When I first started my business, I hired a copywriter to help me with writing the website and some sales literature. She quoted me a price for doing this and then I wanted a couple of days to review this so that I could discuss it with my husband. While I was in the process of reviewing, the copywriter came back to me and dropped the price right down.
The interesting thing was that I was actually going to go ahead with her original price – I just needed a couple of days to review things. But of course, when she dropped her price, who was I to say no?
People are, I have decided, very cheeky. This tends to happen more when the newspapers are full of doom and gloom about the state of the nation. Suddenly everyone decides that they can’t pay for things and that they need help and advice for free.
That leaves you in an interesting dilemma. Do you give in, in an attempt not to upset people or do you hold firm?
Recently I’ve noticed at potential sales meetings clients have been asking me the same sorts of questions and it got me thinking. Whenever you notice a trend with your potential clients, do you write it down and prepare an answer to the question?
Think of it this way – last time my husband applied for his current position, we spent ages writing down what sorts of questions we thought he might be asked at the interview and practising them so that when that day came, he would feel prepared and would have the best chance of getting the job.
A couple of years ago, I met with someone who sold to his customers in a particular way. He firstly had a meeting to tell the customers what he could do for them. Then he had a meeting to find out the client’s needs and finally he had a meeting to pull it all together.
I found this interesting because my normal policy with sales would be to find out the client’s needs first so I asked him whether he’d thought about swapping the first two meetings round.
On Friday, I was with a client of mine and we spent quite a bit of time talking about how to come up with topics for newsletters and emails so I thought I’d let you know my top ways of coming up with ideas. They are:
- Writing down what’s been talked about in meetings with clients and writing something on a topic that’s come up. Sometimes, I will look at my diary for the previous week and come up with one theme from each meeting.
- Look at what’s going on in the world – can you refer to a news item, seasonal activity or something everyone is talking about.
- Write an A to Z of your industry. Just done that – why not do it again?
- Write down topics that you think your target market might be interested in.
- Use an idea that someone else has come up with i.e. one of my contacts does a Friday teaser where she sets up a brainteaser for people to solve. Can you use this in your business?
We’re all exposed to potential topics that we could write about on a regular basis – but if we don’t capture them somewhere by writing them on a post it note, or jotting them down in your notepad, you’ll quickly forget about them. Get into the habit of doing this and pretty soon you’ll find you have a whole host of things you can talk about in your business.
