I came across this neat summary of a great quote by Perry Marshall the other day … a quote is as good as a post, so here is one of the greatest pieces of advice about marketing your business that I have ever come across:
“Nobody who bought a drill actually wanted a drill. They wanted a hole. Therefore, if you want to sell drills, you should advertise information about making holes – NOT information about drills!” – Perry Marshall
What that means is that people do not care about your opportunity, what they care about is a solution to their problems.
So, what you need to do instead of pitching your [whatever it is that you sell] to your prospects, sell them inexpensive or free information on how to solve their problems, on how to drill that “hole.”
If you can show them how to make that hole, your prospects will come to the conclusion that they need a drill from you because you gave them free knowledge or inexpensive information on how to accomplish their goal, and therefore earning their trust in you.
Put simply: education sells!
In fact, this is the way to sell ANY client ANYTHING … it’s what I did to make my businesses a success. If there is anything that neatly encapsulates the reason for my business successes, this is it. Really.
This is so true that I train with my staff weekly on this very point when it comes to patient education in my practice.
Instead of pushing the actual ‘care’ that we provide, or how we ‘deliver’ it, we work to find out what a patient wants, plain and simple, even if it isn’t what we want for them. We then make it a point to only talk about those ‘things’ that the patient wants or looks forward to on a regular basis.
Most patients don’t come into our clinic wanting ‘optimal health’ or ‘optimal fitness’, etc..(which is what we want them to want/have), most people simply just don’t want to have symptoms or pain only, which is not the same thing as pursuing optimal health. However, I have to constantly bite my lip with patient education, and just focus on discussions that pertain to what they want, and this is always what produces me a busy and successful practice.
When it comes to drills, I am afraid I want the drill. And it cant be any drill – it has to have all the features – the more features the better. The fact that I “could” find things to put holes in around our home is just the selling point I use with my wife 😉
@ Scott – we need to explore this concept further, together. Somewhere in here is your competitive advantage …
@ C – the lies we tell … 😛
Hmmm, you could phrase the same conclusion with a different introduction:
“They don’t want a wife…”
🙂
Seriously, great post. People miss the fact that the forest consist of a bunch of trees.
-Mike