Want to know a great selling tool – the focus group.
Most people think marketing research when they think focus group but, with a nifty little twist on this concept, you can turn it into a sales conversion machine.
This works particularly well if you can focus on one specific industry group. The idea is to find a group that shares the same frustrations and uses the same language to express them.
Put together a teleconference panel aimed at discussing a common industry issue or growing trend. Invite 10 participants, but make sure that at least two of the participants are happy clients that turned to you to solve this frustration. Then, once the group is assembled, you sit back and gently moderate only. If any selling goes on during the call it must come from your clients only. Let the group talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. Three things will generally occur from such a session.
- Your current client usually feels pretty good about the decision they made (that will lead to more referrals)
- Other callers come away with a very favorable impression of your place in the market – who else is making this kind of educational effort?
- Several members of the group will call you the next day and invite you to show them how you can help
There are any number of ways to add a creative twist of two to this approach but nothing sells like a current user telling a skeptic, in their own words, how great your product or service is.
