How To Increase Sales By Giving Something Away
A man who was very good at what he did - selling - once told me that the best way to get was to give. His favorite thing to give away was an idea.
I’ve made it a life study to find out that he was right. The one sure way increase you sales per call ratio : Give away an idea to every client you visit.
I don’t go into a sales call without being stocked up with an idea for my client to think about.
It might be about how they can make more money, it might save them on expenses, it might lower their cholesterol. But I never make a visit without one to give away.
I keep a notebook with me during my windshield time every day and am always ready to write down an idea, with a reference to which client to spring it on.
Some ideas are general enough to keep in reserve for leverage for just the right time with a client that needs something extra to sway him my way.
Watch for the sales people who treat you this way and then notice the predators out there. The difference is like daylight and dark.
I have a quote on the back of my current notebook that say’s :
” Do you process people, or do you serve them ? “
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You can apply this idea to your website as well. Don’t just ask for contact information when someone tries to download every whitepaper. Perhaps offer a few for free so they get a taste of who you are. I saw an article by Brian Carrol and just wrote a post on this. Chad H.
Hey Chad - I’ve got Brian Carroll’s new book and he is the real deal.
When I finish it, I’ll let everybody know how good he is.
It worked for David Meerman Scott, too. One of his free ebooks has been downloaded over 100,000 times. Talk about gathering readers and links !
That should do it.
I have an ebook almost ready to go that I may give away as a viral marketing tool.
I strongly believe in letting people “taste” whatever you sell. Usually we mean sampling, but the suggestion of giving away ideas is huge. Nowadays you’ve got to be an idea person. And they better be real, practical, but creative ideas if you want them to have the desired effect.
With a website, this notion of giving away information via download without requiring a signup first is more art than science. If someone can simply download your tool for nothing, you may have provided value, but did you actually create a prospect? Not really.
You can’t follow-up, you can’t ask directly for feedback, you can’t encourage them personally to upgrade or check out another cool resource you’ve developed. You may be “giving back,” or stimulating/gauging interest, but you don’t have a real prospect.
Not that that’s a bad thing. I do it at my site.
Hey Brandon,
I’m on the fence here with regards to this issue. From my old internet marketng standpoint, you gotta “signup” to “get”.
That keeps you from serving up info to non-believers, but weeds out a few believers, too.
From a blggers standpoint and in the eyes of David Meerman Scott, whom I steal a LOT of ideas from, you don’t ask for an email, you just give them the info.
I’ll probably create a landing page where I give them SEVERAL bullet points of info as to why they should opt-in to the list, but also provide a direct download link for those that abhor being on another list.
We’ll see how that works and tweak the method to try and increase the workability for my purposes.
Thanks for adding to the mix.
Mike, although I know you have disdain for people who write books, I just wrote and published an entire book on marketing by giving away content, titled The White Paper Marketing Handbook. Mike Stelzner, the white paper guru, also has a book on this topic.
Hi Bob,
Good to see a comment from you. I don’t have a disdain for people who write books, unless they aren’t really active in the market they write about, but let’s please not argue any more.
I’ll look around Amazon for your book, Bob ( and maybe Mike’s too ), because I have 3 corporate clients that need to produce White Papers that get read and you do know marketing.
Thanks for taking time to alert me and the readers here to these resources.
As I said many times before, you know writing and marketing and I’m sure your book can be a tremendous help to those who need help writing White Papers and more importantly, getting them read.
Hey All;
Thought I would get in on this discussion since someone brought up my name (thanks Bob). I agree that white papers are great giveaways and I actually wrote about the value of free recently on my blog.
The concept of free is powerful but can also attract the wrong crowd.
Mike
Thanks for weighing in Mike.
I’ll be checking out your blog and book.
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