Hey, Paul here, I just wanted to put a different spin on why the product you sell doesn’t really matter.
We’ve probably all heard the phrase, “It’s not what you sell, it’s how you sell it,” before, and you’ve heard a few reasons of why it makes sense. There is plenty of empirical proof that shows this concept is in fact the case. People have been buying sub par products for decades just because of how they are sold vs. the actual value that’s brought to the consumer.
I want to talk about a strategy I’ve employed for years (that I did NOT come up with on my own but knew because of my Train the Trainer experience) that may be able to help you sell your product just that much easier. (Oh, and by the way, I highly recommend having a decent product that brings value to peoples lives, it helps to have happy customers after the fact as well.)
But before we go forward, I want to warn you that this is all information that is covered in my Train the Trainer course which I offer to current students only. If you want to find out how you become a student and get access to TTT, then I’d start reading the rest of this post!
Okay, so what’s the strategy?
For the last 10 years as a public speaker I’ve used and improved upon the speaking template that I was trained during my peak potentials membership.
The most Important part of that whole template is a 10-minute section that comes right after the initial two questions and introduction. (Which I may talk about in the future, we’ll see…)
These 10 minutes are the most important part of any speaking engagement, it decides whether you will leave the room with cash or a bruised ego. Getting it right is critical.
This section is called ETR. Earn the Right.
Say you have an audience of a few hundred people, they’ve never met you, seen you, heard of you before. Your goal is to turn 30% of that audience into a paying customer for whatever product your pushing that day.
What 99% of speakers do is they introduce this amazing fantastic product, show all of it’s cool features, point out all the amazing ways it can save you time, money, and energy, etc…
Finally, it comes time to send people to the back of the room, but typically what happens? It’s the same old story, one or two people get out of their chairs, haggle with the people at the back, one of them buys, and you spend the rest of the event giving out offers on top of the original deal just to break even on your booth expense. (Trust me, I’ve been there too).
What happened? The pitch was great, the product is amazing, the demo went perfectly…
Well, did you have the RIGHT to sell to them your product? What right did you have to interrupt their day and introduce to them some product that could help them or could not, they don’t really know.
People do not like being pitched to, it’s the way it is and always will be. UNLESS you receive permission to pitch to them.
So, that 10-minute ETR section I mentioned, what’s in it? Well this is a concept that I go into great detail in my Train the Trainer course, but I’ll go into it briefly here as it is only part of the overall equation and we have lots more to get through.
Essentially, the ETR section is composed of doing the following things in order when speaking to an audience (live, virtual, or print).
- Ask permission to talk a bit about yourself
- Tell the audience a TRUE story about a client case, your own story, or share a tale people can directly relate to that is connected to the product you’re about to introduce.
- Ask the audience if they are willing to move on with the presentation, (receive the pitch)
1. Why ask permission? That prepares the audience for the story and pitch your about to tell them. They have agreed to hear you out, which means that they will listen more intently rather than tune out because they didn’t consent to being spoken too.
2. Why tell a story? Well let’s talk about this for a moment, as it easily the most important part of components.
9/10 times the story you should tell is your own. The story of how you ended up in your current position, whether it be sales rep, CEO, founder is always a great one if your product happens to be what put you in your current position in the first place.
My ETR section is about my first digital marketing job (hired gun) with a guy named Terry Malloy. If you ever see me speak it’s likely you’ll hear this one, but essentially the job ended in a disaster.
I was asked to build a store which was designed to get people to buy a membership to recieve a CD (it was the early 2000’s) of the month.
I feel it important to mention that I got the gig because I was a bit of a techie and had been responsible for my own site and publishing and otherwise because I couldn’t afford to get anyone else to do it. Jazz musician things… but back to the story.
As I was building the site, I kept asking Terry how he planned on getting traffic to the store, to which he always replied, “don’t worry about, people will come.” The #1 misconception of the internet is the belief that if you build it people will come. You can imagine how that turned out…
We launched, and in 6 weeks the company made 2 sales… Both with last name Malloy.
Of course I got blamed for the lack of traffic (and hence sales) despite my concerns which I raised to Terry earlier. So in an attempt to salvage the project (because I hadn’t gotten paid yet) I went out and invested in a bunch digital marketing training from the fore fathers of the “internet marketing” era, people like Dan Kennedy and the like.
Unfortunately by the time I knew enough to make the project a success, it went bust and I never saw my pay check. But all was not lost because I still had all that knowledge.
With that knowledge, I decided I’d like to help others learn what I’d learnt in Canada. I then invested in speaking training with the big names like Peak Potentials. I started going to trade shows and conferences, usually taking breakout rooms and keynotes when I could to spread simple digital marketing strategies that by that point had made me a fair bit of cash. As I became a bigger name in Canada, I started filling larger and larger rooms, eventually able to host my own conference TWICE called Ultimate Wealth Weekend. We even brought in David Chilton and Brian Tracy. Today Training Business Pros is not only just a training company, but an established Digital Marketing Agency helping Canada’s established businesses break through their growth barriers using online practices.
(If you just noticed how I’ve just now earned the right to continue talking to you in this post, you should now realize the power of this concept).
I told you how I went out into the world to learn the digital marketing practices from the best digital marketing gurus, which I help others learn, which adds authority and trust to my training and services.
I should say now, this template is not only for selling on stage, but it applies to any form of “First Contact” with a cold audience.
That goes for organic website traffic, booth foot traffic if you do trade shows, live audiences, video sales letters, blog posts (see what I did there), webinars, really any place where you first introduce yourself you must earn the right to sell.
Of course, if you don’t have a personal story such as the one I just shared with you, you need a different kind of ETR. Perhaps the story of a client, colleague, related story of any kind. Just keep in mind it must be a TRUE story, not fiction, not based on a true story, THE true story itself.
Now, is it okay if tell you a bit about a course I offer that can help you construct your ETR section? When I introduced this section into all my speaking programs I saw up-sell and closing rates go up form 3-4% to 30-40%.
Interested? Great.
I offer a course called Fast Track MORE Sales. It’s a one-day training where you learn all the above in great depth. Plus…
- Advanced NLP techniques
- The full speaking template to dramatically increase back of room sales (also applicable to all offline sales as well)
- Up close and personal 1 on 1 time with myself
- And don’t forget coffee, lots, and lots of it!
Unfortunately, you are likely unqualified to register for this course right now, as I only offer this course to people who are already students. The pre-requisite course for Fast Track MORE Sales is called the Fast Track MY Sales which you can learn all about here.
In brief, Fast Track My Sales provides a massive overview of all the digital marketing strategies you should be implementing to allow you to dramatically grow your business, plus a few strategies you can take home and implement immediately to see quicker results.
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