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Today’s question comes from Matt Sellhorst, who asks:

“Craig, I am a boat salesman on Lake Wylie just outside of Charlotte, NC.  My customers are active families/households earning $75K+ within 30 miles of our lake.  My biggest marketing challenge is getting prospects back into the dealership after a presentation or inquiry online.

By the way, bought your book awhile back and loved it.  I’m on my second reading and have already implemented several ideas. I’ve implemented a two step marketing program with a free report, monthly newsletter and a ‘No Sales Pressure Guarantee’.

Thanks, Matt Sellhorst”

This is a very simple question on the surface, but it brings up a lot of good issues.

What Matt’s basically asking is, how can he convert more prospects into paying clients?

First of all, let’s take a look at the basics about why people don’t buy, even after they’ve responded to your lead generation material.  There are three basic reasons, and a few ‘after the fact’ reasons:

1. What you’re actually offering them isn’t really compatible with what you promised them originally.  So if you’re promising someone a trip to Jamaica, but all you really want to do is sell them suntan oil… this is going to be a problem for you.

When what you’re offering isn’t congruent with the initial promise you made, to get people to raise their hands and tell you they’re interested… then you’re going to have a hard time converting your prospects into paying customers or clients.

2.  If you’re prospects don’t believe you or they don’t trust you, you’re also going to have close to a zero conversion rate.  You can be offering free gold bars, but if no one believes you’re going to deliver them… it won’t matter.

3.  If you’re charging too much money, people also won’t buy.  This is a very difficult issue to cover in a simple e-mail like this, and frankly… this isn’t a very common reason why people won’t buy.  But… rest assured it’s a valid reason why some prospects won’t convert to buyers.

Now let’s talk about two other reasons why people don’t buy.

One is ‘timing.’  For any one of a million reasons, they simply might not be ready to buy right now.  They’re preoccupied with other things… they’re having car trouble… the kid needs braces — who knows why?
But this is why it’s critical you’re consistently following up with your prospects, as often as you can.

And when I say “follow up,” I don’t mean calling them up every two weeks asking them if they’re ready to buy now.  I mean, following up with them by keeping them informed and educated about things that are relevant to them.

By doing this, you stay in front of them and you continue to position yourself as a valued and noted expert.  This way, they don’t forget about you when they are ready to buy.

The other reason why they may not buy is because you don’t ask them to.  If you’re not constantly making offers to your prospects, how do you expect them to become buyers?

If you’re going to rely on them having the incentive to take the bull by the horns and do this all by themselves… then you are overestimating how much you are worth to your buyers.

Heck, most people won’t even pay attention to their own children unless there’s some kind of an emergency going on.  And yet, you expect complete strangers to just ‘drop’ money into your pockets because you’re a good person?

Um… I don’t think so.

But let’s get back to Matt.  Because it sounds like Matt’s got at least some of this covered.  He’s qualifying his people using two-step lead generation… he’s following up with them regularly using a monthly offline newsletter.  And presumably, he’s supplementing this with at least weekly e-mails about local boating conditions, customer profiles, and events.

And, he’s also got a ‘no sales pressure’ guarantee.

So what more can he do?

Well… there are a couple of things that come to mind here.

One thing he can do is, make it harder for people to see his boats in the first place.  Perhaps limit the days the boats are available… or make them pay a $50 deposit fee (which is refunded when they show up), to cover ‘prepping’ the boat and getting it ready.  The point is, the more hoops you make your prospects jump over to get at you, the better qualified prospects you’re going to have.

And, the greater the perceived demand will be.  I don’t know enough about Matt’s industry to know specifically what to do, but making people self-qualify a little more, is one option he has, for sure.

Another option is to let prospects take the boat home and test-drive it for free for 72 hours.  Not many people are going to go through this much effort, only to bring their boat back.

Yes, you’ll have some returns, but the cost of this will pale in comparison to the extra sales you will make.

And by the way, this “try before you buy” is now being done with cars and apartments and houses.  That’s because with high-end items like this, you need to do as much as you can to overcome as many objections as your buyers might have.

And NOTHING beats ‘sampling.’  Whether you’re selling chicken wings at Costco, or boats in North Carolina.

O.K. Matt, that should give you some food for thought.  Good luck implementing these strategies, and let me know how things work out for you.

Now go sell something, Craig Garber

P.S.  To discover how to make IRRESISTIBLE offers, check out Chapter 24 in “How To Make Maximum Money With Minimum Customers” – where literally dozens of ways of doing this are revealed!

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