Have you ever experienced doing a really good job, and you felt proud talking to your potential clients about your job-well-done services, yet it seems that not a single one called and actually hire you?
This article might help you answer your woes. With a little exercise, you can join the ranks of business and sales people who get hired, sell services and increase referrals.
Before we proceed in answering the question, let’s take a look at the differences between promoting products VS services.
Products often have features that reveal results at an instant. By talking about the benefits of such features and how it could make your customer’s life easier, surely, there’s a sale in there!
Services, on the other hand, are intangible – incapable of being realized or defined. They are more challenging to sell because the outcome of a particular service is different from the other, and can be difficult to quantify, measure, or prove.
If you’re still stagnant in your business while continuing your usual marketing strategy, you better find different tactic, and fast! You’re wasting a lot of time using the same strategy and the result is still the same – flat!
Go come up of a new sales technique to promote the intangible results of advertising.
Authors, Coaches, Consultants, etc. produce results that improve the human side of life and business and “Alternative Healers” deal with subtle energies that may take longer to produce quantifiable results. To the average consumer, these are luxuries that, although desirable and beneficial, can be “done without” if money is tight.
Many are good at explaining how they work and what tools they use. The problem is that most consumers couldn’t care less about how you work. They care more about the benefits they’ll experience after hiring you. They want to be clear on what results you can deliver in exchange for their hard-earned money.
“What’s in it for me?” – a very crucial question every customer would say before purchasing such products or services. As service providers, we must be able to describe and portray clear results to our potential clients.
Success Story:
One client arrived in despair. She had a great service as a professional organizer and sadly, few customers to show for it.
I asked her to give me the top 10 benefits of her good service…alas she (like many others responding to this request) provided a list of top 10 features instead.
She listed “features” that describe how she gets to a result. Features like:
– Customized quotes
– Office flow organization tweaking
– Created new filing systems
– Ergonomic layouts for offices, etc.
Sound pretty good, don’t’ they? Sure, and her customers seemed interested and keen, BUT they were not following through and hiring her.
I helped her articulate a more effective sales list of the benefits and results of her good work. Results like:
– Added value of charging only her client’s specific needs
– Improved and streamlined office procedures
– To save time and decrease frustrations
– Ability to provide better customer service
– Increased efficiency with improved filing structure
– Less time wasted due to poor office layout
– Resulting in increased productivity all around.
We created a list of 6 good questions she can ask to uncover if a client needs organizational help. Why waste time telling clients all about our services if they don’t need them?
Now, my client will always ask questions to find out first if someone seriously needs her service. If they do, she tells them with confidence about the results she can provide and is more secure asking for their business. By following these guidelines you too can get hired faster with more confidence practically every time!