Badass Your Brand: The Impatient Entrepreneur's Guide to Turning Expertise into Profit by Silva Pia

Author:Silva, Pia [Silva, Pia]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Worstofall Design
Published: 2017-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

ANGLE 3: LEAD PRODUCT & SALES PROCESS

A sales process is a series of steps that turns leads into clients. Our approach to the sales process is different because it shortens the time from lead to sale, and eliminates the steps in between.

We’ve excluded all the free work that people usually do between meeting prospective clients and closing them and getting an initial payment. Instead, I take the first step of your process, productize it, and sell it for a relatively low price.

I call this building a lead product. It has the potential to completely transform the way you talk about your business, and how you sell. And it has many benefits.

First, a lead product makes it very clear to all interested buyers what the first step is to working with you. Instead of long, drawn-out conversations and time-consuming proposals (which you write for free), you prompt all potential clients to buy this lead product.

This saves tons of time. It turns the sales process (which I categorize as free work) into one short conversation. You get paid to develop a thoughtful proposal that also works to elevate your credibility in the mind of the consumer.

Second, lead products make you easy to talk about and share with colleagues, which creates an organic sales force. Prowess, a marketing consulting company that coaches fitness businesses, offers a Prowess Brand Boost™ as its lead product. The Brand Boost makes it easy for past clients to tell their fitness friends about Prowess because the Brand Boost is a tangible, valuable offering; it’s easier to suggest than just referring a great marketing company. Everyone who does a Brand Boost is primed to hire Prowess for the full package, but the Brand Boost keeps customers coming in the door and telling their friends.

Having a lead product is like educating your fans on something simple and interesting to say about you.

Third, lead products take the pressure off the conversation for both parties. Whenever money exchanges hands, each side has different expectations. The client expects to get value, and can let down their guard because they aren’t being sold to. The expert can focus on delivering value without the pressure of turning this free work into a paying client (and feeling like they wasted their time if the client doesn’t sign).

Fourth, lead products demonstrate that your time and expertise are valuable, even during the evaluation phase. Your proposal will be better than anyone else’s because you had paid time to work on it. And because the client paid for it, they will value the advice more highly than the free work they got from competitors. When you give your services away, you undermine your own value and credibility. People don’t value free things. A paying client sets itself up to listen and trust more—which sets you up for success.

Finally, those that buy this smaller lead product are buying into you. Once they’ve made that commitment psychologically, they are much more likely to hire you for the full project.

I know what you’re thinking: Sometimes people or companies need a proposal.

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