Neil Asher
How Can You Sell a Service?
I've got nothing tangible to sell. There's nothing tangible how can I sell that...
This is a comment made often by professionals, and people in service industries. Yet, it's far from the truth. Just as a good copywriter will dissect and analyze a product, to search for its features, advantages and benefits and its USP (Unique Setting Proposition) a service can be treated in exactly the same way. It is no matter which way you look at it, a product or a service is packaged for the market or should be anyway. So really, the treatment in advertising should not be any different.
So where do these people go wrong?
Take a phone call I had the other day. A gentleman, who has recently started a coaching company on his own, rang to say he had been placing ads for his new life coaching service and the results had been disastrous.
My first question was, "Is there a market for what you are offering?" and enthusiastically he assured me there was.
So why was he having trouble creating a service?
Further questioning uncovered what I feel was his answer and the answer to a lot of other ads that don't work. His ad headline was simply, Life Coaching Service Now Available.
Now being too close to his line of work compounded the obvious.
My question was, if people have been presumably getting along nicely without coaches, what in the headline would possibly attract them to him and his services?
"They aren't handling their lives as efficiently as they should, they need my services." he insisted.
He knows that, but if they don't know that they have this problem...Why on Earth should they seek his help?
He still found it difficult with this suggestion until I gave him this analogy: Let's say, I suggested, a producer of a new vitamin pill has come up with an amazing new ingredient to overcome lethargy. So he runs an ad headlined, Vitex Tablets Now With Astro Scorbate or whatever.
Great for him, but it means nothing to a sufferer (the person with the problem).
What he should be headlining is,
New Vitex With Astro Scorbate Brings Renewed Energy to Lethargy’s Sufferers
With a sub-head to describe what a lethargy sufferer is just to make sure (never assume people know anything!).
Just as a sufferer may not know they lack astro scorbate, the client may not know they lack efficient management so they can get on with their life. My caller accepted at that point that what he had to do was dig deeper to discover the underlying wants, needs, desires, fears, or members of his target market and grab them by empathizing with that.
The examples go on. Life insurance agents advertise life insurance advice. Yet, the consumer may not know life insurance is what he or she needs. She may perceive his problem to be uncertainty about her finances. She may have surplus cash, may vaguely know she needs tax minimization, or she's really searching for an agent offering perhaps an independent broker who isn't biased towards one company who truly cares and keeps in touch with latest developments, and keeps his client in touch with what these developments mean for their overall financial needs.
Here’s how to fix it!
Write a believable, me to you style headline and advert around that and there might be a whole new cliental out there for you. Then, there's the computer companies all selling computers. When I went to buy my first computer I was almost totally ignorant about the things. Yet, all the ads talked about technology jargon to which I could not relate.
Finally, I entered a store recommended by a friend. I opened the conversation by stating my needs and stressing that I was a total computer idiot. Things went fine for the first few minutes then the salesperson went all misty as he wandered off on his own trip about megabytes, rams, defaults, hard drives and techno babble like that. While this is all basic stuff to me now, it totally alienated me then.
Yet, so many salespeople do that and companies do it in their ads. Peddling products, and hence positioning themselves to compete on price instead of developing their own unique product through the superior service they can offer clients.
Price positioning is DEATH to any business!
On the retail side, there are hardware stores selling hardware when the prospect isn't after hardware. His wants are to please his little girl by building a doll's house. Talk to him about the fulfillment he'll get, how his little girl will think daddy is just the greatest. Now that he’s having a little girl or how the relaxation of making something with his hands will make him happier.
Then provide a detailed information sheet supplied for free (of course) down at the store and he'll see himself doing it. Talk about hammers, nails, paint etc and all he sees is mess and bother.
Want more?
OK here’s another example
There's the home painter and decorator who advertises a price or more likely just his name whilst trying to solicit business from ads in the local papers. The prospect may not have even given a thought to having his home painted. Yet, talk about increased value a sense of satisfaction of coming home at the end of a hard day to a home that is a pure picture of the extended life of the quality paints used and how that means he doesn't have to worry about doing the lousy, scraping job every few years, or the gardens of selecting colors of the qualifications the painter obtained over and above the ordinary and etc., and suddenly he's sitting up taking notice and price isn't even an issue, it is outweighed by USP service.
In the Sunday papers the other day, there were two ads by the same company. One headline states, Abgal Pool Covers. The other, Abgal Solar Blankets. Both with little more than address and a phone number to assume that the reader will make the mental jump to workout these products offer less pool maintenance, winter parties, and a warm pool will have the neighbors all blue with envy, etc is a curse assumption. By selling the benefits with that headline,
Enjoy Pool Parties in Winter While the Neighbors Go Blue With Envy,
I suspect many more sales would results from this much improved USP based headline.
So services, products, business to business, whatever you are selling it doesn't really matter if there is a need in the market place. They can be sold far more successfully simply by discovering what the prospect wants. Then, translating the product or service into a reader benefits, and you can do it successfully in the press, magazines, direct mail and the letterbox drop by telemarketing, TV, radio, etc.
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