Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing. Jay Levinson Conrad

can be certain that the first commerce was transacted face to face, one caveman to another. That method continues on, mostly in the form of selling, which is a blessing to some people who love to do it and a curse to others who find the instinct absent from their DNA.

      Advice to a guerrilla who faces a lifetime of face-to-face selling: Learn to love it by learning about sales and by learning more about your product or service. The more you know about these things, the more passionate you can be when get to do them or to sell them. As in so many parts of our life on earth, passion rules the roost and fuels the fires.

      Once you learn to excel at face-to-face selling, you’ll find yourself considering selling to more than one person, such as in a seminar, in a webinar, or on a teleconference. As hot and sexy as computers may be, teleconferences—disdaining the use of visuals, and relying on the good old telephone—are being held in record numbers.

      The guerrilla feels equally comfortable speaking directly to a person while looking into that person’s eyes, or speaking to a 1,000 people while looking into a TV camera lens. Never forget that marketing is just a fancy word that means selling.

Getting Them to Look You in the Eye and Buy

      You need to see yourself as others see you. The following tips, excerpted from Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerrilla Marketing, 4th Edition (Houghton Mifflin, 2007) should help. Use them to help you evaluate and develop rapport, give dynamic presentations, and most of all, close the sale.

Contact

      The tone of your meeting is established early. Here are some ways you can create a positive first impression.

      • Greet your prospect warmly and sincerely, using eye contact.

      • Allow your prospect some time to get acclimated to being with you, some time to talk. Don’t come on too strong. But don’t waste your prospect’s time, either.

      • Engage in casual conversation at first—especially about anything pertinent to your prospect. Make it friendly and not one-sided. Be a good listener. But, let the prospect know that your time is precious. You are there to sell, not to talk.

      • Ask relevant questions. Listen carefully to the answers.

      • Qualify the prospect. Determine whether or not this is the specific person to whom you should be talking, the person with the authority to give you the go-ahead, to buy.

      • Learn something about the person to whom your contact is directed so that he or she will feel like a person rather than a prospect. Make your prospect like you, for people enjoy doing business with people they like. The best possible thing you can do is to make your prospect feel unique—proving that you recognize his or her individuality and needs.

      • Be brief, friendly, outgoing, and truly inquisitive. But, be yourself.

      • If you’re in a retail environment, one of the best questions to initiate healthy contact is “Mind if I ask what brings you into our store today?”

      • Don’t think of yourself as a salesperson but as a partner to your prospect. This healthy mindset improves both your perspective and your chances of closing. Realize that you have an opportunity to educate your prospects to succeed at whatever they wish to succeed at. As soon as possible, learn what it is that your prospect wishes to succeed at, and then show how what you are selling can make that success achievable.

      • Important elements of your contact are your smile, your attire, your posture, and your willingness to listen and look directly into the prospect’s eyes. Your nonverbal communication is as important as your verbal communication. The impression you make will come as much from what you don’t say as from what you do say.

Your Presentation

      When making your presentation, keep in mind that you are not talking by accident. You are there because of intent on your part. If your prospect is still with you, there is intent on his or her part, too. And the intent is to buy.

      Either you will buy a story about why a sale cannot be made, or your prospect will buy what you’re selling. It truly is up to you. And don’t forget: People do enjoy being sold to. They do not like being pressured. They do like being persuaded by honest enthusiasm to buy.

      The following are some tips to make your presentations flow smoothly and some ways to evaluate your technique.

      • List all the benefits of doing business with you, one by one. The more benefits a prospect knows about, the more likely a prospect will buy. When compiling your list of benefits, invite your employees and at least one customer. Customers are tuned in to benefits you offer that you may take for granted.

      • Emphasize the unique advantages of buying from you. You should be able to rattle these off with the same aplomb you can state your own name and address. It is upon these competitive advantages that you should be basing your marketing. Don’t knock your competition whatever you do.

      • Stress the advantages of your type of offering, then of your specific offering, especially if your prospect has no experience with what you are selling. If you’re selling security devices, talk of the value of owning them, then of the value of owning yours.

      • Tailor your presentation. Do your homework and find out what there is to know about your contact. Then take that information and customize it into your presentation.

      • Mention the acceptance of your products or services by others—especially people in their community. People do not like to be pioneers. People know darned well that pioneers get arrows in the back of their necks. If you can mention names and be specific, by all means do so. The more specific you are, the more closes you’ll make. But don’t be tedious. You can’t bore a prospect into buying.

      • Know enough about your prospect so you can present your product or service from his or her point of view. This ability will increase your number of closes dramatically. Emphasize what all of your product or service benefits can do for your prospect, not what they can do for the general population.

      • Keep an eagle eye on your prospect’s eyes, teeth, and hands. If the prospect is looking around, rather than at you, you’ve got to say something to regain attention. If your prospect is not smiling, you are being too serious. Say something to earn a smile. Best of all, smile yourself. That will get your prospect to smile. If your prospect is wringing his or her hands, your prospect is bored. Say something to ease the boredom and spark more interest.

      • So show as much as you can: photos, drawings, a circular, a product, your sales video, anything. A sales point made to the eye is 78 percent more effective than one made to the ear. Just be sure it relates to your presentation.

      • Sell the benefit along with the feature. If the feature is solar power, for instance, the benefit is economy. If the feature is new computer software, the benefit is probably speed, power, or profitability.

      • Mention your past successes, so the prospect will feel that the key to success is in your hands and there is little chance of a ripoff.

      • Be proud. Take pride in your prices, benefits, and offering. Convey your pride with facial expressions, tone of voice, and selection of words. Feel the pride and let it come shining through.

      • Remain convinced that your prospect will buy from you throughout your presentation. This optimism will be sensed by the prospect and can positively affect the close.

      There are 250,000 commonly used words in the English language; there are 600,000 nonverbal methods of communications: stance, facial expression, hand gestures, eyebrow position and 599,996 others. Learn them and utilize them. They’re completely free, a perfect example