Your prospect doesn’t need to sit through another sales pitch…
Think about this. You aren’t sitting around, waiting for someone to sell you something. And you pretty much never go looking for it.
There’s one rare exception to this.
When you reach a point where you’re fully aware of the problem you want to have solved, the potential solutions to that problem, and even the product you’re most interested in, you’ll often sit for a pitch.
So, for example, you decide it’s time to get a new car.
You do your homework. You compare models. You consider your options. And you land on one particular car you’re most interested in. So you go to the dealership fully prepared to have them sell to you.
In that case, and in cases like it, you may willingly walk into a sales presentation.
(And even then, you don’t want to be sold in the traditional, stereotypical way. You want to have someone treat you with respect and dignity and help you come to the best decision for you. But that’s another topic for another article.)
In most other selling situations, you as the prospect are not interested in a sales pitch.
Sure you may have a problem you’re looking for the solution to. Or even some nagging situation that just doesn’t feel right, where you’re looking for clarity on what the problem even is.
Or perhaps you have an idea of some solutions out there, and want to do more research. Or you need help establishing buying criteria for narrowing down your options to a single solution.
All of these are situations where a sales message can engage with you as a prospect.
But they’re not situations where you’re ready to be sold.
They’re situations where you want VALUE…
If you have a nagging situation in your life you may want the value of being helped in defining the problem you’re facing. Think in terms of a medical diagnosis. You have symptoms bugging you. But you don’t know what the actual problem is, much less the solution. And you’re certainly not ready for a pitch and an offer.
Or perhaps you understand your problem, but you don’t know what the solutions are yet. Here you want the value of looking at solutions available, but aren’t anywhere near choosing one yet.
Or maybe you do know the general categories of solutions, but need help narrowing down what’s the best fit for you and how to select one.
Or maybe you have a good idea of the kind of solution you want, but need a feature comparison of the different offers in the market to consider what’s ideal for you.
All of these are situations where you need valuable guidance, NOT another sales message.
If a salesperson (or a piece of copy, or a sales video, or…) just presents you with an offer, you will ignore it. It’s not what you want or need, so you won’t give it the time of day.
If, on the other hand, someone presents you with the value you want and need in that moment, they will earn your attention and start a conversation that could lead to the sale.
Here’s what this all has to do with winning attention, as marketers…
As marketers, we see our business from the inside out. (The same is true for client businesses.)
We see our product. We see our service. We see our offer. We have a goal to sell more, and so we want to pitch it.
We create marketing messages that are about us, and what we want.
Which ultimately is about the offer, the product, the service, the proposition.
Most prospects aren’t ready for that. And so they ignore us, and our best messages.
It doesn’t matter if the product is a perfect fit for them. It doesn’t matter if it’s exactly what they need in the end.
If they’re not ready for the pitch, they’ll never give you the attention — and they definitely won’t hear you out long enough to figure out that your offer is actually perfect for them.
If you want to win attention, you have to start with the value they want and need right now. To move them from unaware, to problem-aware, to solution-aware, to product- and you-aware, to deal-ready.
This is the entire premise of my Value-First Funnel Strategy. It’s the entire premise of education-based marketing.
Give the value your prospect needs and is looking for first. Then use that as a jumping off point to continue the conversation, up until that point where it’s appropriate to pitch.
The bad news is this a little more sophisticated than just throwing an offer in their face. The good news is it’s incredibly powerful, and it can actually be accomplished rather quickly (often in a single marketing message or campaign).
One powerful tool to grab attention and turn it into sales…
… Is a webinar.
But not just any webinar. Not the tactical, technical format of a webinar.
You can’t just do a webinar, and make sales flow.
Rather, you have to structure your webinar — its content, its promotion, and your follow-up — in such a way that it captures that attention and turns it into buying intent.
This will actually engage your prospects. It will get them interested in you, and your message. It will start them thinking about the problem you can solve — long before you actually make an offer for a product or service that solves it.
It will bring them toward you, and earn their attention.
And then it will turn that attention into leads, customers, sales, and profits.
And you can do this as an external campaign — acquiring NEW customers. As well as an internal campaign — building the relationship with your list and making more sales and profits.
You can do it live — one time. Or you can do it prerecorded and available on demand.
You have many options — but they all follow the same principles and strategy to make them work.
I’ll be doing some training on this in the next month or so (including, of course, a free webinar!). So you’ll hear more from me on it, very soon. But first, I have a favor to ask, if this is interesting to you.
I want to know what your biggest challenges and questions are when it comes to creating webinars that sell — for yourself or for clients.
Click here to let me know how I can help you create more effective selling webinars.
It will help me as I share more content on webinars that sell in the next few weeks.
Thanks!
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
