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Education Based Marketing A Case Study Where $50 Delivers $5,000 Sale and a Free Lunch
| Guest post by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith |
Article Overview: The tried and accepted sales rule is never give anything way for free. In today’s global market place, this rule is now defunct, irrevelant, kaput! Read this case study and learn how $50 turned into a hundred fold.
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Free Download - How to Craft an Engaging Message That Highlights What You Do to Increase Sales By Leanne Hoagland-Smith |
Education Based Marketing A Case Study Where $50 Delivers $5,000 Sale and a Free Lunch
The tried and accepted sales rule is never give anything way for free. In today’s global market place, this rule is now defunct, irrelevant, kaput!
Take out a fifty dollar bill or write a check for $50.00. If you receive a hundred fold return for your $50, would you be willing to violate the old rule of Never give anything away for free.
The problem with this No Free Give-A-Way rule is that the giveaways, in many cases, lacked value because they could not be connected to any results. Hence, these giveaways did not help to close or I prefer to earn the sale. They were just that giveaways and never connected tangible results or issues facing potential customers.
With the Internet, potential qualified customers or clients (a.k.a. prospects), have a plethora of free information from which to read and use on a daily basis. With better educated potential customers coming in as leads, you must change your paradigm from the traditional sales based marketing approach to one of education based marketing.
Of course, this approach is not really new as good sales professionals have been engaged in education sharing with their loyal customers for many years. However, the premise was always get the sale first and then educate the customer as to the value second.
Recently, I have focused all of my marketing efforts under the umbrella of education based marketing. In speaking with a past client who had undertaken a comprehensive 360 assessment for the second time, I noticed her frustration with that assessment specific to how it could help her build a strong dynamic and sustainable results driven management team. During our discussion, I mentioned that I had something might work for her provided she was willing to invest 2 hours of her time. This assessment would be given at no charge just in case it did not meet her needs. She agreed and I emailed to her the link for this assessment. NOTE: The actual retail price of this assessment is $50.
An unexpected outcome of giving away this assessment is that my client then emailed me her 360 without being requested to do so. Using the data from my assessment, her 360, I invested less than 60 minutes in better understanding the results from both tools. We then scheduled a 1.5 hours debrief in which we reviewed the results and how this second assessment could:
Help better understand the 360 individually
Effectively integrate the 360 into team building
Create a plan of action both personally and organizationally
Upon conclusion, she asked what would this cost her? Having already established a relationship and doing my fact finding during our debrief, I quickly answered $750 for each assessment for her four department heads including a two hour debrief; 2 – half day workshops at $1,000 each and this included a meeting with her as well as unlimited email support and any emergency telephone calls. She then asked me to send her a proposal or what I prefer to call a statement of work and she would get the purchase order in the works. Less than 48 hours later, I received the purchase order. Sales Coaching Tip: Sometimes you must give a direct answer to the price question.
My investment was $50 out of pocket, approximately 5 hours of my time including the initial debrief, writing the statement of work and the travel time. And given that my standard sales coaching cycle time is 6 months, I was able to earn the sale in less than 3 weeks from our initial discussion to receiving the actual purchase order.
What is even better, after we finished our debrief meeting, she even bought me lunch. I was going to buy her lunch, but she so enjoyed the experience, she wanted to thank me. How cool is that?
TAKE ACTION SALES COACHING TIP: Education based marketing is the solution for today’s information laden and rather crowded marketplace. You must still due your research; make sure that you are correctly qualifying your potential customers and be willing to invest up front some hard cold cash. Who knows, you may increase sales, decrease sales cycle time and improve profitability and are those not aspirations that most sales professionals would like to achieve?
How Too Many Coaches Are Marketing Using the Square Peg in the Round Hole Approach to Win More Sales
Out With the Old and In With the New To Increase Sales
Education Based Marketing the New Sales Paradigm for Relationship Selling
How to Leverage Relationship Selling through Education Based Marketing
It’s OK to ask for the sale. Really it’s OK
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About the Author: Leanne Hoagland-Smith RSS for Leanne's articles - Visit Leanne's website Her book, Be the Red Jacket is a no-nonsense and quick read to help discover potential gaps that may be keeping you from your goal to increase sales. The forward is by Evan Carmichael of EvanCarmichael.com Remember if you think you cannot or you think you can either way you are right. (Henry Ford). Sales Coaching Tip: Change your thoughts; improve your results. Click here to visit Leanne's website   Business Building Check List Leadership Assessment Leadership Audit For Business |
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