Double Your Sales - The Power of Communicating Value
Joshua Frank, Chairman of the Board, St. Louis Veterans Business Resource Center; Managing Partner, RSM Federal
You’ve heard it before, “It’s not about what you sell. It’s about the value that your products or services provide.” But what does that mean?
Whether your franchise is commodity or service based, sell sandwiches, cut hair, or perform disaster restoration, you want to think in terms of how you qualify and quantify your value. We’re going to discuss how to communicate value and integrate with what marketers term a Call To Action (CTA). We’re going to discuss this, step by step. There are two parts to this strategy. The first is understanding how to communicate the value of what you provide. The second is providing part of this value, for free, as your primary CTA. This is then followed with what we call a “trip-wire” for a second CTA. You never provide more than one CTA at a time. It’s not overly complicated. We’ll use an example so you can tailor it to your franchise. Like anything else in business, it will take some of your time but it’s well worth it.
Let’s consider a Home Inspection franchise. Remember that these techniques and strategies are industry agnostic. No matter what you sell, product or service, you can tailor these strategies to your business.
One target market for home inspection companies is real estate. Home buyers (if they’re smart), will hire someone to inspect their future home. What do most inspection companies do for marketing? They have a simple website that outlines their services, perhaps how many years they’ve been
doing this, and their contact information. Maybe their website is the first you find in a Google search. They may have a dollar or percentage discount for their services. They might say that the discount is only good through the end of the month to create a sense of urgency. How likely are they to accelerate their sales? Not likely. Their competitors have the same or similar offerings.
Instead, identify about the value provided. I want you to think about your industry and the value you provide every day that you may take for granted. There are probably a dozen issues that you’ll consistently find during a home inspection. Three of these are so common, that 90% of the houses have these problems. Now imagine that a prospect visits your website and finds the following: FREE DOWNLOAD
“12 Most Common Inspection Issues That New Home Buyers Fail to Identify and 4 Inspection Checks Every Home Inspector Should Do For You.”
The first paragraph of the document is a part of your sales pitch:
“It’s not what you sell. It’s not the cost. It’s not the features. It’s the value you provide.”
“No matter what you sell, product or service, you can tailor these strategies to your business.”
“ABC Home Inspection has been helping new home buyers avoid costly repairs for more than 20 years. Buying a new home is an exciting experience and your focus will be on signing the contract and planning your move. But an inspection that fails to find all the issues can cost you thousands after you’ve moved in. 84% of home buyers are surprised with an average of $3,100 in repairs within 30 days of move-in. So before you hire a home inspector, quickly look at these 12 most common issues and the 4 checks you can do yourself before you select a home inspector.
We don’t just inspect your home, we protect against future costs. Since 1996, we’ve saved new home buyers more than $1 Million in avoidable repair costs that should have been identified during the initial inspection and paid for by the seller. (Author’s note: the numbers and percentages in this paragraph are not real. Just an example of the type of metrics you want to use.)
The title of the free download and the opening paragraph of the article are packed full of numbers, percentages, and return on investment (ROI). When you list the inspection issues and the 4 checks, continue to describe via value and metrics. It’s not what you sell. It’s not the cost. It’s not the features. It’s the value you provide.
Now, the second part of the strategy is to provide the document as a CTA. What good is providing something of value if you have no mechanism to identify which prospects are interested? Before they download, they should be required to enter their first name and email address. That’s it. If your CTA is strong enough, you’ll get people to download. Now you have prospects you can immediately engage.
After entering their name and email, when the prospect clicks the button for ‘Free Download’ they are taken to a second page where they can download the document. But, in addition to the download is a second CTA! It’s proven that if someone is willing to enter their information, they are more likely to do it again. For the home inspection company, perhaps CTA 2 is a 20% coupon for services.
Rethink your value. Design a strategy that collects your prospects information. It’s industry agnostic. How can you differentiate from your competition and accelerate your sales?
Joshua Frank is Chairman of the Board for the St. Louis Veterans Business Resource Center. He is the #1 bestselling author of “An Insider’s Guide To Winning Government Contracts,” a professional speaker, and awardwinning business coach with 30 years in corporate, government, and military organizations. He specializes in the development and implementation of techniques and strategies required to differentiate, position for, and win B2C and B2G business. He is currently Managing Partner for RSM Federal.
www.rsmfederal.com