The vast majority of approaches to prospective clients either via emails, correspondence or telephone calls focus on you. Your company and how good you are or your product or service.
What’s the effect on prospective clients? Most of these marketing pieces don’t create much interest but rather they create tension in prospects.
So, I’d like to flip this on its head and use a different approach. One that is focused on their key objectives, the issues they face and the challenges they need to overcome to achieve great results.
Why do you want to do this?
Ultimately when you are approached you’re thinking about “WIIFM” What’s in it for me?
So, you need to stimulate interest first rather than concentrating on the immediate action you’d like the person to take. For instance, they probably already know you’d like a meeting or telephone call with them to discuss your product or service.
The problem is it’s far too early in the conversation for them to make a commitment, until they really understand what’s in it for them.
So, how can you do this?
First of all, think about the new ways of marketing. In the past, marketing was focused on outbound activity. Generally, it was an interruption, either cold calling, cold emails or interruptive ads. But today’s sales generation are really focused on inbound marketing. They are creating interest and gaining permission from the customer either through blogging, publishing relevant articles and generally creating value for the customer.
So, we need to think, are our activities still relevant and effective?
Any marketing activity that pushes services or products on customers is really using that old outbound technique. What we really want to do is use marketing techniques that rely on earning people’s interest instead of trying to buy it!
So, what I’d like you to take away from this article is really a change of mind-set. Stop focusing on your company, business and what you want and make that shift to thinking about the challenges clients face and the unique value you can add to your prospective clients.
And I’m talking about amazing value. What value could you add that would make you irresistible in their eyes…challenge yourself to come up with answers to this.
So, they are thinking not just, “That’s a nice idea” but rather “Wow that would make a dramatic improvement to our business.
Next week stay tuned as I want to discuss creating powerful correspondence, ‘How do you write to engage people?’ and Secondly, are you using that amazing piece of technology The Telephone…How can you use it to create remarkable results.
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