A lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, and SOHO’s don’t just fear marketing they think it takes a lot of work.  While marketing does take work… most of that work revolves around understanding what your best potential buyers need to hear to buy your stuff.

After you get that right it probably takes a whole lot less work than you realize.  Andrea Stenberg recently wrote about ways to re-purpose your blog posts.  Something serious bloggers do on a regular basis.  So it’s easy to forget how something that’s a habit for me is something you don’t even think about.

Although I’m reminded of this fact when working with my individual coaching clients all the time.  They are so relieved to see how you can get so much value from just one simple thing.

The concept is simple.  For everything you do figure out ways to re-purpose and recycle it in as many ways as you can think of so you get the maximum return for your efforts.  This is leveraging.

When identifying ways to leverage remember to respect the different ways people like to consume information.  Some prefer to read, others like to listen, and most enjoy seeing things.

Let’s take something you probably already do and see how that might work.  Let’s say you get the opportunity to speak at a local event.  Here’s what you could do to get the most value from that speaking engagement:

1. Record your live event then either sell the recording or use it as a gift for people who connect with you.
2. Create notes for a hand-out to give people at the live event and then either use those notes with your product for sale, or include them with your gift.
3. Have your speech transcribed from your audio recording then offer attendees the opportunity to get the transcription in exchange for connecting with you.
4. Turn your transcription into an ebook.  You can either sell your ebook or give it away.  When you combine your ebook with the audio, and notes the value increases.
5. Transform your ebook into a number of articles and submit those articles to local publications, as well as, online article directories.
6. Submit audio recordings of your articles to online podcast directories.  Remember to include an offer at the end that invites listeners to get free information and connect with you.
7. Create a video from your articles and audios, and submit your videos to online video directories.
8. Combine your audios, videos, notes, and ebook into a product to either sell or use as an offer to connect with you.
9. Share your free content with other business owners who sell to the same people you do so they can give it as a gift to their customers.

See how easy it is to do just one thing and leverage that work so it works over and over again for you?

The next step is automation.  If you limit yourself to one-on-one interactions you’ll work yourself to death and sell yourself short.  To prevent that simply set-up ways for people to connect with you 24/7/365.  A web page is an easy way to do that.

Then help them stay connected with you by offering your free gift in exchange for their name and email address.  This information is simply collected via a form that’s connected to an auto-responder.  There are so many good things to say about automation I’ll leave that for an entirely different post another day.

photo credit: TheTruthAbout…

photo credit: austinevan

Are you afraid to ask for the sale?  Have you ever had a sales trainer suggest that you don’t ask for the sale because you don’t want to.  Insinuating you’re afraid to do something perfectly logical?

You don’t ask for the sales because you don’t want to ask for the sale BECAUSE you know there’s no logical reason to do so.  Your internal warning signals are shouting to you, “don’t make a complete fool of yourself asking for a sale you can’t make.”  Your natural fear instincts exist for a very good reason.

Those fear signals not only warn you of real physical danger they also warn you when you are about to cause emotional danger to yourself.  Don’t force yourself down a path leading to your own humiliation.  Rather change your approach and change your outcomes.

You don’t want to ask for the sale BECAUSE…

1. What you have to offer isn’t a match for what the prospect needs.  When this is the case, make and friend and walk away.  Never try to desperately force a sale that shouldn’t happen to begin with.  You will live to regret it.
2. You didn’t set yourself up right before the actual sales appointment.  Because you didn’t take the time and make the effort to set yourself up as a trusted adviser you now have to deal with the adversarial relationship most people have with salespeople.  Why dig yourself out of a whole you shouldn’t be in in the first place?
3. Even you recognize you haven’t helped the prospect uncover their “reason why” they should buy.  People aren’t going to buy to be nice and help you out.  They need real reasons to make a “yes” buying decision.  They need to believe your offer is the right offer for them.
4. You don’t like it when someone tries to pressure you into buying and you don’t want to do that to someone else.  Good for you.  Never use pressure tactics.  Those tactics might work for a one-time transaction but they back-fire when you want life-time relationships.
5. You helped them uncover a reason why they should buy, but you didn’t help them uncover the motivation to act.  You can tell because the prospect is completely logical about the offer and stays focused on data and facts.  You help them gain the motivation they need to act and act now when you help them envision the future they want in every detail.

You don’t want to ask for the sale because you know the prospect isn’t ready.  All too often you and the sales trainers you work only focus on closing statements.  As long as you place all your attention on the closing you’ll never correct the problems that make closing so difficult.

You’ll want to ask for the sale when you adjust your marketing and sales conversations to make closing a natural conclusion to a great conversation.  You won’t be afraid to close because you’ll know its right.  In fact, in most cases you won’t have to “close” because the prospect will do it for you.

photo credit: Office Now

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