was down in London for a few days I'd try to grab a game at the Grosvenor Vic and later the Gutshot Cardroom.

When poker took off online I began to get quite interested. Even considered it as a career change from consulting for a while as I was a pretty decent player back then. 

In addition to all the books from well-known experts I read, I followed a few people online through their blogs.

And here's the thing: the poker bloggers I followed and listened to weren't WSOP champions or leading theorists with a string of books to their name.

They were just regular guys who were trying to make it as poker players and were chronicling their exploits in their blogs.

Some of them eventually started producing ebooks and online courses you could buy too and began to make a side income from them.

But what's interesting to me looking back is that I chose to follow the fortunes of people who were just a few steps ahead of me, not those who were already at the top.

Partially, that was because the guys still on their journey were more willing to share what they were doing, warts ‘n all.

But mainly it was because I felt a closer connection to them. They were who I could be with some work. Doing what they were doing didn't seem like some distant, unattainable goal.

So I followed them, fascinated.

When I started my own business, all hobbies went out of the window of course. But looking back I realise now that in some ways I'm doing what those early poker bloggers were doing. And you can too. 

I do well, but I'm not a multi-millionaire consultant. And although my book has sold pretty well, it was my existing following that made the success of the book, not the other way round.

I think many people like hearing my ideas, not because I'm some genius who's at the very top of the pile. But because my success seems within reach. I'm perhaps a step or two ahead in a few areas, but nothing that seems impossibly difficult.

You can be that “one or two steps ahead” leader too.

Don't pretend you're an international superstar if you're not. You don't need to. People are more than willing to follow and pay rapt attention to those just a few steps ahead who share what they know honestly and entertainingly.

You can EASILY do that.

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I scored 12 out of 15 – how will you do?

Posted byIan Brodie on May 18th, 2017.

I've got a little marketing quiz for you today, with perhaps a surprising conclusion.

As you might know, I often split test the subject lines I use in emails to see which get the best open rates (and yes, it's better to test which get the most sales but the numbers are rarely big enough to get a statistically significant result, so open rates is what I work with).

Listed below are some subject lines I've tested in recent emails – see if you can guess which ones got the highest open rates:

1. The tools I use to run my online business vs The question I get emailed about the most
2. The case against thought leadership vs [Podcast] Brent Adamson on how to win business through commercial insight
3. If you're considering creating a premium or “high ticket service” vs Behind the scenes creating a “high ticket program”
4. If you're a serious Linkedin user, you MUST listen to this vs The big upcoming changes in Linkedin (podcast with Mark Williams)
5. “But how do I get them in the first place?” vs How to “kick start” building your audience and clients
6. These three things are all you need vs You probably won't become a Youtube sensation, but you *can* learn from them
7. No personality? vs “But what if I don't have a big personality?”
8. How to avoid going broke with online advertising vs The secret of confident paid traffic
9. Is this holding you back? vs Activity vs Assets
10. The “secret” source of leads most people ignore vs “Re-activate” your old leads
11. Fish in the right ponds for clients vs “Where should I look for new clients?”
12. 3 things you MUST do to attract the right leads vs Most people get this completely wrong
13. Mindset flip = more leads vs Do you fall into this common lead generation trap?
14. Tough clients, try this? vs Which world do you live in?
15. Beat the 57% rule vs Does your content fail this test?

Scroll down for the answers…
…
…

drum roll
…

…

The winner in each case is the first subject line listed – except for numbers 6, 8 and 14.

The reason for the order of the subject lines is that the first one in each pair is the one I thought would win. So I got 12 out of 15 right.

If you look back at some of the tips I've given over the years about email subject lines in these emails, on my blog, or in my book Email Persuasion you'll have a good idea of why I picked the subject lines I did.

And given how many emails I've written and sent over the years and how much I've studied the topic you'd expect me to be pretty good at picking the winner.

Yet still, I got 3 out 0f 15 wrong. That's 20%.

That's a big chunk for a so-called expert.

And I think that's the big learning here. When it comes to something as complex as marketing, even experts will regularly get it wrong.

The answer is not to ignore the experts, of course. They do much better than random.

But test their recommendations to see if they really are correct. 

In the case of email subject lines, I simply tell my system to send one subject line to 10% of my subscribers and the other to another 10%. Then wait a couple of hours and send the winning subject line to the remaining 80%.

That way you don't have to be a genius to make sure the vast majority of your subscribers get your best subject line. You can let the data tell you.

Of course, other things aren't so easy to test. But the principle is an important one. Try to test your marketing whenever you can. 

More Clients Memorandum

Too fast!

Posted byIan Brodie on May 14th, 2017.

Last Sunday my email was about how your number one competitor is most often the status quo: your potential clients deciding not to do anything.

And I made the point that you're often better off focusing on helping those clients see that something needs to change rather than proving you're an expert (if they don't think they need to change it doesn't matter how expert you are, they don't think they need that expertise).

How do you do that?

The answer is to sloooow down.

A big mistake I've made myself  many times is to get too excited when I'm talking to potential clients. 

We start well by talking about problems they might have or goals they're trying to achieve. But what I used to do was that when I heard something I thought I could help with I immediately jumped to talking about what the solution could be.

I felt like I was adding value and proving my expertise by giving them lots of ideas on how they could solve their problems.

The problem for me was that they usually didn't hire me when I did that. 

I'm sure you've figured out why already. I was moving way too fast.

It obviously wasn't a surprise to the people I was talking to that they had a problem. And since they weren't living on a different planet, they were usually aware that there were solutions to that problem even if they didn't know the details.  

The reason they hadn't already implemented a solution was that to them, the pain of changing seemed greater than the pain they were experiencing from the problem itself (at least in terms of a gut feeling). So they stuck with what they already had.

By jumping straight to talking about solutions I was giving them details of something they weren't yet convinced they needed. Worse: the more details I gave them the more difficult and painful the solution seemed to be – so I was actually putting them off.

What I should have done instead was spend much more time exploring the impact of the problem. Asking about what effect it had. Using my experience to suggest possible side effects and contingent issues they hadn't realised were happening.

When I started doing that, my results took a big uptick. I was still adding value when I later suggested solutions. But this time I was suggesting solutions to people who now realised they needed them.

Of course, sometimes when you explore the impact of a problem it turns out it's not worth solving after all. In that case, it's your duty to recommend that they stay with the status quo.

But usually, that's not the case. Usually, they mistakenly stay with the status quo because you haven't properly helped them see the true impact of the problem they have.

Don't let that happen to you.

More Clients Memorandum

You’re more interesting than you think

Posted byIan Brodie on May 11th, 2017.

I had an enlightening discussion last night.

I was chatting to a group of speakers, consultants and trainers and we were talking about using stories from your life in your talks.

The enlightening thing was that to a person, we all basically said: “well, I don't really have any interesting stories from my life…but I bet you have some amazing stories to tell”.

In other words, we all looked at our own experiences, and because we'd lived them (and re-lived them many times in our memories) they all seemed a bit dull to us. But to everyone else we mentioned them to, they were really interesting. 

And vice versa, of course. The stories about themselves that everyone else thought were incredibly dull were interesting and new to us. 

The same goes for your content too.

I can't tell you the number of people who tell me that they don't think anyone would find their area of expertise interesting enough to get regular emails about. Yet, of course, they themselves are incredibly interested in the emails they get from other people about topics those other people fear are deathly dull.

Familiarity might not breed contempt, but it certainly causes you to find your own stories and content a lot less interesting than other people do.

So if you're worried that others might not be interested in what you have to say, remember that they're probably thinking the same about their own content.

Try out your stories. Share your ideas and insights. Watch whether people perk up and listen.

If your stories are relevant to them and your content is about problems or issues they have, they'll be interested, I promise you.

It just takes a little bit of courage to start.