Incentivizing and Closing
If the success of your business depends on lead generation, then it is important to create an attractive incentive in your promotional offer to improve the percentage of leads showing up .
The Promotional offer should appeal to a wide array of people to attract a high amount of interest. The incentive should work to keep the prospect interested in your product or service. The purpose of the promotion is to attract as many interested prospects as possible. A good promotion should have some kind of tie to your product or service. Giving away a $1000 or an iPad may attract a large volume of people, but if there is no direct relation to your product or service, it may be hard to convert the leads into sales. A typical offer that would relate to your business would generally be a Free Trial of some sort.
Since this a common offer, it tends to lose its “Value” in the eye of the prospect. When I say lose its value, I am referring to the prospect’s desire to follow through with the next step, most likey an appointment. Many times once contact is made with the prospect, getting them to show up for the initial consultation or visit can be challenging.
Contest type promotions have always proven to be popular and successful marketing means. In order to incorporate a great incentive into your contest giveaway and still make this inexpensive for you, and convenient for the lead, you have to set it up as follows:
When the promotional offer is to Win something, you will need to keep this prize on the table and readily available to the prospect. The prospect will only be able to participate in the contest or receive a prize when he or she shows up for the scheduled appointment. Many insurance agents will offer a $20 gift certificate to a popular local restaurant. However, it is only given to the prospect when he she meets with the agent and listens to the presentation. The gift card keeps the prospect interested in showing for their appointment. A health club offering a Free Year Membership can make the drawing available only to someone who visits the club to take a tour. The incentive is the drawing for a free year membership. This keeps the prospect incentivized to show for their appointment.
How to Create a Raffle Drawing
A very successful procedure to make a raffle drawing that is fast, inexpensive and allows for instant winner notification is to use a fishbowl filled with poker chips. Fill the bowl with 100 chips of the same color. After the lead takes the tour, give them a chip that is a different color and have them drop it into the fishbowl. Mix up the chips and put the bowl behind their back. If they pull out their chip, they win. If they pull out a filler chip, they don’t win. This is fast and provides instant winner notification. In many cases, you may never have to have a winner. However, when first starting this, I like to put only around 10 chips in the bowl, so there is a winner. Once there is a winner, I create a lot of PR Marketing, showing off the winner of the Free Year: local newspapers, signs in the club depicting the winner, a banner outside, etc. to show to everyone that the contest is real. After the first winner, you can add more chips to work the odds back to your favor. Note: be creative with your drawing. Include small gift certificates from local businesses for an added value to your drawing. You may be able to get the certificates donated by advertising for these businesses in your facility.
The Sales Process
The idea with the sales process is to have a method that starts from the second the sales representative or the agent greets the potential client. If your sales process starts when you present your price for the service or product it is too late and you most likely will have to resort to a hard sale, which for most people is not a comfortable process, to close the lead. If you are raffling a free membership at your health club or training facility and you have an appointment show. It is important to find out what the prospect is interested in accomplishing and showing off your facility with a tour geared to the prospect’s interests. Your goal is to create a tour that will have the prospect so excited to join regardless of whether he or she wins the free year or not. The tour is your selling time, not when you sit down to discuss the cost of a membership. Filling out the paperwork for a new membership should just be a formality.
Create Value in Your Services Offered.
A popular incentive for a chiropractor to use is offering a free massage. Before the prospect can receive the massage, he or she must meet with the chiropractor for an analysis and consultation. Many prospects in turn decided against this and turned down the free massage offer. The solution to this issue was for the caller to sell or build value into the doctor’s services. A simple rephrasing of a line, “you have to see the doctor first” into “you will get to visit with the doctor, and discuss any lingering issues of discomfort that may be taking away from your quality of life. Many times, this short meeting can alleviate some problematic symptoms.” Now the potential patient sees value in the meeting whereas before it was just a needless step to get a free massage. Add a dollar value to your services. This way you can list a dollar amount to everything a prospect is receiving for free.