Sell Your Successes: 3 Techniques That Can Lower Your Marketing
Costs & Energize Your Business
By Dean Mercado
I attended a seminar recently and one thing
that they mentioned almost in passing that inspired me was the critical
concept of “selling your successes”.
Hmmm… “Sell your successes” – What could that
mean?
Simply put, when you walk the talk, talk the
walk. Adjust your marketing and sales conversations and materials to
reflect how your product or services helped someone achieve what they
wanted.
Now how do you do this? Well here are 3
techniques that when applied effectively can lower your marketing costs
& energize your business.
1. Let ‘Testimonials’ Pave the Way
To best illustrate this technique, let me share with you a line that
I use often that goes something like this: “If I tell you that I’m great
at what I do, at best you’ll take it with a grain of salt, but if an
unbiased third-party tells you that I’m great at what I do, you’ll tend
to believe them. In other words, people tend to give more credence to
what someone else says about you rather than what you say about
yourself.
So use every opportunity to gain testimonials
about you, your team, your product, your service, or your business in
general. Collecting and effectively using testimonials should become a
key marketing strategy for your business.
2. Using ‘Stories’ to Get Your Point Across
Storytelling has been around since the
beginning of mankind and when used properly can illustrate your point
better than almost any other way. Stories have the power to capture and
engage the listener in a softened manner – not the hard selling approach
that people typically run away from. Stories also have the unique
ability to take complex ideas and make them easy to understand – without
a dissertation on the subject.
My best advice here is to model other great
storytellers. Take one of my favorites for instance, Mark Victor
Hansen. Just look at his Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books.
Essentially each chapter is a story effectively illustrating a point
that touches, moves, and inspires its readers.
So you may be tempted to say, well that’s easy
for him, but I’m no Mark Victor Hansen. Now maybe you potentially are
or aren’t, however my point is, that this is a very learnable skill,
people aren’t born with it. They develop it by continually practicing
and honing it.
3. Sharing ‘Case Studies’ to Illustrate
what’s Possible
Case studies are a sure-fire way to give your
prospect a mental picture of what’s possible for their business should
they engage you help. These are particularly great for those prospects
who need to see it themselves in order to believe it. Case studies
illustrate tangible solutions – they tend to instill a deeper level of
confidence in your prospect that you can get it done for them.
Essentially, you have a track record of success to draw upon.
Now when using any or all of the 3 techniques
just discussed, remember that just like telling a joke, timing and
delivery are critical to their success. For example placing a
testimonial in your sales letter in just the right spot where you are
looking to establish credibility is key to getting your prospect to keep
reading.
These techniques can also play a critical role
in humanizing your business and its offerings – placing real people
behind your messages. For example, instead of pounding a prospect with
every possible service you offer and the features and benefits of each,
try using a short story to simplify a complicated solution that you
implemented for a similar customer. Or how about using a relevant case
study in a sales presentation illustrating how your service helped a
client with similar needs to the prospect you’re presenting to.
Try integrating these techniques into your
everyday marketing and realize the positive residual effects they can
bring.
© 2006 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights
Reserved.
Online entrepreneur Dean Mercado,
"The Motivational Marketer", is creator of the acclaimed
'Pumped
Up Networking' system geared
to explode your business through professional
relationships. To learn more about it and to sign up for
his FREE eZine the 'Marketing
Minute' – a weekly multimedia
eZine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in
less than 5 minutes, visit
www.OnlineMarketingMuscle.com.
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