Many marketers miss out on profits because they try to take a selling shortcut that almost always fails.
They
proceed directly to their offer instead of taking time to develop the “know, like and trust” factor that is almost always required before a sale can be made.
The website version of this is a marketer who simply lists products and services and expects the prospect to read the list and call up to order.
Marketers who use this one-shot approach are almost always disappointed in their results.
Thanks to master copywriter Gary Bencivenga for today’s lesson.
The universal law of selling identified below is your key to higher profits.
In every sale, either in person or in your marketing efforts, there are at least two sales that have to be made, not just one.
This is true of anything you sell, and the sooner you realize this, the sooner you can become a master at selling anything, in person or in your sales copy.
The main sale, of course, is the product or service you ultimately want to
sell.
But before you can even get a chance to sell your main product, you must first sell your prospect on giving you an audience.
This is known as the sale before the
sale. In short, you must sell the chance to sell.
Legendary life insurance salesman Frank Bettger used this principle to become one of the greatest salespeople who ever lived.
Bettger was
such a crummy salesman that he came close to quitting before he stumbled upon one of the most powerful strategies for selling anything.
On a vacation, while standing on the deck of a ship about to dock in Miami, Bettger noticed that the ropes needed to moor a great ship to the dock were tremendous in size.
They were very long and as thick as a man’s thigh. He wondered how anyone, no matter how strong, could ever lift such a thick rope, let alone hurl it so that it would reach the pier.
So he decided to watch how it
was done…
He discovered that the crew doesn’t even try to throw the heavy rope, known as a “hawser.”
Instead, he saw a solitary crewman hurl a little iron ball, called a “monkey’s
fist,” which was attached to a thin rope about the size of a clothes line.
He tossed this monkey’s fist to a longshoreman standing on the pier, waiting to receive it. When the longshoreman caught the little iron ball, he started to haul in the thin rope attached to it.
This thin rope, in turn, was attached to the huge hawser, which Bettger then saw moving through the water as the fellow on the dock hauled it in.
And that’s how the big, unwieldy hawser gets tied to the moorings on the pier.
Throwing the hawser was too big a first step for any sailor, just as it’s too big a first step for any marketer to approach ice-cold prospects and instantly persuade them to buy.
So this is the little-known but amazingly
reliable formula for opening – and then closing – many, many more sales, in person or online.
Make the first step for your prospect irresistibly easy to take.
Resist the
temptation to start off trying to sell your product. Break it into smaller steps.
As a first step, offer something that makes it easy, irresistibly easy, for your prospect to say yes.
There are countless ways you can achieve this gentle, seductive first step in your marketing.
I have found that offering valuable, free information that targets your prime prospects is the most versatile, economical and usually most effective execution of this strategy.
It works so well because it not only makes it much easier to open sales conversation with your best prospects, but also sets you up perfectly to close them.
If you sell a course on Internet marketing, you can offer a free e-book such as, “The 100
Most Successful E-mail Advertisements Ever Written.”
If you manage a real estate office in Huntington Beach, you can offer a free “Trend Report – Sale Prices of Huntington Beach Homes, Condos and Co-Ops over the Last Six Months.”
If you’re a chiropactor, you can advertise a free guide, “My Seven Best Secrets for Having a Pain-Free Back in Just Six Weeks.”
If you sell a course on public speaking, you can offer a free CD, “Secrets of Getting a Standing Ovation Almost Every Time You Speak.”
All these are examples of “throwing the monkey’s fist” – they make it much easier for prospects to lower their guard, give you their time and allow you into their busy lives.
This is how you make the sale before
the sale.
It’s the same as courtship. You would never dream of walking up to a total stranger and asking him or her to marry you. The first step might just be a flirtatious conversation, which leads to a date, which leads to more dates, which lead to an engagement, which leads to a marriage proposal, which leads to a lifelong
relationship.
Trying to race to the ultimate destination from an ice-cold start just won’t work.
Romance your prospects in the same way.
Make the first step easy, non-threatening, enjoyable and irresistible!
Then make the next small step the same way, and keep going until you’re both in love.
