How To Sell Softly

How do you sell without actually selling upfront?

Podcast: Download (Duration: 3:02 — 2.9MB)

Highlights in this news:

00:37 – When to establish yourself as the expert
00:57 – Talk about the WHY and the WHAT
01:12 – Give away valuable tips and case studies
01:57 – The best Call to Action is this _______!

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Transcription:

James Schramko here and it’s time for a business tip. In this episode, I’m going to cover how you can pitch at a non-pitch event.

Alright, sometimes as experts or authors, we get asked to speak at an event and the promoter doesn’t want us to pitch our services. It’s not a “sales pitch” event and that’s okay, but you should always be selling something even if it is the listener of the audience coming and contacting you and finding out more about your stuff so that it could build a relationship that later leads to a sale. So here is what you should do when you structure your presentation:

When Should You Establish Yourself As An Expert?
Firstly, you will need to cover who you are and why people should talk to you and why you are the trusted authority in the industry. And that can be done not at the beginning of the presentation but a little bit further down the track. When you have a captive audience, it’s okay to save that up to a little bit later because people don’t really care about that. What they really need to know upfront is, with you getting their attention, talk about WHY they need to know what it is that you’re going to talk about. And then, cover WHAT you are talking about, so the WHY and then the WHAT.

Pitching Softly

Demonstrate Tangible Results Related To Your Service
Now when it comes to the HOW, if it’s a non-pitch event, certainly give away some valuable tips but only one or two and then the rest of them, you could insert case studies from your successful customers or from examples out there in society that illustrate what results you get for people or what results your type of service gets for other people even if it’s not your service. I’ll give you an example: If your service helps people with sign writing, then you could explain that a company like Coca Cola will use sign writing extensively as part of their marketing campaign. That clearly demonstrates how people are using your service or a service like yours.

State The Perfect Call To Action
And then there’s the call to action that’s covering the WHAT IFs. Now, people will still have questions. The best call to action is “Come and find me while you’re at this conference and I’d like to talk to you about your business”. You’ve just made it relevant to them and the call to action is to come and talk to you. That is a clear call to action that can lead to a relationship. That way, when people do come to you, that is the perfect marketing, it’s called “Pull marketing” where customers are coming to you asking you to help them with their business. What a match made in heaven!

So I hope this tip has helped you pitch at a non-pitch event, I’m James Schramko and be sure to leave your comments right near this video.

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