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Guest post by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith Become an Author

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The beginning of a New Year is a great time for change especially if your sales are stuck in a rut? Maybe the down economy has affected your ability to increase sales? Possibly, the Internet is playing havoc on sales revenue? Now is the best time to throw out the old traditional sales based marketing and embrace education based marketing.

Many in sales are literally fighting the 21st Century Information Age where with a click of a mouse potential customer to potential qualified customers can find almost anything they need and much of it is free. So what is the sales professional supposed to do? Well, you can either climb into a fetal position and hope that something will change or you can change how you think of selling.

Most sales professionals have experienced sales training through a sales based marketing approach. All of your messages are geared to selling something to someone. In this approach closing the sale becomes paramount. Unfortunately, this only helps to reinforce the image of the pushy sales professional.

Now consider a 180 degree shift in your sales paradigm. Why not educate your potential qualified customer about the exceptional value that you bring to the marketplace? This value also must be unique in that it cannot be readily found elsewhere and truly means something to that potential customer.

To secure results from this new marketing approach may require you to break this Sales No-No Rule of Do not give anything of value away for free. What you give away must truly render exceptional value. If executed correctly, you will not only increase sales, but realize increased referrals and a decrease in your sales cycle time.

The key in education based marketing is exceptional value. Your give-a-way or freebie must be better than anything else in the marketplace while providing your potential qualified customer with a tangible result. Depending upon your target market, you may start with an article, white paper or assessment from your Internet. By capturing demographic information on the visitor who signed up for the freebie, you can determine if this individual warrants a more intensive (expensive) give-a-way.

From my own human capital talent consulting business as well as my sales coaching practice, education based marketing when executed flawlessly delivers impressive results from securing the goal to increase sales to reducing the overall sales cycle time. The challenge is two fold: Throw out the belief that it is wrong to give away something for free and you must find something that delivers exceptional value.

TAKE ACTION SALES COACHING TIP: Return to your marketing action plan and revisit your demographics. Research the marketplace for current conditions and trends. Listen to existing clients to determine their most pressing problems. Create a free offering that will uniquely showcase you while establishing a relationship of mutual trust.

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