I'm old enough to remember how people used to look for products and services...
They'd check out the print ads and yellow pages then call the company requesting brochures on what products they were interested in.
Now, at that point, every good salesperson should have said something like...
“ All our customers are different, you're unique sir, that's why sending you loads of brochures may just lead to more confusion. What I'll do is I'll bring all the brochures along with me and we can go through your exact requirements and see how your specific needs can be met. How does that sound ?.Is Tuesday Morning or Wednesday afternoon better for you?”
If that succeeded, and you were granted a visit, you were in with a good chance of a building rapport with the prospect and converting them into a customer.
But it's all different now..
A prospect searches on the web, checks out all the sales pages, maybe downloads a few brochures and then, and only then, do they think about making contact. The issue here is that the prospect now has all the information they need...or at least they think they have. In reality there's a good chance that all they have is a pile of sales literature.
And of course if they think they know what they want, what is the only question they really want answering, yep it's...
How much does it cost?
Then you're in a price war, the last thing anyone in sales really wants.
But free reports stop that happening by getting to the prospect when they are first looking for a solution. BEFORE they really fully understand what will meet their needs or solve a problem they have
As long as the report is finely targetted to the intended audience then it will both inform and educate the readers. A well written, high quality, report sets you apart form the competition by elevating you to a position of authority and helps you become a trusted advisor.
What it also does is allow you to begun ethically influencing the prospect by showing and demonstrating where you are unique. Then you explain and educate them as to why the unique element of what you do is so beneficial to them.
Of course there's a fine line between salesy and informational but as long as you don't cross that line and make the report as educational as possible you should be OK.
This reminds me of my days in IT sales when there was a publication regularly produced called The European Journal. Essentially it was a detailed list of high value tenders produced by councils, and in the case of IT the value of the tender could often run to six or seven figures.
Now when these publications arrived the sales office resembled feeding time at the zoo...all the sales guys would fervently search the journal in the hope of finding a council or government body on their patch who had asked for companies to provide a solution to a big IT project.
Now here's the thing...
In all the years I saw these documents I can count on one finger the times someone won business directly from these documents.
That's because most of the tenders were written with the help of existing suppliers. After all, you couldn't expect council employees to keep abreast of all the developments in the ever changing and complex world of IT, so they sought advice form a number of suppliers, more often than not the incumbent. These suppliers were able to influence the council so that the tenders were often written around a specific companies offering.
If you weren't one of those influencers then forget it, IT suppliers and eager sales people trying to get in “blind” as it were stood no chance.
Now you may not be vying for high ticket complex IT solution but the lesson still applies
Use free reports to get in first, inform, educate and influence and you dramatically increase your chance of getting the business.
