Around 25 years ago I started writing a series of seven different sales training newsletter that sold for $500 each.
On each invoice for my newsletter I made an offer of a valuable how to guide provided full payment was made in seven days.
I had four how to guides and clients could choose the one that they wanted to get as a free bonus in exchange for prompt payment.
One guide was on How to save an hour of time a day. Another one was on how to quickly improve the sales results of any sales team. And I had two others.
Some clients purchased more than one version of my newsletter. When that happened I just increased the number of valuable how to guides that they could get if they paid their invoice in full within seven days.
One client I spoke with was the sales manager for a well-known car dealership that had around 30 branches around the country.
This client ordered four versions of my sales training newsletter.
His invoice came to $2,000 and I offered him four valuable how to guides provided payment was made within 7 days.
I had a price of $50 on the front cover of each how to guide that I was giving away.
Six and a half days later I received a phone call from the accounts payable manager of the car dealership.
He told me that he had just seen the invoice and noticed that if it was paid within 7 days the business would get four valuable how to guides worth $200. He then asked me if it would be okay if they could send me a cheque by urgent courier that should reach me in about an hour.
I said that would be fine and the full payment turned up an hour later.
I found that with this offer of a valuable how to guide that 83 per cent of my invoices were paid in full within seven days.
So the how to guide was a great way to get people to take action and pay my invoices.
Example two: Prompt appointments
I had a client a while ago who sold an expensive training course to the managers of large hotels.
He needed to get the general manager of each hotel to agree to meet with him so he could explain his service to them.
We came up with a very simple strategy to do this. It involved first of all getting a one page magazine style article into the hands of each hotel general manager.
And in the article my client offered a valuable guide on nine ways to handle price shoppers and turn them into profitable new clients.
This guide was given at no charge in exchange for a meeting being booked within the next 10 days with the hotel general manager.
My client found that every time he made this offer of a free guide in his magazine style article 10 per cent of hotel managers would contact him and book an appointment.
This simple strategy produced over $167,000 of new sales in the first six weeks. And it continued to work well for the next four years.
If you want people to take action fast just offer them a valuable how to guide.
"I never worry about action, but only inaction." - Winston Churchill
Action Exercise:
Make sure you have a couple of valuable 'how to' guides on hand that you can use to encourage people to take action fast.
- Graham McGregor is a Marketing Advisor and helps businesses who offer an expensive service to quickly attract ideal new clients. You can download his brand new 106 page marketing guide 'The Expensive Service Marketing Solution' at no charge from www.TheExpensiveServiceMarketingSolution.com
