The average person or company has an abundance of problems these days. Every day, week, month and year thousands of problems creep up and compete for limited time, attention and money.
Hopefully, you have founded your business to solve one of these thousands of problems. If you have, you now face a different and bigger challenge. How do you make YOUR problem stand out with so many competing problems?
The answer is—by educating them. And here’s why…
Education Creates Urgency
Your prospect will spend money, time and attention solving the most pressing and threatening problems. With so many problems vying for attention, education is your best bet to emphasize the problem you solve. This makes your problem appear the most urgent.
Take homeowners insurance for example. You can educate your prospects on the dangers of being an uninsured homeowner. One way to do this is to offer a free webinar filled with true stories and statistics around the dangers of being uninsured.
When your prospect finds out their life savings could be wiped out by an injured lawn care professional or your dog biting the water meter inspector, homeowner insurances becomes an urgent problem that needs to be dealt with now.
And where will they go for help? Probably the industry expert that educated them.
Education Gets Your Foot in the Door
If you call up a prospect and say something along the lines of, “Hi, I’ve got this solution to a problem you have, when can I stop by and show you?” What do you think the reaction will be?
All the prospect can think is, “Whatever it is, I don’t care. I’ve got too many other problems to worry about.” Never forget you are competing in a massive world of problems!
Instead, if you were to offer free industry information to your prospects, do you think they would be as cold to you? Of course not. You are adding value and making their lives better…for free!
For example, imagine you are a mechanic and are looking to expand your client base. Instead of cold calling people and asking them to come in for an oil change, you do something different.
You send a free informational mailing with the title, “The Five Most Common Ways Mechanics Rip You Off,” or “Avoid Outrageous Car Maintenance Costs With These Six Simple Monthly Steps.”
Are you positioning yourself as an expert? Yes. Are you building trust with your prospective clients? I’d sure say so. Are you providing useful information the client may keep in their glovebox or on the fridge? Yep. Do you think they might call you when they have car trouble? There’s a great chance.
Education is one of the best ways to preemptively open doors and build trust with future clients.
Education Establishes Credibility
When you educate people, you become a subject expert in their mind. After all, compared to the average person you ARE an expert at what you do.
I’m sure there are plenty of phycological studies on why you become an expert in someone’s mind when you present relevant facts and information. Whatever the science, it doesn’t matter. Educating people positions you as an expert.
When you rattle off statistics and interesting facts during a sales call, it oozes credibility. When you tell stories of past clients in similar situations who’s problems you solved, your prospects hang on your every word.
When you educate, you position yourself as an expert and people prefer to work with experts to solve their problems.
Next Actions
When someone sniffs a salesperson, the walls come up. But if you educate, it’s more likely you will get a warm reception and get the client relationship off on the right foot.
Now that you see how important education is in the sales process, get out there and put together some free educational materials! Create a webinar. Put together a short powerpoint presentation. Draft a blog post or informational email to send your prospects.
Don’t worry about your service or product just yet. Focus on educating your prospects. Once they learn the urgency of their problems, they’ll want help from an expert like you.
Do you use education in your sales process? How do you educate your clients? Let me know in the comments below.
