Education Based Marketing A Case Study Where $50 Delivers $5,000 Sale and a Free Lunch
Education Based Marketing A Case Study Where $50 Delivers $5,000 Sale and a Free Lunch
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?
Education Based Marketing A Case Study Where $50 Delivers $5000 Sale and a Free Lunch - To learn more about this author, visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website.
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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?
Education Based Marketing A Case Study Where $50 Delivers $5000 Sale and a Free Lunch - To learn more about this author, visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website.
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David BarrDavid Barr is the President of Venture Opportunities, Inc. David has been a professional business broker/intermediary since 1980 focusing on General Business Brokerage and Mergers and Acquisitions representing client transaction value from $400,000 to $20,000,000. Mr. Barr has handled the sale of over four hundred and fifty companies. David earned a university degree from the State University of New York majoring in economics and business. David holds the Mergers and Acquisition Master Intermediary and the Certified Business Intermediary designations from the International Business Brokers Association. He is also a Senior Business Analyst and a Texas licensed Real Estate Agent. For more information about David and Venture Opportunities, visit www.bizdealmaker.com. - Visit David Barr's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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Jay Kubassek(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek) In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.
As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)
Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist. Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper. Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website |
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009. Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010. To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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Casey GollanCasey Gollan, Business Coaching & Mentoring Programs. Add $1 Million to $10 Million in the next 1 to 3 years. Since 1996 Casey has to added hundreds of millions of dollars to businesses. Watch a free video see client results Business Coaching website. - Visit Casey Gollan's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Jeff FosterWebBizIdeas.com is a Minneapolis website design company founded to help people start an internet business by providing them with website, business, and internet resources that help foster the growth of successful online businesses and develop innovative Internet business ideas. We specialize in internet consulting & internet marketing. - Visit Jeff Foster's Website |
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