What Else Do You Need To Get Customers To Buy?

Sales is a baffling art to most people. And it should be – everyone on the planet is more complex than they get credit for. Getting face-to-face with a qualified prospect is a challenge. Getting a person sufficiently motivated to give you money is incredibly difficult.

Customers need to be given credit – they are continually evolving. What used to work no longer works and needs to be reinvented.

Anyway, before you can even begin sell your wares there are three questions your prospect will ask themselves. Ignore them before you’ll ever be success at selling and by extension marketing. Here are the three questions:

How Well Do I Know You? – Your prospect asks themself this about any seller. It is their way of gauging how trustworthy you are.

If they feel they know you really well they will be easier to sell to them than if they don’t know you from a bar of soap. This is why many guru’s go to great lengths to be in the media – media breeds familiarity. Do you reckon David Koch has too much trouble getting business owners to follow his business advice?

No. Cos they see him on TV all the time – he is well known to his audience.

Do I like You?

At the same time your potential customers wonder about how well they know you. They are also deciding if they like you. This happens really quickly – first impressions matter. (As a few of us no doubt remember from our days doing direct sales.) Even if it was to get a date – you were still being judged based on first impressions.

The same thing happens when you send a direct mail piece – first impression of the piece and what you say, either will help you or hinder you.

Obviously it is much easier to sell to someone who already likes you.

Can I trust you?

These are less than trusting times. The late Stephen Covey (7 Habits Of Highly Effective People) spent a great deal of his later years looking at the effect trust on business relationships. Covey devised his own ways to measure trust.

When he found that trust was high – the speed and ease of doing business was much higher than if trust is low.

Trust is also a barrier to getting the first sale in the door. So be sure to do everything you can to engender trust before you ever ask for the order – and don’t do anything to jeopardise trust because it is hard to get back once it is lost.

I can tell you from experience that when a client knows, likes and trusts you – there is a much better client relationship to be had.

One of the most effective ways to make your marketing sizzle, and to make real connections with your customers and clients, is to add your personality. The fact is, customers prefer to do business with people whom they know and like – not nameless and faceless corporations.

Personality works. It will multiply your sales. What is personality? I think it is best described as humanizing your marketing – taking away the sterile corporate approach. Consider the all-too-common approach to many sales letters:

“It has come to our attention that your account is now blah, blah, blah.” You can imagine how fast that letter will hit the circular file! Now try this next sample on for size, and see if you just might hold the attention of the reader for a little while longer. “I was just sitting at my desk writing my next column and my secretary came running in, waving an invoice. She told me that it is highly unusual for …” Get the idea?!

If you would like to add some personality to your marketing, here are four things that you can do to help make you a better writer.

1. Read as much as you can. You should find time to read every day, even if it is for 10 minutes before turning in!  Read everything from sales letters to e-zines, newsletters, books, ad copy, direct mail, etc. The more you read, the more you’ll learn different ways to express yourself in writing.
2. Write more. There is just no way to get around it – to become a better writer, you have to write – and often! As with most things, the more you do it, the better you’ll get at it. You might want to consider starting a blog, which will force you to write at least two to three times a week in a way that, while important, is not as critical as a sales letter.
3. Read out loud. It’s amazing how different your own writing sounds when you read it aloud instead of reading it silently. This is a great way to find your actual “voice,” which you then can transfer to writing.
4. Mirror your favorite writers. Not only is imitation the sincerest form of flattery, it is a smart way to learn how to become a better writer. In the Glazer-Kennedy world this is known as S&D.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, personality works! I was recently hired to help write a client newsletter in which our strategy was to deliver something very different from the typical corporate brochure. We wrote the copy in the voice of an older woman who was a long-term employee of the company (which in this case was actually true!).

When the first issue was mailed, the reaction was phenomenal. The company received well over 100 e-mails praising the newsletter, saying that it was a breath of fresh air and fun to read, and that they looked forward to the next issue. Being in the newsletter business, I can tell you that that is not a typical reaction – personality sells! Even if you incorporate only a few of these tips, you should start to see a shift in your own writing. Before you know it, your personality will start shining through, and with it, you’ll start to see more clients, more sales, and more profits.

At some point you are probably going to sell your business. There is no shame in it, we are too. Whether we acknowledge it openly or not the smartest people in the room see owning their own business as a vehicle to create wealth, so that we can have the lifestyle we want both now and when we are finished working.

The vast majority of business owners however see their business (wrongly I might add) as a way of owning their own job- simply content to get by. They invariably coast by their entire business life and then when they feel like retiring sell their business and leave lots of money on the table.

Most business owners sell up for some variation of their gross profits, what is on their balance sheet and some good will. Far less than what their business is actually worth to the buyer.

Most of us have an ‘Enough is Enough Number.’ We know once we have so many dollars that we are set for life and can stop working. Some of us plan on keeping on working past that but the vast majority of us are in business to fast track the accumulation of enough wealth so that we can do something like sit on the beach and drink margaritas.

And being paid multiples of earnings for your business makes that dream of reaching our ‘Enough is Enough Number’ and sitting on the beach that much easier.

When you are looking to sell, the sustainability of your business is important to any business buyer. That is how predictable is the business’s revenue month-on-month or year-on-year?

A strong relationship with your customers increases the predictability of your revenue it also increases the amount of revenue and also profits. Having defined relationship building systems means that there is less risk in the variability of future revenue.

These systems mean that your business can be sold for multiples of its annual income or book value simply because you can prove the predictability of the revenue – the buyer is no longer buying a business. They are buying systems that produce an annual income – effectively an unfranchised franchise.

All of this needs to be thought about long before you ever think about taking your ‘chips off the table.’ The late Steven Covey first habit of highly effective people was ‘begin with the end in mind.’ So the sooner you structure your business in way that you can make desirable to a buyer the longer the track record you have to prove that your systems work and also it means that you have far less headaches to deal with in the mean time.

In fact if you have retention and relationship building systems in place you’ll have much higher profits that you can use for all sorts of other things like getting even more customers. So that you can sell your business for even more when the time comes.

With your newsletter you can create the kind of “sitting under the veranda in the extreme heat of summer, cold drinks in hands and a captive audience” type of vibe.

What do you do in that situation in real life? Don’t know ‘bout you but I’d tell stories.

Now using stories in sales and marketing takes some skill but it is a skill well worth investing in to learn. It puts your business in context. Think about the story behind Rich Dad Poor Dad – Kiyosaki is dispensing some very rudimentary financial advice. You can find better advice in umpteen books with better advice before and after Robert.

But only Kiyosaki has sold the publishing rights for his financial advice for $100 million and change.

Why?

The story behind it.

Without that story of having two dads Kiyosaki is just one of dozens if not hundreds of financial advice authors who are out to make money by telling you how to manage your money. See how you need to come up with the story. That story means you are just another sales person pitching product. Here is my guide to creating that story:

Step 1: A Reason You Are In Business That Isn’t to Make Money.

You need to tell your audience why you are in business and it had better have nothing to do with making money. Although the reality is that you are in business to make money your customers are uncomfortable with you if that is the only reason. Don’t shoot the messenger here.

Take Dexter Morgan of TV and book series (Dexter) fame. His origin story means that instead of being the bad guy as he could be in so many crime novels he is in fact a brooding, charming, charismatic anti-hero loved by many all because of his origin story (and not just a sociopath with a really disgusting hobby). That story frames why you are in business in way that makes you emotionally appealing to your customers -  not just a salesman.

Step 2: Keep referencing it.

You need to keep telling your story behind your product because it is more interesting than the ‘feeds and speeds.’ It is a form of differentiation from your competitors. The second reason is because quite simply the more times you tell it the more chances you give your audience to bond with you over your competitors.

Step 3: Be able to tell it multiple ways

Since everybody eventually gets sick of being told the same damn thing over and over again you’ll need to be able to tell your story in different ways in different lengths in order to bring forward different benefits and reasons they should do business with you.

There you go my complete guide to telling to the story behind you and your business. Have fun developing yours.

Bad news is everywhere these days. For most of us, our customers will come home at the end of the day exhausted, put on the TV and watch the news. And I don’t know if you have sat down and watched the news of late but it is depressing. The economy is failing, our soldiers are dying, and our sports teams are losing and pensioners can’t afford to both eat and pay for electricity…

It goes on. In 1992 Bill Hicks did a similar piece about 24 hour news channels in Relentless his stand up comedy show at Montreal Comedy Festival. The news has probably gotten worse since then.

There are plenty of places your clients can go to get depressed. They don’t need you for that, in fact you can’t hold a torch to most of them. You can and should be the beacon of good news.

There are plenty of good things going on in your world that are worth sharing aren’t there? Yeah, I bet there are. Nobody other than you is going to be able to tell them about all the good things that are happening right.

Good news makes you a point of difference. Not too many other people are out there talking about good news are they?

In his book “Make Them Laugh and Take Their Money,” Dan Kennedy made the point that an audience in good humour buys more and buys more willingly than an audience that is not in good humour. Although he was talking about that in the context of making a speech he goes on to qualify this rule applies in every selling situation, be it one-on-one, in print or selling from the stage.

Good news and being in good humour make you more attractive to your customers hence more sales.

I will caution you. Don’t lie to your customers. If there is bad news out there that they need to know then you should pass it on. But also be the first to point out the opportunity or the positive spin to borrow from our bad news bearing friends.

For example if you use a headline like: The World Is Going To End Next Tuesday… (Creating new opportunities for you). Lots of places your customers can go to find out about the world ending. There are not too many people would take the extra step to point out the new opportunities (good news) they usually only bother to share the bad news.

There are lots of places your customers can go to be depressed. Do yourself a favour. Don’t be another one of those places. Differentiate yourself by being a bearer of good news.

As part of our service for our clients we provide content that is designed to make your customers happy and to look forward to receiving your newsletter. It automatically makes you and your business more attractive to your customers, making them more likely to want to buy from you again. To find out if you can effectively boost your repeat business and referrals with a newsletter register for a newsletter suitability audit by calling 1300 006 120 or going to www.newslettermarketingsystems.com.au/get-started

Consistency trumps everything else. Great company newsletters show up like clockwork. You can count on them reaching your customers every month with solid information, helpful tips, and good ideas. Consistency far outweighs the size of a newsletter, whether it’s color or black and white, or even the quality of the content.

A common mistake that many newsletter writers make is the failure to be consistent. If you aren’t consistent with your newsletter, it doesn’t matter what content it contains. It becomes junk mail—just another pest—that your customers receive every once in a while.

You simply must have frequency and consistency to build trust and relationships. That trust and those relationships turn into business success and a long-term competitive edge.

Consider it in these terms. Magazines and other publications arrive monthly on schedule. Junk mail in all of its various forms arrives sporadically. In what category do you want your newsletter to be perceived?

I strongly recommend monthly newsletters because when they are produced monthly on a regular schedule, they have a higher perceived value. They build a stronger bond and brand with your customers, and your customers begin to look forward to them. If you publish less often, you lose that important top-of-mind position. If you publish more often, there will be customers who think you’re bombarding them with marketing messages.

It’s also vital that you publish your newsletter every month. That way you develop habits and get into the rhythm of production. You and your contributors will know when copy and pictures should be done, so you’ll all be on the lookout for good information and pictures. You’ll know when the newsletter will be mailed. Your salespeople will know when the next issue will be available.

That will also set up expectations for your customers. Your customers will get used to hearing from you at the same time every month. They’ll look forward to the fun, interesting, and readable content of your newsletter.

You’ll find that the regular schedule will aid your other marketing efforts too. If you’ve got a special sales promotion planned, for example, you can alert people in the newsletter for two months prior. Then, when it’s promotion time, your promotional efforts will have the way paved for them by your newsletter articles. Your salespeople can hand out newsletters as promotion flyers.

Consistency is the most important characteristic of great company newsletters. Mail them the same time every month. Send your newsletter every month and you’ll build better relationships, improve customer retention, and draw more new customers.

Newsletter Marketing Systems Guarantees that your newsletter arrives at the same time each and every month, and we have all the systems in place to ensure it happens, If you’d like to find out more about our newsletter service, register for a newsletter suitability audit by calling 1300 006 120 or going to www.newslettermarketingsystems.com.au/get-started