Posts Tagged ‘marketing strategies’

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You Have A Great Idea…so what?

Friday, July 8th, 2011

It’s a bit harsh, but having a great business idea doesn’t amount to much.

Sometimes it’s hard to get our head wrapped around that. Unfortunately “great ideas” are the proverbial dime a dozen.

The reality is that ideas aren’t the important part…execution is. And that’s where most business efforts languish.

As my friend and publicity coach Steve Harrison says, “It’s easy to get excited about a new idea. It’s very tough to stay excited.”

That’s the reason why it’s so important to place a stake in the ground. Focus on one project and put the business blinder on. Commit to launching this one project before you move onto the next one. And, yes, I realize that this is very difficult for any of us who have a strong entrepreneurial orientation.

For years I was guilty of getting excited but not following through. However, at the end of the year, I’d look at what I’d actually accomplished, and it was pitiful. Lots of whirling activity. Very little in terms of tangible results.

Which is one of the reasons I hired a coach (and continue to do so to this day). In many cases it’s not the “new insight” the coach brings as much as the accountability it forces to make sure you’re getting things implemented.

Great ideas don’t mean much. The real question is, “Can you execute it?”

Food for thought
Mark
For Those Serious About Execution

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Attracting Prestigious Clients

Monday, May 16th, 2011

In every market there are the most prestigious clients. Those that if you could attract them as clients, they would propel you into the elite.

The challenge becomes, why should they pay attention to you? What’s the best method for getting them on your radar screen?

In today’s video I share a strategy anyone can use to attract marquee clients:


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An Overlooked Branding Technique

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

In today’s video I share an often overlooked technique for branding and differentiating yourself. It doesn’t cost any money to implement and when done consistently it can be enormously powerful.

This video may take a minute to load so please be patient:

How To Get More New Clients Using Thought Leadership from Mark Satterfield on Vimeo.

Take The Next Step

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Why Your Marketing Doesn’t Work

Monday, November 29th, 2010

Unfortunately, the reality is that most marketing doesn’t work. Doesn’t produce the results people want.

However, the reason “Why?” is actually fairly simple. In fact it boils down to a surprisingly small number of variables. Here’s the biggest one.

You focus on Activities rather than on a Marketing System. Let me briefly explain about what I mean.

Ask most people what they are doing to get more new clients, and what do you hear?

“We’re updating our website.”
“We’re doing social media.”
“We’re doing some email marketing.”

Sound familiar?

But, let’s drill down a bit.

OK, you’re updating your website. But how are you driving traffic to it? What’s the call to action once people are there? What do you want people to do? (Call you for a “free” consultation is too big a request for someone coming to your site for the first time-you need to make an offer that’s easier for them to say “Yes” to.)

OK, you’re doing social media. But do you really know what that means? “Social Media” has quickly morphed into a generalized term. It’s a bit like saying, “Let’s go eat American Food”. Way too general.

Social media encompasses everything from blogs to LinkedIn to Twitter to Facebook to countless other resources. What REALLY is going to be most effective for you? (And despite what the zealots say, Twitter is not a great investment of energy for many b2b businesses.)

But even more important is…there are a lot of dots that need to be connected between setting up a Facebook page or opening an account on LinkedIn and getting those people to pay you money for your services. Do you know what the dots are? Do you know how to connect them? If you don’t, it’s likely you’ll become “Socially Popular” but see nothing added to your business bottom line.

Finally…OK you’re doing some email marketing. But to who? Where are you buying the list? How are you going to get it opened and read? And…most importantly…what are you asking readers to do? Again, “Call you” is way too big a request. Hardly anyone will respond.

Here’s what you need to do.

STOP focusing on ACTIVITIES (websites, social media, direct mail, smoke signals, whatever) and START thinking about a MARKETING SYSTEM.

It’s not that complicated. Especially if you remember that marketing has two distinct components.

1) Get people to opt-in to your list…get them to express a tiny bit of interest in who you are and what you do by OFFERING THEM SOMETHING OF VALUE FOR FREE. (The easiest thing is some sort of article, report or mini-course. You can see an example HERE. Believe it or not, this page alone attracts 15 new opt-ins a day.)

This is how you get people into your Circle Of Relationships.

2) Once they’re in the circle (and not before) THEN you can start selling them on why they should do business with you.

That last sentence is very important. I would argue that not following that principle is the key reason why so much marketing doesn’t yield the results you want.

Trying to sell people on doing business with you, when you don’t have a relationship with them, is the definition of cold selling. The rejection rate is huge, and it just crushes most businesses.

So to reiterate…

Step 1: Get people into your circle of relationships by offering them something for free.

Step 2: Once they’ve opted-in and raised their hand, then send a series of messages that are design to build trust, credibility and convert them into paying clients.

I know…I know…YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS.

But, here’s the question…

Are you doing it?

Odds are you’re not.

And you really should. It’s not that difficult if you take things step by step. In fact after 18 years of doing this, I’m more than ever convinced that anyone can have a marketing system up and running inside of 45 days.

The time to start taking steps to achieve your 2011 goals is now.

Isn’t this the year that you finally put in place a marketing system that generates consistent streams of new prospects and then turns large percentages of them into paying clients?

Isn’t this the year that you finally end the feast or famine business cycles?

I hope so.

As always, let me know if I can be of assistance.

Talk with you soon,
Mark
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My Neighbor Charlie, Just Filed For Bankruptcy

Monday, November 1st, 2010

My neighbor Charlie, just filed for bankruptcy.

It was the prime topic for conversation this past weekend, so I suppose you could say this is a cautionary tale.

What’s got everyone talking (and one or two of the neighbors a bit fearful) is that Charlie seemed to be doing OK.

If memory serves, he advised retailers on supply chain issues such as transportation and warehousing.

Had a couple of fairly large clients as I recall.

I bumped into Charlie at Starbucks this morning-said I had heard the news. What Charlie said was interesting. I’ll try to quote the essence, although the exact wording is my own, not his.

“I guess I saw if coming for a while but I kept thinking that things would turn around. Obviously, they didn’t. The thing is, I thought I was doing all the right stuff. Clients liked me. One of them kept me on retainer for 2 years.

I suppose in hindsight that lulled me into a false state of security.

The problem is that I never really had a big base of people who knew me. I wasn’t good at attracting new people into my ‘circle of relationships’ and obviously didn’t do a good job of converting the few I did have into new clients.”

“Never really had a system for building new relationships…”

“Quite frankly, I thought I didn’t need one.”

I asked Charlie, what he was going to do next?

“Haven’t a clue”, he responded.

I feel bad for Charlie. He wasn’t a particularly close friend, he wasn’t a client, but still, his story makes me sad. I guess we could argue that this is the risk anyone who operates their own business faces. And certainly, at age 48 the odds of Charlie getting another job in corporate America (especially in this economy) are slim.

But I guess what makes me the saddest is that it didn’t have to turn out this way. There’s more than enough information out there (or which mine is only one voice in the choir) that would have been enormously helpful to Charlie.

Yet he never took advantage of any of it.

Never even tried.

I’ll admit that as a marketing person, I don’t really understand that…the unwillingness to try.

But even though I don’t understand it, what happened to Charlie makes me sad.

I get the sense that this happens a lot.

And that’s a shame.

Certainly food for thought.
Mark
File: Marketing Thoughts

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The Only 4 Questions That Matter

Friday, September 24th, 2010

OK, I’ll go ahead and say it.

We’ve pretty much turned into a nation of lazy thinkers.

If the answer doesn’t immediately pop into our heads, too bad…on to other stuff.

Which is fundamentally why you don’t have as many clients as you wish you had.

It’s got nothing to do with, “My clients won’t read my sales letters/emails/messages.”…ect. ect.

It has everything to do with the fact that you don’t make it interesting for them to do so.

And, the reason you haven’t made it interesting is because you haven’t spent any time thinking through The Only 4 Questions That Matter.

OK, I’ll admit, you’ve probably heard these questions before.

But…

Odds are you never really came up with good answers.

Because the answers weren’t immediate. (Or the answers that you did come up with are pretty basic and probably the same thing that all your competitors came up with.)

So maybe now is a good time to do some mental heavy lifting.

R-e-a-l-l-y THINK about the answers.

Don’t be satisfied with the first thing that pops to mind.

THINK

Because if you do…I guarantee that you’ll be able to communicate with your prospects in a way that makes them interested in hearing what you have to say.

Which will get you lots more new business.

4 simple questions.

1) Who are your clients? (Hint: It’s a subset of whatever just came to mind. Second hint: Who’s most likely to be a client in the next 6 months?)

2) Who are your competitors? (Hint: It’s more than Competition Inc. The real competition is what your prospects are doing now. Thus your competition might be “doing nothing” all the way to “completely inefficient methods for solving the problem for which they don’t see a real reason to change.”)

3) Why would your prospective clients prefer to work with your competitors rather than you? (Hint: The only way you’ll ever do a good job of addressing objections is if you can argue the other side of the position.)

4) What would make them prefer to work with you? (Hint: What added value does your solution bring? This should be the easiest question to answer.)

The answers to these questions is what your sales and marketing strategy is based on. So…before you do anything else, you need to figure this out.

Food for thought.
Mark
*Go HERE if you want some help thinking these through

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Advanced Tool For Great Sales Presentations

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

As you develop your sales stories and presentations, one factor you’ll want to give consideration to is what’s referred to as the “arc”. This is more than simply the length of the story, although “long arc” stories are, as one might surmise, longer than short arc ones.

Stories are usually told in self-contained units. “Here’s the beginning. Here’s the middle. Here’s how it wraps up.” Certainly nothing wrong with that, and from a practical perspective most of your stories will be in this self-contained, short arc format.

However, some of the most successful sales stories, especially those that are used in presentations are in a long arc form. What this means is that the story is introduced early in the presentation. However the speaker or writer may leave the story periodically only to return to it later on. The long arc story provides bookends for the entire story although there may be shorter stories that are interspersed within the overall presentation.

The long arc story traces its roots to television. Historically TV episodes were self contained units. In the space of 30 or 60 minutes an entire story was told from beginning to end. The next week a brand new story was told. Aside from the main characters, there was little continuity from week to week.

The television show “Wise Guys” in the 1980s is largely credited with introducing the concept of the long-arc series. The season opener introduced a plot line that was not resolved until season end. Some individual shows made no reference to the long-arc plot line, while other episodes advanced the long-arc plot incrementally. It was a tribute to the writers that they were able to maintain audience interest for an entire season, while also including numerous single-show plot lines that were entertaining for the casual viewer. This long-arc format is now successfully used by many shows.

But what makes this particularly interesting is the application to sales presentations and other speeches you might give.

Let me share an example.

In my presentation on Unique Sales Stories that I deliver to groups, one of the key points I want to make is that people remember stories, they don’t remember facts. It’s my belief that one of the reasons why people don’t get as many referrals as they ideally would like is that they aren’t top of mind. When they describe what they do, it isn’t memorable.

Why?

One of the main culprits is that they use facts to describe what they do rather than telling stories. Thus if you want more referrals you need to tell more unique sales stories.

OK, simple enough.

One way I could get that message across is to simply communicate it as I just did. That would probably work OK, but since I’m advocating using sales stories as a tool for getting more referrals, I ought to do exactly just that. Thus to make this point, I use a long arc story.

I start the presentation by saying, “I went to Washington University in St. Louis.” Pause. “Fun fact to know and tell.” Longer pause.

I then go into my presentation during which I share that as the son of a university professor when it came time to apply to colleges, that was a big deal in the Satterfield household.

I applied to three schools. Since I always loved to read and write, one of them was Princeton University which was the school of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Plus, if you’ve ever visited it, Princeton looks exactly like what you would imagine, ivy covered walls, a university straight out of central casting.

I also applied to UCLA, the University of California at Los Angeles. Growing up in New England in the late 1960s, I wasn’t too much different from most other guys. If you couldn’t be James Bond, you wanted to be a really cool surfer dude. Thus, the appeal of UCLA.

I also applied to Washington University in St. Louis (you always have to describe it that way since there are so many schools with the name “Washington” in them.) Dad was from St. Louis, which is how it originally got on my radar screen, but what was most appealing to me was that it offered co-ed dorms. Quite the cutting edge in dormitory living circa 1973.

Anyway, Princeton sent me a very nice letter, “In the effect that hell does freeze over, we would be more than happy to reconsider your application.” However both UCLA and Washington University in St. Louis let me in. That led to a short conversation with Dad (who was financing this experiment in higher education) who said to me that he thought that if I went to UCLA I would probably become a pretty good surfer and flunk out my sophomore year. (Apparently he hadn’t noticed the mention of co-ed dorms in the Washington University materials.) Thus off I went in May of 1973 to St. Louis.

At this point in the presentation I stop and ask the audience to take out a pen and piece of paper. I ask them to write down the name of the school I went to and then the names of the two schools I applied to but did not go to. I then ask them to turn the paper over and tell them that we’ll return to it a bit later on.

My presentation then goes on to talk about other applications for using Unique Sales Stories. At one point I mention again that it’s my premise that people don’t remember facts, they remember stories and that we’ll find out if that is really true shortly. What I’m doing here is seeding and reminding the audience about the long-arc story which is about where I went to college.

I’m now about to wrap up the presentation so I ask the audience to find the piece of paper that they wrote down the answers to where I applied to school, but not to turn the piece of paper over. I ask them to write down on the back of the paper the name of the school that I went to. I then ask them to write down the names of the other two schools. Finally, I ask them to compare what they’ve written down on the back of the paper to what they wrote down on the front.

Here’s what typically happens.

Virtually everyone gets the names of the schools right the first time I ask them to write them down. That’s to be expected. But here’s what’s very interesting. Typically 85-90% of the audience gets the answers correct the second time as well. This is the tangible proof that people remember stories.

If I had simply said that I went to Washington University in St. Louis and by the way, I also applied to Princeton and UCLA, 10 minutes later no one would remember. (And I’ve actually tried this and the recall results are pretty depressing.) By telling a story, people remembered what they would otherwise likely forget.

This story is introduced very early in my presentation, referred to briefly in the middle and then concluded at the end. It’s one of my signature long-arc stories and does an outstanding job of making the specific point that if you want to be remembered, you need to tell stories.

Since I make the cryptic statement of “We’ll see if I’m right a bit later on”, interest and curiosity increases. That’s one of the benefits of the long arc story.

Granted a long-arc sales story requires a bit of time. Thus it’s ideally suited if you’re preparing a speech or a sales presentation. Naturally, if I can be of assistance to you in developing one, please let me know.

Talk soon,
Mark

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My Beliefs About Attracting New Clients

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

I have a couple of beliefs when it comes to marketing your services and attracting new clients.

So, why should you care?

For one thing, (and since it’s completely self-serving), I thought I’d share with you what Tom Winchester, who’s owned 3 companies (two of which he sold for astro-bucks) was kind enough to say, “Adopting these beliefs was the single most important change I’ve made to my business in the last 20 years.”

So what are they?

My first belief is that that attracting as many new clients as your business can handle is all about the story you tell.

Yes, having a client attraction system is important.

Yes, technology is helpful

But…at the end of the proverbial day…what really separates you from the competition…what makes you memorable, so that people refer you business…what enables you to get prospects to visualize the benefits of working with you, are…

The Stories That You Tell.

So, what I’d suggest is take a minute and go to your website. Take a look at what you’re communicating.

Are you sharing interesting stories about you, your clients and their successes? If not, perhaps we should talk.

Secondly, I believe that WE MAKE MARKETING WAY TOO COMPLICATED.

And, again, I have a theory as to why.

I blame it on Google.

I Googled “marketing advice” this morning and guess what?

There’s only 99,300,000 results.

Now suppose I wake up one morning and say to myself, “Myself, we really need to get off our butt and start to do some marketing. Wonder if there’s any information that will be helpful?”

So off I go to Google. And what happens?

It’s not that there’s a lack of information (some of it actually quite good-especially my stuff). The problem is that there’s (obviously) too much information.

So why is this important?

Because if one takes even a modest dip into the pool of advice, it’s amazingly easy to get overwhelmed. And unfortunately when we get overwhelmed, we tend to resort to a default position: WE DO NOTHING. Which of course just makes matters worse.

I’m a firm believer that we make marketing far too hard. Way too complex.

It’s one thing to have a multi-step marketing system after you’ve put in place the basics. But if you attempt to go from having no marketing system, to one with 18 steps…well it’s no wonder why so many people give up in frustration.

It’s a bit like golf. My instructor tells me about cocking my wrists, keeping the club shaft parallel to the ground, body weight transfer…my mind goes numb with all the advice. While the reality is that my golf shot will pretty much do what I want it to do if I just…KEEP MY FREAKING HEAD DOWN and quit looking up to see where the ball is going.

The point is…when we keep things simple-good stuff happens. True in golf. True in life. True in marketing.

So here’s my advice.

All you need to do is to keep 3 things in mind. Three Simple Components Of The Marketing System. No big deal.

COMPONENT #1: Create something that you think your target audience would be interested in receiving, that you can give away for free. It might be an article, recording of a speech you gave, video, piece of software, book, assessment…whatever. The important point is that it should be something that your particular niche is interested in. (Usually this means that it focuses on a problem they’re suffering from.)

How do you find out what the best topic is? The easiest way is to simply…ask them. Put together a quick survey on SurveyMonkey and send it out to those who are already on your list. So what if you’ve only got 12 people on your list-survey them. That’s a heck of a lot better than sitting in your office deciding on your own what your niche is interested in. (P.S. The offer should be something you can send electronically at zero cost, rather than a “free consultation”. That’s not to say that a free consultation is a bad offer to make, you just don’t want to offer it at the very beginning.)

COMPONENT #2: Create a one-page microsite that promotes the free offer. That’s all it does. In effect it’s a long form sales letter with one purpose: Get your visitors to opt-in to get the “free thing”.

When people opt-in, their contact information goes into what’s called an autoresponder. That’s basically a database that then enables you to send these people additional messages that build trust & credibility, and eventually turns large percentages of them into paying clients. There are lots of services to choose from. The one I personally use and recommend is HERE.

COMPONENT #3: Promote the one page microsite and get people to come to it. Lots and lots and lots of ways to do that. Pay-per-Click advertising, online advertising on relevant association sites, direct mail (letters and/or postcards), social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter…No, not all “social media” is the same so you need to decide what’s best for you and your market), blogs, joint ventures (fancy way of saying, align yourself with those who are also selling to your target market), articles, white papers, books, PR, direct sales, speeches, webinars, telemarketing, teleconferences; the list goes on and on.

So here’s my point.

These are the 3 components of marketing. All you need to do is start with component #1 and progress from there. But by all means don’t start with component #3 (which many people do) since all you’ll wind up doing is spending money on driving prospects to a website from which they bounce off. It’s somewhat difficult to build a relationship with someone if they don’t leave any record of who they are when they come to visit.

Will this work for you?

It’s hard to argue against a strategy that fundamentally says, “Offer people something free and then stay in touch to build a relationship.” Although I hate the term “no-brainer”, in this case it certainly does seem to fit. The bottom line is that there’s simply no reason why anyone can’t have an effective marketing system up and running inside of 30-45 days.

Unless they start making it complicated.

As always please let me know if I can ever be of assistance.

Related links:
Read my newest book, Unique Sales Stories
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How To Communicate Better With Your Target Audience

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

I’ll admit I have a bias.

While I’m not a Luddite driving a buggy, I think that a lot of time we focus way too much on technology as the solution to our business development woes. For example, want to start a passionate conversation? Ask a group of marketers or business owners, “Does social media really work?”

“Yes it does.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“My friend Al got a big account from Facebook, so there!!!”
“I don’t care, you’re still ugly.”

On and on…missing the point. (Or a large part of the point.)

It’s not the technology…it’s not the medium…it’s WHAT you’re communicating.

People seem to forget that.

But I get asked these questions a lot…

Does email really work?
Do autoresponders really work?
Does video really work?
Does advertising really work?

And the answer is always the same…”Yes, if you communicate the right message.”

Which brings me (finally) to my point.

How can we do a better job of communicating to those we want to do business with?

This all came about as a result of an interview I read in this month’s CEO Magazine with Linda Heasley, CEO of The Limited Stores. (As an aside and to answer another question I get asked, “How do you think of things to write?” The answer is “Read lots of magazines and newspapers.” If you want my list let me know and I’ll pass it along.)

I don’t know how much you know about women’s retail (I knew next to nothing until I interviewed Les Wexner for a report I was developing for a client) but it won’t come as any great surprise when I tell you that it’s brutally competitive. Lots of “me-too” stuff, harder and harder for stores to carve out an individual niche for themselves, “branding” is extremely difficult…(sound familiar?).

But Ms. Heasley’s success in reinvigorated The Limited offers all of us a specific lesson that’s valuable.

One of the top challenge she and her team faced was how to hone in on what her target customer really wanted to buy? What really was going on in her head? To figure that out, they came up with a very simple, but highly effective solution.

They created one.

The article explains:

“The fictitious, Tyler Monroe-prototypical Limited shopper-became the touchpoint for decisions at every level of the organization. Strategic decisions were based on the answers to such questions as: What were her likes and dislikes? What type of house does she live in? What car does she drive? What appointments would be in her day planner? What does she do for fun?”

The answers to these questions then drove the answers to the next set of questions:

“How does Tyler dress? What would Tyler wear for the office? For the weekend? At a picnic? At a corporate event?”

And then ultimately the answer to…

“What marketing messages would she respond to? Which would she reject?”

Everything from buying to advertising to store layout was geared towards appealing to Tyler Monroe.

So what’s the lesson? Simple.

You need to create a prototypical client. When you create your website, write marketing copy, develop ads…it’s all done with the vision of this individual (and that’s key-it needs to be an individual) in mind.

To toot my own horn, I’m told by people who allegedly know about this stuff, that my 42% email open rate is extremely high, especially given how long some of my 25,000+ subscribers have been on my list. (For which I am very appreciative-thank you!)

I believe that a large part for why the open rate is so high is because I have a prototypical client in mind when I sit down and write to you. (It was one of the early exercises my coach and I did back a few years ago and it remains one of the most productive 2 hours I have ever spent.)

There’s a series of questions I like to ask my coaching clients to zero in on who this prototypical client is but you can probably do a decent job of creating this “character” with just some good thinking.

But the real point is this.

If you want to attract more new prospects…If you want to convert large percentages of them into paying clients…

It’s not about the latest technology.

It’s not about whether social media, direct mail or advertising work…

It’s all about WHAT you communicate.

Food for thought.

Talk with you soon.
Mark
Related Links
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How To Use Trojan Horse Marketing To Attract New Clients.

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

An interesting short article in SalesForceExp magazine about “What Business Are You Really In?” It reminded me about the power of Trojan Horse Marketing.

For example, on the surface one might think that your local cinema is in the movie business. But they’re not.

The movie is just the “Trojan Horse” for their real business, which is selling popcorn and refreshments. As the article points out, “Cinemas are fast food businesses that happen to offer entertainment.”

So why is this worth thinking about?

Because most services business use a straight ahead-direct-battering-ram approach when attempting to get new business.

And there’s a much more effective way that achieves far better results. Let me explain…

You’d put it more elegantly, but the general gist of most marketing messages tends to be…

Hi…If you suffer from (problem) I have a solution for you. As the leading (financial planner/executive recruiter/technology consultant/Fill-In-Your-Expertise-Here) we have extensive experience working with…(well you know the rest.)

Now there’s nothing inherently bad about that. However the problem is that everyone (or at least all your competition) is taking pretty much that same approach. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so difficult to stand out.

Alternatively, the Trojan Horse strategy approaches the target market at an angle. It may not be immediate obvious what in fact the ultimate objective is.

You see this many times with infomercials. You know, the ones that sell a $8 doo-hickey like some sort of goofy lure that fisherman can use to catch “the really big one that got away”. You’ve probably said to yourself, “How in the world after spending all this money on advertising can they make any money selling something so inexpensive?”

And the answer is…”The can’t.” (And they aren’t.)

In most cases what they are really doing is building a list of buyers of fishing equipment and then selling that list to lots of manufacturers and marketers who sell rods, reels and other fishing equipment.

There’s a lot of money in fishing.

Now they could have used the straight ahead approach, “Give me your contact information and we’ll have a lot of fishing manufacturers send you stuff you might like to buy.” They’d get the really hard core fish fanatics that way. But that’s just a teensy tiny segment of the market.

But they used a Trojan Horse, and now have a list of people who have actually bought fishing stuff.

That’s worth big bucks to others who want to sell fishing stuff, since it’s a proven list of buyers (as opposed to just those who are interested in fishing).

So how does the Trojan Horse approach work with services firms?

Here’s an example.

I’m about to launch a new sales training initiative. It’s my one day sales training program, Unique Sales Stories: How To Get More Referrals, Differentiate Yourself From The Competition & Close More Sales Through The Power Of Stories.

Now I could just create a nice PowerPoint presentation, brochure, website, direct mail campaign ect and market this to sales executives and training directors.

Might work.

But the sales training field is very competitive. Lots of programs vying for attention.

And there are a lot of heavy hitters, companies with far bigger budgets than mine who are mailing their brochures to the same people I want to hire me.

So I need a Trojan Horse.

And I’ve got one.

It’s a book. Not a eBook but a real paperbound book, published by a real publishing house -it’s even got some pictures in it. Pretty cool if I say so myself.

I wrote this book over a 6-week period of time this spring and early summer.

Was my goal to have a best seller?
Was my goal to sell a lot of books?
Was my goal to get “famous”?

Nope.

My goal is to sell a lot of sales training programs. And my book is my Trojan Horse.

Instead of doing what all my competition is doing…sending sales training brochures, having their sales reps cold call training directors and sales executives pitching their sales training programs…guess what I’m going to do?

I’m sending some very targeted direct mail and implementing other very-focused marketing to one niche market that I think has a burning need for this program. (After I hit that one market I’ve got 9 others that are on the list.)

But I’m not going to be talking about sales training in my sales letters, emails and ads.

Nope.

What I’m going to be doing is offering this very targeted and very specific audience a FREE copy of my book.

Guess how many of my competitors are doing this?
What’s their approach?

The straight-ahead-direct-battering-ram approach.

I’ve done this before, the last time I was in the training business. (For reasons I won’t bore you with I’ve been in and out of the training biz periodically for the last 12 years.) The last time I was marketing a program on how to gain access to top decision makers.

Similar model.

Wrote a book. You may have heard of it, Power Prospecting: How To Gain Access To Key Decision Makers (http://www.gentlerainselling.com)

Direct mail to partners at large consulting firms offering the book. Had a small sales team follow up with those who “raised their hands”. (Gave them a great incentive: 50% of the fee for the first training program a company bought and 20% ongoing for all subsequent sessions. With initial commissions of $2250 and then $900 for each subsequent program, my sales team made some serious money…BTW I’m offering the same sales incentive program again so let me know if you want in on it.)

The seminar went head-to-head with at least 7 other programs focusing on the same issue-all of who had been around for at least 5 years.

Using the Trojan Horse strategy we sold $1 million of training in the first 18 months.

All because my team and I were able to get attention by offering something that was “one-off” from the standard straight ahead-direct-battering-ram approach.

And I’m going to do it again.

But the really important point is…so could you.

It doesn’t have to be a book or a movie theater. What it does have to be is something creative that gets people to initially raise their hands. I’ve helped my coaching clients strategize on these and we’ve created some outstanding programs in over 17 different niche markets.

But here’s why most everyone won’t do it.

It requires a lot of thinking.

And planning.

There are a lot of moving parts.

It’s not quick…

But projects that have a potential $1 million payoff seldom are.

So what might be your Trojan Horse?

Summer is good for lots of things. One of which is planning how you’re going to grow your business in the fall.

I’m launching my Unique Sales Stories Sales training program. (And maybe helping some of you with your business launches.)

What will you be doing?

Food for thought.
Mark

Related links
http://www.gentleraincoaching.com
http://www.gentlerainblueprint.com
http://www.gentleraincopywritng.com

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