Lessons from the Frontline

Thought I’d do something a little different today and give you guys an update about what I’ve been up to lately.

Many of you know I launched my Zero Sum List Building system as a WSO on the Warrior Forum and I was pretty pleased with how it was received. I had very little affiliate traffic for this product yet the sales numbers were steady and a few weeks on from the launch I’m still seeing a few sales come through most days.

That will be my last product launch for a couple of months as the next thing I’ll be offering is my first Partnership to Success product. As you know I made a rather large investment in my business a couple of months ago by joining John Thornhill’s high-ticket coaching program. I’ve really been enjoying it so far and I’m quite exciting about what will be coming for  me down the line. Obviously I’ll keep you guys updated with my progress and you’ll get to read everything about what I have been up to here on my blog.

But from what I’ve done so far I can confidently say this next product will be my largest by far and step-up from what I’ve done in the past so watch this space.

And in other news…

I had a rather interesting meeting recently with a  retired salesman who also happened to have worked as an accountant. A contact of mine had recommended him to me and I met up with him for a chat so he could assess my Offline plans and offer me any advice that he had.

Anyway over the course of our near 3 hour meeting he went through all my plans, questioned all my numbers and really played devils advocate. It was great because he helped highlight a few areas that needed improvements and also gave me some good idea’s that I’m going to follow up on.

As we chatting over a coffee he starting telling me a few “War Stories” from his time on the front-line. He had worked in sales for over 30 years and said that people really overcomplicated the whole process and that it’s best to strip it all back to the basics…

Identify a Growth Industry : don’t just develop a product and try to sell it to your target market. Do the research first and find a growth industry that has some problem that you can solve. Create a product that satisfies a particular need that the industry has. If you can provide a solution to their problem then you are heading in the right direction.

Don’t race ahead and try to sell to your target audience right away, instead follow these simple steps:
A – create Awareness of your product or service.
I – gauge if there is Interest from the prospect you are targeting
D – continue to build value as you give them more information about what your offering until they begin to Desire your service/product
A – then you can try to make the sale as the prospect moves from Desire to Acceptance and you try to close the sale by getting them to take Action

I know this was all related to Offline business but I could instantly see how it could be used with great effect with what we do online.

Identify a Growth Industry : say for example you were interested in the IM Niche you could do your research on the Warrior Forum and find the topics that people are interested in e.g. Traffic Generation, How to land more offline clients, SEO etc.
Create a product that satisfies this need and gives your customers a solution to their problem.

Then move onto the next phase in the process…
Awareness – network with potential JV partners and try to get some affiliates on board to support your launch.
Interest – start a pre-launch thread on the forum and build an Early Bird list. Get people to post their reviews in this thread so everything is ready before you go live.
Desire – as traffic hits your sales page on launch day you have to makes sure that your Copy really draws your prospects in and that the Desire builds momentum all the way through as they read your copy from start to finish.
Acceptance/Action – Everything builds up to this moment where they click the Buy Button and place the order.

I know this is a simplified account of a much more complicated process but I hope you get where I’m coming from here…

But no matter what market you are operating in, you must concentrate on :

FEATURES – BENEFITS

Get the balance right between these two variables and you’ll greatly increase you sales and conversions. Whenever we read a sales page we are bombarded with all the wonderful features that the product has. These features are supposed to build up the desire that we have for the product and push over the edge until we decide to make that purchase. But there is another side to this story that you should be paying a lot of attention to, the Benefits of your product.

Features add value to a product but Benefits are what make the sale.

You can use the product features to build momentum and add value to what you are selling but it’s the actual benefits that the product gives to the customer that will convince them the click the Buy Button.

Your new product may have 10 Amazing Features but it’s the Benefits that these Features provide that will get your prospects attention.

For example a Feature of some SEO plugin may be “keyword competition analysis” but the Benefits of using this plugin may be:

• more Traffic to your site
• more sign-ups to your List
• more Money from sales etc. etc. etc.

So bear that in mind in future for whatever you are offering highlight the Features but emphasize the Benefits because it’s these Benefits that will get you the sale. And that’s what’s been keeping me busy over the past few weeks. I hope you’ve gotten some value out of this entry and maybe given you some food for thought, especially when it comes to creating and launching your own products.

Thanks for reading,

Noel.

Want to read more posts like this? Then you’ll enjoy these posts from the archive…

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Mastermind Gold with John Thornhill

4 Skills for Business Success