Universal Business Principle #1: Prospects Do NOT Want to Be Sold
Tue, Aug 5, 2014
Agents who attend our SuperConferences not only change their perspective – they change the way they do business, their success rate, and ultimately their lives – and we need three days to pack in all that growth.This month, I’m going to share four of the 8 Universal and Irrefutable Business Principles, to give you a taste of the many, many lessons we’ll be teaching at our upcoming Super Conferences. And it’s important to note -- I’m not just giving you teasers, but sharing the lessons in detail. How can I just give away these insights, information and techniques that took me years to perfect? Simple: because I have so much more to share. So let’s get started.
Universal Business Principle #1: Prospects Do NOT Want to Be Sold
Prospects absolutely will NOT hear what you’re saying unless you tell them what they want to know. Fishing makes an excellent analogy to the marketing process. When you go fishing, your objective is to end up with a lot of fish in your boat at the end of the day. There are many ways you can try to catch fish (or attract prospects), but there is one strategy that is light-years more effective than the others.Hand-Fishing: Production Focus
Production focus is when you think about what you’re producing to sell rather than on what customers want to buy. In real estate, this means focusing on your listings first, and then cold-calling and door-knocking until you find someone who wants them – which is like standing in the water and trying to snatch fish out with your bare hands.
For the last 120 years, agents have had the intention to sell, sell, sell. The problem with this system is that there's no residual, no customer loyalty, because the focus lies squarely on the product and not on the customer. With a production focus, when you stop banging on doors, the doors stop opening. For this reason, fishing with your bare hands is highly ineffective.
Pole Fishing: Image Advertising
So you get the bright idea to try fishing with a pole. All you have to do is throw out your line and put on an expensive, flashy lure and the fish will bite. Right? This is what most agents think when they decide to abandon cold calling and try marketing.
And so, every year real estate agents spend millions of dollars on colorful, beautiful and expensive advertisements. This is called image or institutional advertising. It may seem like a great idea, because everyone else is doing it, but the truth is that image ads don’t make the phone ring. Why? Because they’re all about you and not about the benefits for your prospect.
Trying to attract customers with flashy ads is like fishing in a sea full of tuna with the fanciest trout lures money can buy. The lures might look great, but if they don’t mean anything to the tuna, they’re going to swim straight past them.
Evaluating Your Lure
Most agents think the purpose of marketing is to promote themselves, but this isn’t true. The purpose of your marketing is to ATTRACT prospects. People don't want to be sold, they want to be helped. And you’ve got to use the right lure in order to help them.
Let me give you an example. Say you’re in the market for a new car. You skip right by the bright banner on the top of the ad that says “Greatest Car Dealership in Town -- We Care About Your Business” and focus on the ad for the 2000 Model X for X dollars a month. Why don’t you notice the “Greatest Car Dealership” banner? Because it’s a sales pitch and you’ve heard that all before. The second ad is information and helps you move closer to finding the car you want.
To select the right lure, you have to understand what your fish want to eat. My marketing is highly effective because I make it my business to understand what my prospects want. I know how to craft marketing that compels my prospects to bite, and I’m going to show you how to do the same.
While all good marketing starts from the same premise (offering prospects an easy way to get something they want), there are many different proven methods that I’ll share with you. Much of the marketing you’ll learn to do won’t even mention your name (except in the mice type). But all of it will ultimately accomplish the same goal -- to help you wind up with a steady stream of qualified and motivated prospects who are eager to use your services to buy or sell a home.
The Ultimate Bait
The kind of marketing that attracts your ideal prospects is called emotional direct response marketing. With this method, you offer people what they are dying to know, and then they call you to get it. Your prospect is motivated (not manipulated) into action on their own volition.
To start finding out what your prospects truly want, ask yourself: what motivates the prospects you hope to work with? Do they want a quick sale or top dollar? Are they after best value or most attentive service? Rather than assuming or guessing you know the answers, have a conversation with your prospect to understand the true nature of their needs.
Once you know what they want, you can build your strategy around marketing that directly addresses your prospects’ problems. This is the right bait, the way to attract their attention and motivate them to bite. Once you understand this, it’s as easy as sticking an earthworm on a fishing hook!
_______________________________________________________________________
JOIN MY FREE WEEKLY TRAINING PROGRAM HERE Do you want to test drive my ideas and systems absolutely free? This free introduction to Craig Proctor Systems includes live weekly webinars and training videos, a free 30 minute business consultation, a monthly newsletter, and free tickets to half day training events around the country. If you were to purchase these tools separately, they would cost you $4,789, but you get them absolutely free, and with these free training tools, you will learn:
- Reverse Prospecting – a highly effective lead generation system that gets qualified prospects to hunt you down rather than the other way around
- More effective Lead Conversion
- Prospect Presentation systems that will change the way you do business