Thou Shall Take it Step by Step

A mis­take busi­ness­peo­ple often make is when they try to sell their com­pany directly in every com­mu­ni­ca­tion they pro­duce. (I’m refer­ring to the idea that they try to sell their com­pany as being merely open for busi­ness, also called “insti­tu­tional adver­tis­ing,” and not direct mar­ket­ing, which is different.)

Insti­tu­tional adver­tis­ing (or what I call “blind brand­ing”) will draw up imme­di­ate clients. When adver­tis­ing, they spend hoards of cash on repeated, slick and enter­tain­ing ads. When mar­ket­ing to peo­ple for the first time, they blab on until the cows come home. When send­ing out infor­ma­tion, they send beau­ti­fully designed pack­ages that make ship­ping crates look like a joke!

They think that by sell­ing them­selves right in the ad, with clever punches and ideas, they will get not only an imme­di­ate response but also imme­di­ate busi­ness. This often­times back­fires and can even take away clients.

Many clients I’ve dealt with usu­ally get as a result of this type of approach a lot of calls but no busi­ness — or at least no long-​​term busi­ness. They end up deal­ing with a lot of peo­ple who are merely curi­ous but never seri­ous. In the end, because of hyper­com­pe­ti­tion, try­ing to look for pre-​​qualified prospects can some­times be worse than a nee­dle in the haystack.

A new con­cept (although it’s been around for years but has recently become pop­u­lar) is direct-​​response mar­ket­ing. It is a process in which busi­nesses seek an imme­di­ate response as a result of their mar­ket­ing efforts. While it is often used to sell in the imme­di­ate sense, many use this tech­nique to offer a free report, item, or ser­vice. Lit­tle do peo­ple know, how­ever, that the direct response strat­egy is usu­ally not the true goal of the advertiser.

For instance, have you ever seen an infomer­cial by Charles Givens? His ad explains who he is and what he does, which is to help peo­ple make or save money, and then adver­tises a “free” sem­i­nar in cities in which the com­mer­cial is being tele­vised. Do you think he’s really doing this for free and trav­el­ing across the coun­try only to edu­cate peo­ple? In a sense, yes.

But when peo­ple arrive at his sem­i­nar, they get tiny tid­bits of infor­ma­tion that will help make or save money. They get what they were promised. But it’s a cer­tain kind of infor­ma­tion that, if par­tic­i­pants want to have it con­tin­u­ally updated, or if they want more, forces them to join the Givens organization.

Mem­ber­ship fees range in the hun­dreds and even thou­sands of dol­lars, and addi­tional prod­ucts (mostly books and reports) are sold in the back of the room at his sem­i­nars. That’s the power of pre-​​qualified lead generation!

Peo­ple who came out to see him are not gen­eral, curi­ous, and unin­ter­ested prospects. They have indi­rectly screened them­selves. Once they show up, they are pre-​​qualified and highly tar­geted. And after they’ve been enticed with free infor­ma­tion, they are also pre-​​sold and ready to do business.

As a con­sul­tant to cos­metic sur­geons, this process is obvi­ously essen­tial if not vital. No one can call a per­son on the phone and out­right ask if that per­son is wants more hair — at least with­out know­ing if that per­son is bald in the first place! How­ever, doc­tors will tele­vise an infomer­cial or place a print ad whereby the peo­ple who respond will nat­u­rally fit into a spe­cific demo­graphic. And it doesn’t stop there. A process call “multi-​​step mar­ket­ing” takes place.

The prospect who comes for­ward usu­ally wants infor­ma­tion mailed to him. The doc­tor sends a pro­fes­sional brochure explain­ing the pro­ce­dure, the pos­si­ble risks and the poten­tial results But with­out any pric­ing. (For one, it is impos­si­ble to deter­mine the cost until the doc­tor per­son­ally sees the patient first­hand in order to mea­sure his degree of baldness.)

The pack­age, there­fore, along with its lack of pric­ing, causes the prospect to come for­ward once more to arrange a con­sul­ta­tion with the doc­tor. In the major­ity of cases, those that at least show up for the ini­tial con­sul­ta­tion are iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as inter­ested can­di­dates, ready to have surgery.

You see, peo­ple who may need your ser­vices may fit your demo­graph­ics. They fit a pro­file of peo­ple within your tar­get mar­ket. But peo­ple who actu­ally come for­ward fit your psy­cho­graph­ics, which are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of those who not only need your ser­vices but also want what you have to offer.

As in the pre­vi­ous exam­ple, the demo­graph­ics for a hair trans­plant sur­geon encom­pass peo­ple who obvi­ously suf­fer from hair loss. But psy­cho­graph­ics, on the other hand, are com­prised of peo­ple who not only are suf­fer­ing from hair loss but also want to do some­thing about it (since not all of them do).

In your case, if you offer a spe­cific prod­uct or ser­vice that caters to a spe­cific mar­ket, find out ways to make your mar­ket come for­ward with min­i­mal effort on your part. This is called “lead gen­er­a­tion mar­ket­ing.” In my expe­ri­ence, one of the best ways to do this is to offer a free report of some kind.

The report doesn’t have to be product-​​specific, occupation-​​specific, service-​​specific or industry-​​specific. It doesn’t even have to directly relate to what you’re sell­ing. As long as it tar­gets and appeals to an audi­ence that fits within your demo­graph­ics some­how, you’re way ahead of the game.

A used car sales­per­son friend of mine placed a small clas­si­fied ad in the local news­pa­per and it read some­thing like this: “Is your car a lemon? Do you know that there are ways to turn your lemon into cash? Before you get rid of your clunker, call for my free report ’10 Ways to Turn Your Lemon into Lemon­ade’!” He even used the pseu­do­nym “The Lemon-​​Aid Institute.”

And guess what? Peo­ple who answered his ad were not only in the mar­ket for a new car (which was what he wanted), but they were also frus­trated with their pre­vi­ous deal­er­ship for sell­ing them their lemon. They were enticed to seek more infor­ma­tion from that spe­cific sales­per­son and his spe­cific inventory.

In the end, they were far more qual­i­fied (or pre-​​qualified, in this case) and also pos­i­tively impacted by the valu­able ser­vice the sales­per­son pro­vided. Car buy­ers there­fore placed more con­fi­dence and trust in that sales­per­son, and even­tu­ally also felt more com­fort­able in send­ing him referrals!

Let’s say you’re a finan­cial plan­ning con­sul­tant. Your ser­vices may include invest­ments, mutual funds and sav­ings plans. Rather than place an ad that directly mar­kets these ser­vices, you could place a clas­si­fied ad pro­mot­ing a free course, sem­i­nar or report on help­ing peo­ple to save money.

Let’s say you’re an image con­sul­tant help­ing peo­ple to enhance their appear­ance. You could offer a free kit includ­ing a makeover, makeup sam­ple, con­sul­ta­tion or report on col­ors that will match one’s unique complexion.

The idea is to have peo­ple come to you rather than you to them. Being in the infor­ma­tion age, I per­son­ally pre­fer the “free report” style of lead gen­er­a­tion. The incen­tive doesn’t have to relate directly to what you do. As long as it log­i­cally appeals to the same tar­get mar­ket, you’re on your way.

If you recall from an ear­lier exam­ple, you can turn your answer­ing machine into a 24-​​hour sales­per­son. Your free report offer should there­fore be included in the mes­sage — they must be some­how invited to ask for the free report.

When it comes to adver­tis­ing though, you shouldn’t go into large cir­cu­la­tion news­pa­pers or gen­eral pub­li­ca­tions, for a vari­ety of rea­sons. I will deal with this issue a lit­tle fur­ther in the next com­mand­ment, but for now just remem­ber that your main goal is to gen­er­ate leads, not imme­di­ate clients.

The por­tion of the gen­eral pub­lic that fits into your demo­graph­ics is merely made up of “sus­pects” (you sus­pect that they might need what you have to offer). When some of them come for­ward to get your free report, sam­ple, or ser­vice, you’ve iso­lated the “prospects” from your sus­pects. Then, if they want more once again, they’ve now become “expects” (you expect them to do busi­ness with you). This can be done in vir­tu­ally all industries.

I used to work as a sales­per­son for a music store spe­cial­iz­ing in pianos and key­boards. Older pianos usu­ally require con­sid­er­able repair since the wood inside hold­ing the strings with which the piano cre­ates its sound may be too old, crack­ing, and bro­ken beyond repair. They con­stantly fall out of tune. A sales­per­son at the store had a small clas­si­fied ad that said:

“Beware par­ents in the mar­ket for a piano!” [That was the head­line.] “Many par­ents usu­ally buy used pianos for their kids because they don’t know if they’ll love music and there­fore want to min­i­mize the risk of los­ing their money. How­ever, to the unsus­pect­ing buyer, many used pianos are inter­nally bro­ken beyond repair and tem­porar­ily ‘doped’ in order to sound good and be sold quickly, only to become bro­ken again when it’s too late. Before you buy any piano, call for our free report ‘Don’t Let Piano Prob­lems Put Your Bank Account Out of Tune: 6 Ways to Find Hid­den Prob­lems with Used Pianos’.”

His report not only explained the pos­si­ble faults com­monly found in older pianos that can eas­ily go unno­ticed, but since he was cater­ing to a spe­cial­ized mar­ket (i.e., par­ents), his report went on to explain how used pianos fall out of tune quickly caus­ing the child to learn the piano the wrong way and even­tu­ally to lose inter­est — let alone the par­ents money!

Of course, what the sales­per­son really wanted was to get these par­ents to buy new or pro­fes­sion­ally refur­bished pianos from his store and espe­cially from him. The result­ing effect, how­ever, was that the report not only brought prospects to his door but also instilled in them a greater con­fi­dence in the sales­per­son in addi­tion to the rea­sons for buy­ing a cer­ti­fied piano rather than a used one. Last time I checked, he made a for­tune using this technique!

Look at lead gen­er­a­tion adver­tis­ing or multi-​​step mar­ket­ing as a form of job search. Peo­ple often send bulky résumés to poten­tial employ­ers in an attempt to sell them­selves as much as pos­si­ble, when very often their attempts get filed away — into the “round” file, that is! (Sounds familiar?)

Career con­sul­tants stress the impor­tance of sum­ma­riz­ing a résumé as much as pos­si­ble, of includ­ing past accom­plish­ments and results (instead of respon­si­bil­i­ties and duties from pre­vi­ous jobs), and of putting it all on one page. Why? The résumé is not meant to land a job but to land an interview.

Lead gen­er­a­tion should be regarded in the same way. Your ad must be small, con­tain a con­cise mes­sage, stress an imme­di­ate ben­e­fit (some­thing for free, for exam­ple) and offer a use­ful tool or addi­tional infor­ma­tion if the prospect wants to come for­ward and know more. And this can be applied in vir­tu­ally all fields and for many if not all types of prod­ucts or services.

What can you offer your prospects to arouse their curios­ity and inter­est? What can you give away for free so to entice them to get more, thereby iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves to you as inter­ested, qual­i­fied “expects?”

If you’re giv­ing some­thing away, real­ize that what you’re really doing is not giv­ing away free stuff but gen­er­at­ing bet­ter leads. Keep in mind that, in the end, the cost of free stuff can be far less than the cost of mass marketing.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

• How to Capture and Captivate Attention
• The Real Problem With The Flaw of Attraction
• Two Shining Stars in an Age of Darkness
• Changes, Relaunches, and Extreme Makeovers
• Superior Value Equals Superior Sales

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