As I touched on in the last point, solid presales efforts amount to unique and compelling value propositions. Those propositions can only do so much if they're not conveyed convincingly. That's why your presales team should be able to put together presentations that reconcile engagement with assistance and practicality. At least a few people within a presales operations team are expected to have detailed product knowledge about the solution they're supporting and a thorough understanding of its applications.
That often makes them excellent resources for helping prepare requests for proposals RFPs and proposals. These processes generally require extensive technical insight with a personalized edge — presales teams can assist with both of those aspects. Any sales team has to understand where its company stands, relative to its competition.
Your value proposition can only be so compelling if it's not distinct from others within your space. That's why your presales team can often be tasked with researching your competition's product, pricing structure, sales figures, and customer base. It's often on your presales operations to provide your salespeople with a more comprehensive understanding of who they're selling to. Thorough customer analysis is generally the best way to get there. That could mean sending out surveys to customers, personally reaching out to them for some perspective on their needs and interests, poring through customer data to identify demographic or professional trends, or taking any other actions that will ultimately give you a better understanding of who you're targeting.
This point is a natural extension of the one above. Once your presales team has gathered an appropriate amount of baseline information about your customers, it can put that insight into motion by creating detailed buyer personas. You might be selling to multiple audiences who can be identified by trends in your customer data — trends that can inform the creation of archetypes of target buyers.
Those archetypes, known as buyer personas, can then help sales teams shape their sales strategies, messaging, and broader process. Once leads have been acquired through marketing, the presales operations team can qualify leads to determine if they are a good fit. At this stage in the process, the presales team can determine what the lead is looking for, if the product or service their company is offering is a good fit, when the lead is looking to buy, and if they have the budget and authority to make the purchase.
Once this has been determined, they can move to the next stage of the process. At this stage, the presales team is preparing the prospect for their upcoming conversations with the closing sales rep.
Once the proposal has been delivered, the closing sales rep enters the process to close out the deal. After the proposal has been delivered, the closing sales rep can prepare to move the process forward. Spending months creating a product that no one has confirmed they actually want or need only to launch it and then… ::crickets And in the process, money, energy, and time are wasted along the way.
This is especially important for business owners and marketers like you because time is one of your most precious assets, right? However, I get that many people you? It can be something as simple as sending some questions to your existing email list or asking people:. You: Hey you! Customer: Si? You: Do you want this amazing thing [Insert here your product or service]?
Customer: Hm… Si! You: Will it make your life better? Will you pay me for it? Customer: Hm… Absolutamente! You: Sweeeet! Entrepreneurship is both a mindset and a lifestyle. It naturally consumes you and your time.
But the thrill and fulfillment involved… it can be downright addictive. In fact, there are now Building a successful business is a massive responsibility filled with lots of successes and painful lessons along the way.
And if you want to succeed, you should pre-sell because you value yourself, your health, your friends, your family, your sanity, and your customers. And when should you do it? Simple: once you have a solid idea of a potential product or service backed-up by some research. See, those customers who buy will have more skin in the game by making a commitment with your product or service. They definitely want the value your product or service can provide.
In fact, U. This is why some of the products featured in Shark Tank make some sales but are pretty mediocre in terms of real value and end up failing. They called themselves the Netflix of toys. People would be able to rent toys each month because you know, kids get bored of playing with the same toys all the time.
And this happened because it was a great business idea but poorly executed according to Forbes. I remember talking to a former alumnus of my college. It was Jay Walker, founder of the multibillion-dollar publicly-traded company, Priceline. I told him about BlueSkyLocal. I explained to him it was a software that sent out text message coupons for restaurants on slow sales days like when it was raining or on a Tuesday.
Me: What do you mean? Just go around, show people what it will do, and get like a hundred businesses signed up. Have them pay you something for it. THEN go build it. The real reason why people would sign up was because I already had personal relationships with them. And also because I had helped them make money from a previous business I ran on campus. There are three types of pre-sell. When do you use each type? And where do you use them?
And how does each type work in tandem to create that excitement around a product or service launch? Pre-sell is pre-sell. It's not restricted in terms of size. The concepts apply to a single person, just as it would apply to an audience of 10, However, as you already know, the larger the audience, the greater the chance that your product or service will result in the sales that you're expecting.
It's not that an audience of one person won't result in the sale. It's just that one person may not be in a position to buy at exactly the time you're selling. Pre-sell is not a magic trick. It's a method to create anticipation which ends up in a client buying into your offering. It works with a small audience, just as it would with a big one.
The whole point of pre-sell is to start right away—even if you don't have any product or service. In fact, the earlier you start, the more the anticipation builds up as you get closer to the sale date.
If you're not ready with your product or service now, you don't have to be ready. In fact, in almost every instance, at Psychotactics, we're never ready with the product or service. Well, let's put it this way: I personally don't like long-winded blah-blah in a book.
The steps matter, but the ability to execute it easily is far more crucial. And that's what you'll find with this product too.
No blah, blah, blah—just solidly good stuff that you can, and should execute! He posted excerpts in the copywriting course and in the cave, and had been drawing attention to his own presell of everything for several months. Plus he asked me to do a Target Profile interview, and sent me drafts of the sales page as he built it, so I felt involved and protective of the project.
When he talked about how much of a difference it had made in his own business, I knew that even though the price was high, I would make that money back in short order by using this method. As I skimmed through the book the first time, I found numerous strategies that I could employ with almost no effort.
Pre-sell is the exemplification of the concept that marketing is the transference of enthusiasm from one person to another. I love that you can talk about the fun thing you are doing, the idea you have about something you might do later, and people get caught up in that.
I have certainly seen it work on myself, and I am delighted and stunned to see it work on others when I do it. That means that if I follow the steps, it will work for me just as it works for him well, maybe it works better for him, but he has more practice.
It works for small or large projects, and Sean makes it clear just how deep you have to go depending on the size of your project—from idly dropping a whimsical thought to producing a full-blown prospectus, everything you need is in the book. There are lots of options.
Each section is broken down into multiple approaches, and each approach is a strategy all by itself, so there are many, many ways to use the system, depending on your preferences, business, project, or time frame. This book is solid gold. It is pricey—for a book.
But you can clearly see the bones of the course it is to become. From that perspective, this book is a steal. It is chock-full of examples for all kinds of products and service, including a revolutionary chapter on samples. If anyone implements just a fraction of these ideas, the effectiveness of their campaigns will skyrocket.
One reading gave me a such sense of confidence and possibility, that I felt instantly relaxed and began looking forward to the rollout process. I posted a chatty Facebook update about my project. All I did was talk about how excited I was by my project, and posted a few points my book would cover. I never mentioned price or encouraged anyone to buy. Within half an hour, I had dozens of excited accolades. So I made an event page, and posted the link in my thread.
Within a few hours, over 75 people had joined, sharing the event and inviting their friends. And the whole process was completely natural for me and even strengthened my relationship with my community. PLUS, you learn more about yourself and your product during the process which I feel is also very important. When reading any of his books I always take away a new way of thinking.
And those new ways of thinking always help me grow my business which is why I will happily buy just about anything he offers! Pre-sell helps you create a wave of anticipation with your clients. After which you are able to roll out the pre-sell system with a clear, focused plan. And yes, things will go wrong. The book shows you how to handle many, if not most of those situations.
The biggest curse of selling is unpredictability. Will the product or service sell, or not? Marketing a product for weeks takes a big toll. With pre-sell, you begin to see clients buying into your product or service within minutes of you putting out the sales page.
Most books are dull because they don't use graphics, cartoons and captions. The use of the above elements makes the reading of the books a very pleasurable experience.
Sprinkled within the chapters are lots of examples so you can get ideas for your own business. Plus there are always detailed summaries that give you a bird's eye view of every chapter.
Because after delaying and procrastinating for more than 2 years about creating and selling some digital info products for my business, I found that the practical tips and steps in the pre-sell book created an incredible amount of momentum for me and kicked me into high gear. For me and my business this is a huge step forward. The pre-sell book was a huge gentle kick in the butt that I needed to get moving and share my gifts with the world.
This helped reinforce the key concepts in my brain. Presales can be ethical, if you set it up properly. If you can't follow through on your promise of delivery, your presale will be a disaster to your reputation. What is a presale? Advantages of a presale The biggest advantage of a presale is it gives you a solid customer base while giving you room to work through any potential issues with your product or service. Challenges of a presale A presale's biggest advantage and challenge is the time you have to assemble your product.
The challenge lies in balancing the time you're given to work out your presale. How to set up a presale strategy Setting up a presale isn't difficult — it's all about marketing. With these two thoughts in mind, follow these basic steps to setting up a successful presale: Create a campaign: Create your presale campaign on a crowdsourcing site, email marketing platform or through your own local distribution network.
Set up your own parameters and make sure your product or service is accessible. Post your product: Once you've established a campaign, start your presale period so you can start collecting sales and gauge interest in your audience. Now is also a good time to ask for general feedback from your most loyal customers.
Market your presale: Find ways to get the word out about your presale, whether it's through email marketing, social media marketing or word of mouth. As you market your presale and make sales, make sure you're staying focused on the other side of the process: the actual production of your item or service.
Pay attention to quality, if possible, and make sure your customers are getting exactly what's been advertised. Release your product and follow up: Deliver your product to the initial buyers and ask for feedback where appropriate.
Bottom line Setting up a presale can be a great thing for a small business, if it's done correctly. Business News Daily Contributing Writer.
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