As a marketing and sales optimisation consultant I'm constantly bringing forward the free line BEFORE talking with prospects.
"Errr, what's the free line?", I hear you ask.
Put simply, I give away a lot of my best ideas for free! Practical ideas on how they can get more leads, convert more prospects into clients and keep them coming back.
So why would I do this?
Quite simply, it's all about positioning, establishing credibility and trust and equally importantly, saving my time.
Let me explain...
People are naturally suspicious. They want to know what value you bring to the table, whether you can deliver the goods, and what your results are likely to be before engaging you.
And if you can do this using methods that don't require your physical interaction in the initial phases of the marketing and sales process, you end up only talking to "qualified prospects".
Prospects who already know a lot about you, have a good feeling and want to move the conversation forward.
So giving away some of your best ideas lets people know you're the real deal. They get to know you and develop a strong level of rapport which helps them buy from you.
I do this by writing articles like this one, giving away free marketing and sales methodologies (business white papers) and products that people have paid hundreds of dollars for, on my website.
All of this is designed to do one thing and one thing only.
Allow people to self select. If they're interested in what I have to share, they stay, incubate, and a percentage move towards having a sales conversation and become clients.
People who aren't interested leave and I don't waste time chasing them.
The fundamental key here is you don't know when someone is going to be ready to buy. Your job is to keep in front of them as unobtrusively as possible, so when they are ready, they think of you.
This newsletter you're reading is a prime example of this strategy.
You're on this list. You get regular articles. If you like what I write you stay. Sometimes you just hit the "delete" button because the article title doesn't interest you - but for whatever reason you don't unsubscribe.
Then you see a title that piques your interest. You open the article and ring up. We have a discussion and you become a client.
Now some of you will be thinking, "Hey, if I give away my best ideas, won't they go away and do it themselves or engage someone else?"
And you're right. Some people will. And all power to them.
However, in over 10 years of our doing this, that rarely happens.
Most people inherently understand that ideas are one thing, implementing is quite another.
So I can tell you that you need a lead generation system. That you need to run multi-sequence campaigns - sending out letters, faxes, emails and SMS. I can even give you examples of letters and real sequences etc.
But most people don't have either the skill and/or the time to implement given everything else that takes their time.
And that's where we come in. We've educated you on what to do. Now you realise just how much there is to this and ask us to do it for you.
In effect you "bought into" our services, rather than having us "sell" them to you.
Rashid.
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