So when I’m talking about offers, did you realize that making an offer does not have to involve discounts or selling stuff or giving stuff away for free?
A lot of people are worried about giving discounts purely because they think that sets precedence. “Oh no, we don’t discount our products, we are not like that. That’s for supermarkets and so on.”
But, people don’t buy products generally, they buy offers. Now what that means is that quite often people are browsing, they don’t generally go out determined to buy things; and if they do, they go direct to the place they want to buy it from and they buy it.
So if they come direct to you with an intention to buy, no problem, sorted, job done, you don’t have to worry about anything, they were already going to buy.
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But what about the other seven billion? What about everyone else? So if you are Wal-Mart or Tesco’s, people come in, do their shopping, they’re coming in to buy stuff.
Now they’re going to still have offers to tempt people to buy things they weren’t planning on buying, we all know how that works. Yes, we’ve all got cupboards and bins full of the stuff.
But generally for the rest of us, people are looking for information, they want to know a bit more, they are researching.
They may want to look up the price of something and it may include your product, they may not be even looking for information, you may send an e-mail and they haven’t actually considered the fact that they may need something that you have for sale.
It’s not on their mind.
So, in that case, they can be tempted with an offer and an offer can be anything, something that just sparks that little “Oooohhh” in their mind that makes them think “Yeah, that’s the point.
I need one of those.” Or “Well, I didn’t really need it right now, but with that, I ought to.”
What Can An Offer Be?
So what can an offer be? An offer can get up sell of something. So if you are selling a product say for anyone who places a purchase during this week and the next seven days, and the next forty eight hours, will also get a free something or other, just an up sell.
So for example, we sell fire safety, fire extinguishers. For the next few days, you could, if you buy one, you will get a free identification sign with it which could be worth an extra £4 or something; or you get a free information book that we normally sell for £10, with every order; or you will get free delivery.
So you can give away free things, but if you get it right, that extra bit that you give away is to enhance the sale and it doesn’t have to cost you anything.
So quite often the extras, if you look at somewhere like on an online store if you are buying a camera, when you look around for say a Canon camera, you will find some stores will do a half price bag with it, or some kind of lens cover or something extra, just to tempt you to buy that thing.
So you don’t give an offer on the product, they’re not discounting the actual product or the service, they are giving extra value. Did you get that? It’s the extra value.
Now I know quite a few people who make their income by advertising products and products for affiliate commission, quite often not their own products, but advertising via certain mediums online, they put that adds, people come through and they get a commission if you buy.
Now they are experts at this but if you speak to them, they won’t say “Oh, what are you selling?”, they would just simply say “What’s your offer?”
And your offer, so it’s an offer because they know people don’t buy things, people buy opportunities and offers.
You Do Not Have To Discount Your Product
But just get it out of your head that you have to discount your own product. Try and build added value. If you have a service, try create three levels of service, you have all seen credit cards where there is a credit card, there is a gold credit card, there is a platinum credit card.
Or, with American Express a good example, they even have the black centurion credit card. And people pay, is it two and a half thousand dollars a year or pounds a year to be a member of and people want that.
So there are certain parts of the world of your customer base that will pay extra for exclusivity or for extra value.
They’re not going to just pay higher money just to pay higher money and make you more wealthy, they are going to perceive the added value that they can afford and they want. So try and create something other than just a product or just a something.
When you contact somebody and you hope to pique their interest, and by the way, don’t make offers all the time, it gets a bit boring and people get blinded to them, but just pique their interest. That’s what I wanted to have you think about today.
Does that make sense? By the way, if anyone has any comments on something like this or something I discussed, you can always go to the website at marektingforowners.com and find the contact form and send me a message, or you can simply e-mail me at jon@marketingforowners.com.
I actually read and answer every single e-mail that come from all over the world and I love to hear from you.
Drive Time Podcast
Now, it’s Thursday, it is a drive time podcast and today, I normally say if you set up your marketing you won’t need to sell.
However, a lot of people still need to know things about selling, so today I am recommending The Advanced Selling podcast.
Now again if you go to iTunes or just Google the advanced selling podcast, I think their website is at advancedsellingpodcast.com.
But it’s two guys, it’s Bill Caskey and Brian Neil. Now they are business-to-business sales trainers, they have been training sales people for like twenty years and they just talk about their strategies, framework for selling processes, their tips, their tricks and everything they use, it’s fascinating stuff and there is something to learn.
I was just talking to a friend yesterday about this is that in retail stores and everything, everyone puts people in front of a customer to take orders and things, no one ever trains them to sell, no one ever thinks it’s necessary. But that is where the transaction takes place, imagine if you could improve it.
So try listening to that, The Advanced Selling podcast. You will enjoy it, guaranteed. I will be back tomorrow and I’ve got a great weekend challenge. This one will help get you more sales. See you then.
