The first thing you have to figure out in any business is your offer…
I don’t care if you just want to sell your freelance services and create a “work from home or anywhere” lifestyle for yourself…
Or, if you want to build a multi-billion-dollar company.
No matter how high you’re aiming when you ask, “How high is high?”… If you can’t first figure out your offer, you won’t get anywhere close.
I just got an email from a reader. I don’t want to turn this issue into a Mailbox Monday (seeing how it’s Wednesday at all). But it did inspire me to write this.
Have you ever experienced this?
You connect with a prospect. You have a great conversation. They treat you well. They seem interested. You present your offer…
… And…
Silence.
Nada.
Nothing.
They never respond.
Or, if they do, it’s a short-but-sweet, “We’ve decided to go another direction.”
With any given prospect, there may be good reason for this.
They may not be a fit, and you didn’t do a good enough job DIS-qualifying them to figure that out, before making your pitch.
Or, it could just be the wrong time, or not a fit for some other reason.
If it’s happening every few prospects — and you’re still closing a bunch — it’s probably them.
If the “crickets” is the only response you’re getting, though, something else is going on — and it’s not good for you!
If you’re speaking to a ton of prospects…
And you’re presenting your offering…
And nobody is buying…
The problem is probably YOUR OFFER!
In a good sales presentation, here’s what should happen…
And I’m going to use a modified version of my PAISA formula for this.
First, you get to know them as a PERSON.
This is the typical small talk, but directed at giving you context that’s useful in understanding whether or not they’re a good fit for you.
Then, you make sure you understand their PROBLEM.
That is, you ask a bunch of questions about their challenges they want to solve. Assuming that’s roughly a match with what you can solve…
You dive deeper into how this is making them feel AGITATED.
What are the emotional and practical experiences and implications of this problem? Why are they struggling with it — and looking for solutions today.
Next you look at how other solutions have been INVALID.
Again, questions, questions, questions. Why do they still have this problem? What have they tried? Why hasn’t it worked yet?
Then, you present your SOLUTION.
This should clearly link to their problem, have advantages over other invalid solutions, and promise to solve their agitation.
Finally, you ASK in a compelling way.
That is, you make a clear offer to get started solving their problem.
There are many ways this can go wrong, but here’s the biggest one…
Good sales people always start at the problem. They are trying to find people who have the problem they’re really good at solving. When they present an offer, that’s the context: Let me help you solve your problem.
Bad sales people start with their own solution. They try to work backwards from their solution, and try to force it on the problem. When they present an offer, it comes out like: Buy my product, it’s the best.
When your pitch and your offer are built around what you want to sell, you’ll fail constantly.
When your pitch and your offer are built around what they want to buy — their problem, solved — you’ll find something magical happens.
Prospects will start closing YOU on letting them buy, not the other way around…
And here we get to how you can tell if you’re making a great offer.
Let’s turn the tables for a minute. You have a pressing problem. You’re desperately looking for a solution. It’s keeping you up at night. You’re frustrated because you’ve tried a million things, and nothing has worked yet. Then, you find a solution that promises to be different. A solution that has good reasons for being superior to what you’ve tried so far.
And here’s the kicker: The value proposition is stacked heavily in your favor.
Maybe the price:value ratio is hugely advantageous. Maybe the seller has offered to shoulder all the risk. Maybe it’s set up so you don’t pay until you get the results.
For whatever reason, the offer seems like a perfect fit for solving your problem, and weighted strongly in your favor as the buyer.
How much does that person have to chase you to close the deal?
They DON’T.
Because your potential benefit is so high, you want it done.
Most successful businesses run based on effective offers…
Good marketing can be a multiplier of a great offer. But it can’t replace it.
And, many businesses are run by mediocre marketers who have simply put together an incredible offer.
Take the local car mechanic.
They’re typically not very good marketers. But if they’re trustworthy, have a good reputation, and can quickly diagnose and fix that strange sound under your hood? Bingo — that’s a multi-hundred or multi-thousand-dollar sale.
They probably aren’t even very good salespeople.
They just ask you your problem, which you explain in a way that probably invokes your agitation, they might ask a few questions about what you’ve done to figure out the problem, and then they say, “let us take a look at it and get back to you.” They confirm the source of the problem, and make an offer to fix it.
PAISA.
And since you need your car to keep running, you buy.
If your offer isn’t converting…
I’m putting the finishing touches on the next section of the Client-Getting Blueprint.
I’m going to break down how to use this process above — even if you don’t have an offer yet — to identify the pressing problem of a selected target market, and then develop the offer to them.
Click here to join BTMSinsiders and watch the overview of the Client-Getting Blueprint today.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
