Wanna Sell More? Teach Your Customers

A couple of years ago I came across the sales page of an SEO course. Initially my intention of purchasing it was close to zero, as I had been optimizing my sites for a while already, and I figured I knew pretty much all there was to know on the matter.

Then I came across a section on the sales page titled “3 SEO Concepts You Probably Don’t Know”. My reaction was “I doubt it.” Well, it got me, as I really didn’t know 2 out of the 3 concepts mentioned, and they were both pretty interesting and useful.

Teaching me this new stuff did the trick. It was enough to convince me to buy the course.

How was the course? Decent, but that is not the point. The point is that by teaching me some new stuff on the sales page they managed to turn someone who had no intention of purchasing the course into a customer. In other words, teaching is a great sales technique, and yet few people use it consistently or effectively.

My friend Karl Staib recently wrote a post about the ROI of delighting your customers. Not coincidently one of his points is about teaching instead of trying to convince. Here’s a quote from the post:

When we talked about creating webinars in the above example, the purpose was to attract customers sharing your expertise. In today’s client-savvy markeplace, it’s good to think of yourself as a teacher first and a marketer second.

When you teach something new to a potential customer you are doing two things mainly:

1. Showcasing your expertise. People want to buy from credible sources, so if you prove you are an expert on your field they will be much more likely to buy from you.

2. Giving away something that has value. This will trigger a sense of reciprocity. That is, the potential will feel the need to give something back to you since you already gave him something. This “something back” will be the purchase of your product.

Bottom line: If you are not using teaching as a sales technique yet you should, so give it a go.

If you enjoyed this post and wish to be informed whenever a new post is published, then make sure you subscribe to my regular Email Updates. Subscribe Now!

Kindly Bookmark and Share it: