Page 293 - Duct Tape Marketing

277Chapter 17: Making the Sale

ߜ After achieving awareness, generate interest in your offering. Present
your product as the answer to a need or desire and prompt the prospect
to request more information, perhaps by watching a demonstration, vis-
iting a Web site, or requesting a brochure or other information.

ߜ After gaining your prospect’s interest, convey the value your offer
represents. Set face-to-face meetings, share product samples, offer pro-
posals, or take other steps to let the prospect see how your offering is
better and more valuable than other alternatives. (Remember that best
value doesn’t mean lowest price. Chapter 3 describes the value formula
that customers apply when making buying decisions.)

ߜ After establishing value, close the sale. Present your offer, address
questions, help the customer reach a satisfying decision, and make the
buying transaction an easy, enjoyable process.

Don’t jump the gun. Plan each marketing communication to move prospects
to the next step they will be willing to take on the buying decision path.

A brand-new preschool wants to enroll 30 toddlers. With no existing aware-
ness or reputation, the preschool owners would be expecting parents to
leapfrog over the decision process if they ran ads saying, Introducing our
brand-new preschool. Call to register children between 2 and 5 years old.

They would be more apt to succeed if they preceded the enrollment request
with a program that builds awareness, interest, and trust. They might begin
with a message saying: Our brand-new preschool and playground is ready to
serve 30 lucky 2- to 5-year-olds. Please join us Thursday afternoon for an open
house and tour, or call any time for an appointment.

The first approach calls for the order before the prospect is ready for the
question. The second approach seeks to build rapport. Which would you
respond to more comfortably?

Prospect conversion guidelines

The number of people you reach with your marketing program really doesn’t
matter. What’s important is how many qualified prospects you reach and how
you move those prospects through the steps that turn them into customers.

Think about the preschool mentioned in the preceding section. Say that the
owners run an ad in a newspaper delivered to 20,000 homes in the preschool’s
market area. If 5 percent of those homes have 2- to 5-year-olds in need of day
care, the ad will reach 1,000 prospects. If half of those prospects are qualified
prospects, in other words if half of the newspaper’s readers with children that
age want and can afford preschool offerings, then the ad will reach 500 target
market homes.