A series by Morris Berg
Part I : Don't Tell People What you
Do.
Sell benefits - not descriptions, the
marketing gurus tell us. Tell them how they will benefit,
say the sales coaches.
This is variation of the old adage, "don't
sell the sausage - sell the sizzle."
Many people who come to you have coaching
already or have read coaching articles or self-coaching
books or other self-help books. They may have been in
counselling or therapy. They may know people who have done
any of these and discussed the processes with them. they may
have picked up a lot from various coaching sites on their
way to finding you. They are not naive.
There are many approaches to coaching and many different
types of training. People who buy choose with different
criteria. Some people want to know what something will do.
Other people will want to know the specification. Yet other
will want to know that you won't do - because they
are trying to get away from a solution someone else has
offered and which didn't work for them.
If you are purchasing a gadget and really
know what you are looking for, won't you be looking at the
specification?
Does anyone sell a car by saying "It will
get you from A to B" or a good quality camera just by saying
"it will take beautiful pictures"?
They may produce a surrealistic TV ad for
the car or use models and insinuation to make it look sexy,
but anybody who really appreciates cars will take that with
a pinch of salt and look at the car's performance, features,
comfort, safety, guarantee, fuel consumption, insurance
rating and other points. The point of the ad is not to sell,
but to get you to find out more and put that brand on your
list of possibilities. In other words, to get you curious.
Does anyone selling a book just promote its
benefits, without describing the book and, if non-fiction,
giving a list of contents?
Many experienced and well-qualified coaches
are also doing therapy, consulting, and other helping or
advisory work as part of their portfolio. Despite often
given advice to have separate websites for each identity,
they have one central site that promotes their own name
as a brand. In such a site it is vital to enter into
detail about what coaching is on the coaching page, just as
the same person will mention what therapy approaches he/she
uses on the therapy page. Doing otherwise simply does not
make sense, and will seem condescending to coaching clients.
I have walked out of a shop various times
after asking a salesperson an elementary question about a
gadget and finding he/she didn't have a clue, and the answer
was not stated on the packaging either. I always knew more
about what I wanted than the person selling it. It is easier
these days - you can usually find specs and reviews on the
Internet and buy the item without having to embarrass a
badly-trained and underpaid human being not interested in
his or her job.
If you are choosing complementary therapies
and deciding between aromatherapy, crystal therapy, Reiki
healing or reflexology, practitioners are all likely to use
similar terms to emphasise the holistic, stress-reducing and
generally healing benefits of their treatments. If you have
a common condition such as stress or headaches, each
therapist is likely to say a session would be worth trying.
Can they persuade you to buy their therapy by benefits
alone? No. Other considerations have to come into play, such
as whether you are comfortable with the particular
procedure, how many sessions you will need to have, whether
it can have any side-effects, and even what is the rationale
behind it.
I have also heard it said that people will
come to you for coaching after they have tried everything
else. Really? How does anybody know? What kind of everything
else? So, client X has come to you after time management
workshops, fire walking, team bonding in the Outer Hebrides,
and winning The Apprentice. Client Y has come to you after
Kleinian analysis, crystal therapy, a sweat lodge, and Zazen.
Isn't it even more important for them to know what you can
do differently?
There is a contradiction between the idea
that the client is naive or uninformed - and won't
understand when you talk about methods - and the idea that
the client is experienced in being helped, probably by
several different types of helper. Yet I have seen both
ideas being implied.
The essence of selling coaching is based
upon coaching itself - asking key questions. As a coach,
asking powerful questions is a key technique. Powerful
questions encourage the client to examine the situation from
new angles and to generate his or her own solutions. In
selling your coaching services, there are two types of
questioning that go on. The coach can ask questions about
the client's needs and preferences, and the potential client
can ask questions of the coach. The first process is more
important when face-to-face or on the telephone as it
establishes rapport and demonstrates authentic interest in
the client's needs. A similar questioning process can occur
by Internet chat.
When communicating by email, things can
happen differently. Whether selling coaching or something
else, you can get an initial enquiry and then spend your
time asking a number of rapport-building questions, and
sometimes never receive as much as an acknowledgement. Some
people, inevitably, have gone elsewhere, and some simply
don't want to write much. It might be worthwhile to use
email to invite the prospect to live phone or chat. Another
approach is to use a web contact form that asks key
questions about what a client is expecting.
Working remotely as I do, my potential
clients will have questions in their minds as they browse my
site. Answers need to be there, or I will spend half my time
answering those questions again and again by phone or email,
and after the fiftieth time, listening to myself gets a bit
boring. The advantage of a website is that people can read
as much or as little as they want. Some intuitive people
will "know" very quickly that they want me to be their
coach, without much reading. Others will want to digest
everything. Why do web sites have FAQ (frequently asked
questions) pages?
Knowing more about a thing enhances its
perceived value. That is why collectors often pay a small
fortune for an article that might look ordinary to an
outsider. The collector knows its history, its rarity, and
how it fitted in to the culture of its time. To the
collector that antique set of nondescript little coloured
tokens with a red cup is fascinating - but if you don't
collect tiddlywinks they won't mean anything to you.
The advice "don't sell the sausage, sell the
sizzle" is based on two ideas: (1) don't bore people and (2)
if someone really knew what went into the sausage, they'd
never eat it! With web browsing, don't worry about
boring people. If they are really interested - and those are
the only people you want - they'll stay. If they're not
interested, they'll hop it. Have you ever seen one of those
interminable sales pitch pages for a course or ebook where
scrolling down takes forever? Web copywriters have commented
that such length is fine, because only the people who are
really interested will read it all - and they are precisely
the people your marketing wants to reach.
Readers' Digest mailshots work the same way
- they are full of intricate detail. The detail is
exclusively for those who are interested in the product: you
won't buy the road atlas if you don't drive, or the
gardening book if you live on the 34th floor. The idea is -
let people who want to know more get lots of information.
If you are contemplating hiring a coach, do
you really not want to know what's in the sausage? Coaching
clients are well-functioning already. They are not people
with major problems affecting their ability to function -
such people need a therapist. It is therapy clients, more
than coaching clients, who often will not want to know the
"technical details" beforehand. I write that acknowledging
the fact that many therapy clients are also together and
well-informed and came for self-improvement before the
coaching phenomenon was widespread. Nowadays many therapists
are also becoming coaches.
So, when marketing online, adopt a "benefits
plus" approach. Market the benefits - and also explain
something about what you do and how you are different. Give
an example of how a particular approach or piece of dialogue
can go. Make your site interesting and with enough content
so that visitors are likely to return later and read more.
If possible have some downloads.
Sell some sizzle - and provide a CAT scan of the sausage
for those who want to see it!
And, last but not least, there is another excellent
reason to say more about what you do, especially in a web
site. Quality articles and information-rich pages are
one of the best ways of attracting the attention of the
search engines and getting more traffic for your site!
(This series will be continued)
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For more details
of coaching by Morris Berg see the various sections of this
website
www.sensitivenlpcoach.com
This article is
copyright © Morris Berg 2008 and must not be reproduced
on-line, in print or by any other means without permission in writing.
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