Jay Abraham strongly advocates that a business extend itself far beyond the normal advertis- ing methods used by most firms. Too many companies use conventional ads on a hit or miss basis that draw poorly. Bad results discourage them from continuing to market and promote themselves. This can kill any hope of success.
You Must Out-Market Your Competitors
YOU MUST MARKET. You must out-market your competitors. You must make every dollar you spend as efficient and as productive as you can. You must learn and adhere to all the ele- ments of powerful marketing.
The success of your business depends on how well you seek out new marketing approaches and sales avenues.
The cornerstone of your marketing plan (according to Jay) should be to educate your client.
You first educate them on your product or service. Let's say you sell home furnaces. All the interesting details regarding the construction and function of your furnace should be in- cluded in your advertising and promotional material. Next you should have a booklet or report on how to save on home energy costs which is generic and can be used in a variety of promotions. Finally you could have a report on how to buy or what to look for in an energy efficient house or an even broader book on home construction or home budgeting that only touches on home energy and heating.
In other words, you educate them on your product and your firm; you educate them on the field in general in a way that's useful to them and you broadly educate them on tangentially related subjects which has the effect of endearing you to them.
One of the saddest marketing mistakes I see is the failure of businesses to educate their cus- tomers about the unique advantages offered them. If you've reviewed 100 different manufactur- ers of the products you sell, let your customers know. It'll impress them that you've screened out products that don't have the quality, endurance, warranty, manufacturing support, service guar- antees or dependability you know they want. Perhaps your guarantee is three times longer or covers five times more problems than your competitors'. Your customer won't know that unless you tactfully point it out.
When You Educate Your Customers, You'll See Your Profits Soar
When you educate your customers, you'll see your profits soar. Think about yourself.
When you buy or consider buying any item or service — for yourself, your home, your family, as a gift or for your business — you often don't know as much as you would like about the item. If you have unanswered questions about a product you're less likely to shell out the money to buy it.
When a company or salesman takes the time and initiative to objectively educate you on all the products in the field you're considering making a purchase, it gains your trust and favor.
Education is a powerful marketing technique. Educate your prospective buyer about every- thing (including a few of the bad or less positive aspects of your product or service) and you'll sell to almost twice as many people as you do now.
This one concept — educating your customers — will gain you an inordinate advantage over your competitors.
20____________________________________________________________________________EDUCATION You Must Lead Your Customer By The Hand
Few businesses realize that they must lead the customer to action, in addition to developing a compelling marketing plan.
People need to be explicitly told how to act to obtain your product or service. Therefore — and this is incredibly important — every sales call, letter, commercial or personal contact should make the case for your product. Give prospects a brief education, then take them by the hand, figuratively speaking and tell them what specific action to take next.
If you're selling an impulse item or if the offer is for a limited time, tell your prospect to get in touch with you immediately. And don't be abstract. If you deal by phone, tell them to pick up the phone and call a specific number.
Always Give Your Customers The Reasons Why
Whenever you make an offer, ask for a sale, run an ad, have a salesperson make a proposition to a customer or prospect or offer a product or service for sale at a specific price, always tell the reason why.
Why can you sell a product or service at a lower price than your competitor? Is it lower over- head or volume buying? Do you buy odd-lot inventories? Do you not give all the services? Why is your price so good?
If your price is high, tell the customer or prospect why. Do you offer a product far superior than the norm? Is your product made with demonstrably finer materials? Is your product de- signed to last or perform 2-1/2 times longer than your competitors?
Why is your price high? Is it handmade? Is it made twice as durable or with three times the personal stitching or handiwork of some machine-made similar product?
If your price or the package is an especially appealing value, tell me (the customer) why you're making this offer. Is it because I'm going to order from you for the first time and it's an exclusive offer to first-time customers? Or, is it because you got a great purchase on all or part of the components in the package and you want to pass the savings on? Or, is it because you're overstocked and you want to get your capital out of slower-moving inventory, so you're willing to sell at a loss.
Please, tell me your reasons why! Why should I patronize you instead of your competitor? Tell me what you are doing that makes favoring your firm better for me. Why can your salespeople handle my purchase better than someone else?
The More Factual You Are With Me, The More I'll Favor You
Tell me all the reasons why. The more factual, believable, credible and plausible reasons you give me for dealing with you, the more compelled I am to favor you with my business. When I write a mailing piece, I do something most other people don't do: I let my readers in on a secret.
I tell them why I am making the offer and what it's all about. Then I admit that I don't know for sure if it's good for them, so after they order, they have a choice. If it works, they can keep it. If it doesn't work they can send it back.
Most people just say, "Buy from me" in their ads. If something is expensive, they don't say why it's expensive. For example, a product may be constructed with 12 times more material, triple-reinforced and made with the best material available. Educate your public and they're putty in your hands.
Quite a few years ago, gems were hot, then they died. A large company was stuck with some magnificent stones that they'd paid over a million dollars for. When they tried to sell them, nobody wanted them. They cut the price and still nobody wanted them. This was extremely frustrating. They had all this capital tied up in gems.
EDUCATION_____________________________________________________________________________21 As a last ditch effort, they came to me. I turned around and started talking directly to the
reader. I said, "These are the facts. We paid over a million dollars for these gems. If we'd sold them back when the market was high, we'd have sold them to you for two million dollars. If you'd bought them from a retail jeweler, you probably would have paid three million dollars. Right now, we can sell them wholesale for $900,000. If you took them to a jeweler, he'd appraise them for three times that amount.
I built the case a step at a time. Finally I told them, "If you've ever wanted a gem, you can buy one that you would have spent $20,000 on just a year ago for $14,000. This is the steal of a lifetime."
Then I told them what to do. I told them to pick up the phone. The mailing piece included a list describing the gems. I said, "Pick the gem that sounds best to you. Call any jeweler you respect in your city and describe that same gem to him. Ask the jeweler what he or she would charge you to buy it. If it's not worth two or three times what we're asking, don't buy it from us. If it is, buy it on a conditional basis. Take it to the jeweler who gave you the quote and ask for an appraisal.
You can send it back if it isn't superior to what we charged you."
Educate People To Appreciate The Value Of What You Deliver
Educate people to appreciate the value of your products and services. It worked for this com- pany. They sold their entire inventory in three days.
You can't appreciate value in a vacuum. You can't appreciate anything until you're educated about it. Most people forget this when it comes to marketing and they lose millions of dollars!
I am frequently asked to help a company out of a problem. Often, I bail a company out of an inventory overstock or I stimulate patronage for some service or product that's just not selling.
Tell Your Customers The Truth
How do I do it? What's my secret? The answer is so basic and simple — and obvious — you'll laugh. I tell my clients to tell their customers and prospects the truth. For example, if you've had 9,000 widgets gathering dust in your warehouse for six months and you have $90,000 tied up in them, but no one's asking for widgets, write a letter or display ad or TV/radio commercial that tells your customers and prospects that: 1) you have a huge inventory of widgets; 2) the widgets are good for such-and-such; 3) you are interested in selling them retail; and 4) their quality composition/constructive service functions and performance criteria are such-and-such.
Then tell people what other retailers or wholesalers would normally offer these or comparable widgets for and tell them the price you're willing to sell a widget or a specific quantity of widgets for. Then tell the prospects why you're selling the widgets to them so cheaply — the real reason
— but with a delightful embellishment. For example, tell the prospect the truth — that you have 9,000 widgets in your warehouse and the real rush is over until next fall, so you'll sell them for your actual cost or even for cost less 20%. But add to that explanation a parenthetical exclusive qualifier like...
But we're only offering this value to our best customers as a reward for your patronage." Or...
But we're only making this offer to new, first-time customers who buy an equal amount of other products or services." Or... "We're only making this offer available to people who buy (some other specific product)."
An important point — in fact, it's vitally essential — is that your customers and prospects won't understand or appreciate a value or a bargain or a service or a benefit unless — and until
— you first educate them to appreciate it. Merely offering a product or service at a specific price (even the best price) doesn't generate excitement or a response until you tell people what they're getting, what a value it is compared to other products and services and why you can offer such value.
22____________________________________________________________________________EDUCATION This applies to any problem.
When your business has a problem (say you've taken money or advances for a product or service) and something goes wrong, precluding you from fully rendering that service, never fail to acknowledge your screw-up. Otherwise that's a sure way to commit integrity suicide. Be up- front and honest. Call, write or individually approach your customers and apprise them of the problem.
Tell them precisely what you were supposed to do and tell them why you can't fulfill your obligations. Tell them with certainty when you will be able to perform.
And this is the clincher. Give them some wonderful consideration to compensate them for being put out. Give them a small gift that costs you a lot less than the profit you'll lose if you're forced to return their money. Or, send them a discount coupon or rebate a portion of their original purchase price. Whatever consideration you offer, tell them why you're doing it, apologize for what went wrong, thank them for their business and assure them honestly that you can and will rectify the problem — that everything will be put right by such-and-such a time or method.
Jay's advice on education extends to the point where you concentrate on this Junction as much as any single aspect of your business. This advice is fabulous and it's easy to do.
Position Your Company As An Industry Expert
Here's a market niche that's crying to be filled. Reposition your company as the source for industry information — as the expert in the industry — and you'll be amazed at the increase in business that results.
First do some homework. Read everything you can get your hands on to keep abreast of industry trends, developments and forecasts.
You can have somebody ghostwrite a book or report for you that you disseminate through press releases, trade journals or have the publication available free to anybody who wants it. It can also be distributed for free and/or sold by people who own bookstores.
Approach bookstores and offer to allow them to sell your publication and keep all the money for themselves — just for showcasing the book. If it's a report, you can have people give it out as a bonus or let them sell it for pure profit. You're getting all the free publicity you could hope for
— and the only costs are your writing and printing expenses.
You could put on seminars throughout your area — either free or for a low cost. You could team up with other business experts who have complimentary products or services and who are noncompetitive with you, to organize the seminars. For example, if you're an accountant you could get together with a financial planner, an attorney and a management consultant and do seminars on how entrepreneurs can protect and increase their wealth in the 1990's.
You can buy time on radio stations for half-hour shows. You can become the keynote speaker at all sorts of organizational meetings. You can start hosting regular breakfast and lunch meetings at your facility (or at a restaurant) on the subject that you're expert in. You can publicize yourself and your product.
In fact you can get on radio talk shows at no cost simply by calling them and applying.
This also ties in with Jay's idea to make yourself a personality in your business. If you become widely recognized as an authority (and this takes years) you instill confidence in your cus- tomers. This is a form of branding. In other words, it's a powerful method of brand recognition which automatically leads customers to you and your product. One obvious way to do this is to title your company under your name. For example, I like Harry Brown Motors better than Fourth Street Auto. Use your picture in your ads and sales literature. However, when you make yourself a personality, you better follow through with superb service and quality, other- wise, negative word of mouth will rapidly make your name mud.
EDUCATION____________________________________________________________________________23 Send Out Press Releases
Start sending out lots of press releases. You'll get reporters calling you. Start a local, regional or national telephone information hotline service. You can have a free, informative recording. At the end of the recording, make this proposition: "If you want more information, call this number and talk to one of our specialists."
Conversely, you could have a paid hotline that gives advice people perceive as valuable (900 line) that you sell to people. It's inexpensive to run and can be a nice little business.
Every business has untold opportunities to educate. For example, a stock-brokerage firm should educate its prospects about its services, the investments it has available, its financial strength, the number of people it employs in research to help the client, the trading staff, special employees and other interesting and helpful facts. Beyond the standard research reports it should have books and reports that teach and encourage stock and bond investing.
They could have a book for large investors entitled, "How to Manage Your Own Private
Mutual Fund," or a book for small investors on why you should buy Mutual Funds and not try to manage on your own. Beyond that, there are thousands of interesting articles to reprint and books to give away that can be effectively employed as lead generators.
As you probably know, it's a big pain to get a call from a telemarketing trainee trying to clear the road for some stockbroker or a brassy guy asking intimate financial questions in the first thirty seconds of the conversation. But if I ordered their free book I've got to hold still for it.
That's human nature.
Here is an anecdote of how the foregoing examples work. Jay also crosses over into some powerful additional strategies which will be covered more extensively in upcoming chapters.
This is Jay at his mile-a-minute best:
Let's talk about my biggest success of the early 1980s, Investment Rarities, Incorporated. I first met IRI in 1978. I was introduced to them through a previous job I held, selling lead- generating programs to financial service companies. Investment Rarities was a little company that somehow got included on my prospect list.
I remember the first time I came in contact with them via telephone. Their president was cordial, but totally oblivious to anything resembling master marketing strategy.
But almost in spite of themselves, IRI had built a profitable little brokerage business solely off a single referral relationship they enjoyed with a popular financial newsletter publisher.
Defer "Self-Serving" For "Education-Rendering" Marketing
But when I pressed IRI to find out what they did with a lead once it came in, I was dumb- founded. They mailed to inquiry/referrals a self-serving (not education-rendering) cluster of nonmotivating sales rhetoric — then they threw the lead away if the prospect didn't immediately buy. They never, ever solicited that person again. At first I was incredulous.
That feeling was quickly replaced by one of opportunism when I realized all I could do with a client like this. Here's the strategy I subsequently mounted for Investment Rarities:
First, I focused their overall corporate orientation toward logical and "obvious" thinking. I carefully explained to IRI that, if someone was interested enough to call up or write in for more information, they warranted a concerted follow-up effort.
Then I drafted entirely new educational material to send out to inquiries and referrals.
Next, I composed elaborately personal acknowledgment letters to accompany the educational
Next, I composed elaborately personal acknowledgment letters to accompany the educational