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My industrial safety business, DustSafetyScience, launched an online conference for next year. This multi-day digital conference is going to take place from February 24th to 28th, 2020. We announced it about a month ago and have already started registering people.
Consequently, I’ve been thinking a lot about selling. The big focus for the last couple of months is on direct sales.
We haven’t been doing advertising or marketing sequences. We’ve been emailing people directly and asking them if they want to be involved in the conference.
There are two big reasons why we’re doing focusing on direct sales first, before moving into online marketing:
- To test tactics instead of putting potential attendees into a big online sequence from the very start.
- To identify successes that can be used in online marketing strategies.
Now, instead of saying, “Come to this amazing event! It’s going to be great!” I can say, “Come to this event- we have 60 speakers lined up and 50 general participants have already registered. Don’t miss out!” It’s a more compelling offer.
I truly believe that these low-tech strategies are great for getting your business going. A lot of people get hung up on trying to create complicated marketing sequences and funnels. If you have something good that you want to put into the world, there are low-tech ways to do it, and they work.
Why Selling Is An Important Skill
Selling permeates everything we do, from talking with potential clients and selling your products and services to teaching people and framing your content. When you write blog posts and create podcasts, selling yourself is critical to connecting with your audience. If you don’t have the correct message, you’re going to have a hard time converting those people into paying customers.
If you knew with 100% certainty that you would get $100 as soon as you press ‘pay,’ you’d probably pay $75 for that because you know what the value is. The same principle applies to marketing: if people aren’t buying, it’s because you haven’t convinced them of the value. It all comes down to the skill of framing your message and its benefits. It’s also about finding the right clients and targeting the right people.
Three Strategies For Getting Results
There are three strategies you can use to get results. They are:
- What can you do?
- If not you, then who?
- Go low for high conversions.
Let’s review each one in detail, along with some examples.
What can you do?
After my son was born, I let my gym membership lapse. A couple of weeks ago, I went in and tried to renew it, only to learn that I had to pay a $150 reactivation fee in addition to bi-monthly recurring payments of $37.
I told the manager that they should be able to waive that front fee if they want to retain members, but he said that he didn’t have the ability to do that. I responded by saying, “Well, what can you do?” Then I was silent.
The manager scratched his head and finally said, “I have the ability to waive your bi-monthly recurring fees for a period of time.”
I was silent again. Then he said, “Yeah, we could do that, and that would cover your upfront fee.”
I said, “That’s an excellent solution.” Then I was silent again, and he responded with, “How many cycles do you think I should delete?”
I said, “Oh, well. I think six should do.”
If you do the math, it comes out to around $190. I paid $150 upfront, and he waived the fee for the first six bi-monthly cycles. We went from this position of “I can’t help you at all” to “What can you do?” and giving me more back than I was asking for.
The main point of this strategy is to ask questions and be silent. Let the gears turn in their head and they will come up with an answer that benefits you.
If not you, then who?
In organizing presenters for the Digital Dust Safety Conference, everyone wants to present on high-profile topics. Of course, one of the companies I assigned an introduction-type speech to said, “No, I want to present on explosion protection.”
After some discussion on what an introduction to their type of system entailed, I asked, “Do you know anyone else I should reach out to, who could explain that whole process at the start?”
This is essentially the “If not you, then who?” question. “Do you know anyone else who could explain this process at our conference in front of a thousand registrants?”
He thought about it and said, “Well, we should do that. We should present on it.”
By the end of our conversation, there was no way he could say no. He’d already visualized himself there, presenting to thousands of registrants. That’s a key marketing message: if you can make your potential clients see themselves in your solution, you’re far ahead of the game.
Go low for high conversions
There are low-tech ways that I use to get high conversions.
- Direct email campaigns: Direct emails to people who know you’re the authority in the space is a way higher conversion process than online funnels.
- Calling people: This one can be scary because we’re not used to using the phone anymore, if a picture’s worth a thousand words, a phone call is worth a thousand emails. You can ask them to take action while you have them on the line.
- A call-to-action on your business cards: In my case, my cards have a link to the DustSafetyScience conference on the back. I’ve gotten high returns for other events: I give out maybe 50 business cards and we get 10 people signing up. 20% is great when you consider that business cards average 30 cents each.
If you try these three selling strategies, I’d love to know how they worked for you. Tag me @GradBlogger on Instagram, or @GradBlogger on Twitter. You can also send me an email directly at Chris@GradBlogger.com.
I love sharing my journey as an academic building an online business and making a big change in the world and I look forward to seeing what big change you’re going to put in the world with your own business.
