Tags |
|
|
Links |
|
|
Member You - Your Business is a Cereal Box: Attract, then Inform
Brazing is divided into two types by temperature. High temperature brazing is that done at 1800F or above, in a furnace. Low temperature brazing is done in a furnace from about 1200F up to 1800F Below 1200F is considered soldering.High temperature brazing is ticklish because of four things: the base materials that the product is made from, the nearness to the melting point of the base metal during brazing and the probability that the base metal may also require a heat treating process different than the brazing cycle to gain maximum strength, corrosion of the base metal by the brazing alloy during brazing, and a f
Be your own client
What do your clients look for? Try a little role playing: Pretend you are your own prospective client and objectively evaluate your communication material.
Ask yourself: Would I buy from myself? What would keep me interested? What am I looking for? What do I really want?
Learn from how
Thinking of entering the teaching profession? Maybe you’re even thinking of teaching a subject like mathematics. What a crazy thought! Why would you want to do such a thing? I mean, I can come up with at least a hundred other ways of frustrating the heck out of yourself. All joking aside, teaching has to be the most noble profession on earth, but one that should not be entered into on a wing and a prayer, nor after only perfunctory consideration. And if you are selfish, then teaching is definitely not for you.Why do I say what I do in the above paragraph? Well for one, teaching, if done right, is one of th
The lesson: Ingredient lists don’t sell cereal. Look at your business features as you would the nutritional information on a cereal box: people only look at it when they are already considering buying the box. It displays important information that needs to be communicated, but it does not answer the first questions in the client’s mind.
For service providers, marketing is a challenge: you know your service is useful and has value, but because you don’t have a physical product, the benefits may be harder to define. After all, your client will only experience what you do once they actually hire you, which they won’t do if the benefits of using your services are not convincing.
How will you, as a service professional, deal with this fact? You must communicate with your clients by being focused on their needs first.
Attract, then Inform
I notice that many of my clients put too much emphasis on what they do instead of emphasizing why their audience should choose them over the competition — or choose them at all.
Note these claims:
What’s wrong with these claims? Absolutely nothing, if they are true. In fact, these are features your clients should be aware of. They are part of what you are offering (the “what” of your business), but they are independent of your clients and their personal concerns.
Benefits are effective in attracting people because they speak to what they can gain personally. Once you have their attention, then you can enhance your selling proposition with features. Features can close a sale, but they will usually not be your client’s first point of entry.
Your benefits should:
I vs. You
In the features list above, notice how many times “I”, “we”, “our”, “my”, and “me” are used. People are naturally concerned with their own needs first. By presenting them with a list of reasons why you are so great, you are sending them the wrong message: that their needs are secondary to what you think they should know. Don’t make the mistake of turning your marketing into a giant r?sum? of your accomplishments. Use words like “you” and “your” more often.
Be your own client
What do your clients look for? Try a little role playing: Pretend you are your own prospective client and objectively evaluate your communication material.
Ask yourself: Would I buy from myself? What would keep me interested? What am I looking for? What do I really want?
Learn from how
Management is a skill, some have it inborn and some have to inculcate it by learning and taking courses. However, all of us have to learn business management, since business is a wide term with a lot of elements involved.Business management is something like the proverb, teach a man to fish and he will never go hungry in his lifetime. In the same way after you learn business management skills you can be sure that you will not be looking back, you will gain confidence to manage your business efficiently and effectively.You will then gain an insight into the effort and hard work you will require to put in you
How will you, as a service professional, deal with this fact? You must communicate with your clients by being focused on their needs first.
Attract, then Inform
I notice that many of my clients put too much emphasis on what they do instead of emphasizing why their audience should choose them over the competition — or choose them at all.
Note these claims:
What’s wrong with these claims? Absolutely nothing, if they are true. In fact, these are features your clients should be aware of. They are part of what you are offering (the “what” of your business), but they are independent of your clients and their personal concerns.
Benefits are effective in attracting people because they speak to what they can gain personally. Once you have their attention, then you can enhance your selling proposition with features. Features can close a sale, but they will usually not be your client’s first point of entry.
Your benefits should:
I vs. You
In the features list above, notice how many times “I”, “we”, “our”, “my”, and “me” are used. People are naturally concerned with their own needs first. By presenting them with a list of reasons why you are so great, you are sending them the wrong message: that their needs are secondary to what you think they should know. Don’t make the mistake of turning your marketing into a giant r?sum? of your accomplishments. Use words like “you” and “your” more often.
Be your own client
What do your clients look for? Try a little role playing: Pretend you are your own prospective client and objectively evaluate your communication material.
Ask yourself: Would I buy from myself? What would keep me interested? What am I looking for? What do I really want?
Learn from how
All of us solve problems in our daily and professional lives. Although we perceive some of them to be ‘big’ problems, most are not.What if you had the following problem to solve: You are asked to “fix” an IT (information technology) problem in your $250 million company. It seems all of your order processing and product distribution systems are unable to cope with your business volume and you expect to triple your volume in the next two years. This will require you to completely redesign a new system, somehow transition out of the old one, train everyone nationwide on the new system as you implement it, and coordin
What’s wrong with these claims? Absolutely nothing, if they are true. In fact, these are features your clients should be aware of. They are part of what you are offering (the “what” of your business), but they are independent of your clients and their personal concerns.
Benefits are effective in attracting people because they speak to what they can gain personally. Once you have their attention, then you can enhance your selling proposition with features. Features can close a sale, but they will usually not be your client’s first point of entry.
Your benefits should:
I vs. You
In the features list above, notice how many times “I”, “we”, “our”, “my”, and “me” are used. People are naturally concerned with their own needs first. By presenting them with a list of reasons why you are so great, you are sending them the wrong message: that their needs are secondary to what you think they should know. Don’t make the mistake of turning your marketing into a giant r?sum? of your accomplishments. Use words like “you” and “your” more often.
Be your own client
What do your clients look for? Try a little role playing: Pretend you are your own prospective client and objectively evaluate your communication material.
Ask yourself: Would I buy from myself? What would keep me interested? What am I looking for? What do I really want?
Learn from how
A magistrate in the home country of Breaking News, Trinidad and Tobago, ordered an investigation into how a picture of one of the accused in the Sean Luke murder case got on the Internet. The boy is 13 years old and his picture is supposed to be protected because he is a minor. Ever since she made this comment, one of the top search phrases for and from Trinidad was "Sean Luke's killer face."If you don't have one already, this court order only highlights the need to get your website as soon as possible because from a business perspective, it shows the true advertising power of the World Wide Web.Here's what
Benefits are effective in attracting people because they speak to what they can gain personally. Once you have their attention, then you can enhance your selling proposition with features. Features can close a sale, but they will usually not be your client’s first point of entry.
Your benefits should:
I vs. You
In the features list above, notice how many times “I”, “we”, “our”, “my”, and “me” are used. People are naturally concerned with their own needs first. By presenting them with a list of reasons why you are so great, you are sending them the wrong message: that their needs are secondary to what you think they should know. Don’t make the mistake of turning your marketing into a giant r?sum? of your accomplishments. Use words like “you” and “your” more often.
Be your own client
What do your clients look for? Try a little role playing: Pretend you are your own prospective client and objectively evaluate your communication material.
Ask yourself: Would I buy from myself? What would keep me interested? What am I looking for? What do I really want?
Learn from how
This week is National Customer Service Week. As we celebrate the people who pay our bills, I want to give a few low-cost and no-cost ideas to WOW Customers so that they come back again and again and tell everyone they know. 1. Have a live person answer the phone – with no wait time. 2. Southwest Airlines sends out birthday cards to their most valued customers. Consider sending your best customers birthday cards. 3. Myra Golden Seminars sends all meeting planners a box of Death by Chocolate cookies to thank them for their business. 4. Be Gumby. The
Be your own client
What do your clients look for? Try a little role playing: Pretend you are your own prospective client and objectively evaluate your communication material.
Ask yourself: Would I buy from myself? What would keep me interested? What am I looking for? What do I really want?
Learn from how you search the web: If you were looking for administrative help, would you be searching Google for “15 years of experience”? Probably not. You would be more likely to search for terms like “database entry” or “transcription services”. If that’s what you look for, chances are most of your clients will do the same. Give them what they want and organize your information accordingly.
As you create any communication material, answer these questions:
The answer may be different for each target market, so it is important to know who your prospective clients are before asking yourself these questions.
Being completely objective about your own business is not easy; you’ve worked hard to build it and you know it inside out. Defining your benefits from an outside perspective can enable you to better understand how other people view your business. Getting a view of your own “big picture” is something a professional business coach can help you achieve.
Whether you do it alone or get outside help, it never hurts to think about what you have to offer to potential clients. So, next time you’re at the grocery store, stop by the cereal aisle and ask yourself: “What are MY 5 essential nutrients?”
Copyright. Cristina Favreau. All rights reserved.
HTTP = HTML link (for blogs, profiles,phorums):
<a href="http://www.memberyou.net/article/27919/memberyou-Your-Business-is-a-Cereal-Box-Attract-then-Inform.html">Your Business is a Cereal Box: Attract, then Inform</a>
BB link (for phorums):
[url=http://www.memberyou.net/article/27919/memberyou-Your-Business-is-a-Cereal-Box-Attract-then-Inform.html]Your Business is a Cereal Box: Attract, then Inform[/url]
Related Articles:
The Most Important Management Skill
Franchising the World will Never Work Say Critics
Measuring TQM Success - How to Use Malcolm Baldrige Assessment to Do It
Bookmark it:
|