PreneurCast is a business podcast. Each week, author and marketer Pete Williams and digital media producer Dom Goucher discuss entrepreneurship, business, internet marketing and productivity.
This podcast was recorded during a LiveCast from Rich Schefren’s offices in Florida. Pete talks to Rich about the importance of demonstrating things to your clients – how to give various types of proof of your ability or authority to your clients.
Pete talks to Rich about the importance of giving proof of authority to your clients
Transcript:
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Episode 059:
Demonstrating to Your Clients
Pete Williams: Hi guys, Pete Williams here. And welcome to another edition of PreneurCast podcast. This week it’s a little bit different. As I mentioned on the show last week, I’m in Florida at the moment working with Rich Schefren and his team on a whole bunch of productivity and workflows processes. So what I’m doing is actually getting Rich on this week’s episode. I’ve put Dom in the cupboard. It’s just me and Rich this week. So welcome, Rich.
Rich Schefren: Thank you Pete. I’m glad to be here and I’m really excited to see how this all works and to actually do this podcast while I’m learning. So thanks for that.
Pete: And the context of while we’re learning is what we’re actually doing is recording this while shooting a live stream.
Rich: Right. So that my clients can see how easy it is, and then everything that can be done after the podcast is created and all the ways that revenue can be created from this one thing we’re doing right now.
Pete: Absolutely. And normally, on the live stage, you’d ask for applause from the audience; but we’ve got hundreds on a live stream and we can’t really hear from them, but they are listening. So, if you’re listening to the podcast in your car, on the way to work, or while you’re running in a couple week’s time, that’s what we’re doing here and why the audio is a bit different.
What I thought we’d do for the topic of this week’s podcast is actually talk about the importance of demonstrating things to your clients. That’s what we’re doing right now. We’re demonstrating podcasting to you clients through a webstream. So let’s talk about the importance of doing that and how that applies to marketing anything in business.
Rich: Okay. So there are many forms of proof. But at the end of the day, what you have to realize if you’re marketing anything, is that you need some way to show your audience that you not only know what you’re talking about, but that also that what you’re suggesting actually gets the outcome. So you can do that with testimonials, you can do that with case studies. But one of the most effective ways is to actually demonstrate it in action.
It takes a certain amount of confidence to say I’m going to do it right now and I’m going to work without a net, I’m going to walk the tight rope and you’re going to see the actual outcome that happens as I do this. There was in a book called Made to Stick by the Heath brothers, they talk about the Sinatra test.
Pete: And we’ll put the link to that book, the Amazon link in the show notes and make sure guys, if you’re listening to the show, head over to PreneurMedia.tv; like every episode, that’s where the show notes are; link to Rich’s website [StrategicProfits.com] if you want to know more about Rich and there will be links to that book as well.
Rich: Great. So along those lines, it’s thinking about what could you demonstrate that would show anyone who is a prospect of yours, that you are the person to follow, get advice from, etc.? One example would be if you were someone that taught how to get an appointment through cold calling.
If you were to have someone break open the white pages and pick anyone at random and give you a phone number and you could call and book an appointment, well, if the people that are watching you do that are people that rely on cold calling for a living, they would be blown away.
That would be more powerful than any testimonial. That would be more powerful than anything else that you could do because you’ve basically shown that you know how to get the outcome that they’re desperate for. So in that sense a powerful demonstration actually trumps everything else.
Now that’s one form, that’s actually doing it live, where you’re working without a net. But then there’s also this kind of doing something by association that makes you be the relevant choice. So some of the examples in Made to Stick were if you’re the one that provides security or lawn services for Fort Knox.
Pete: I actually know one has actually a security company.
Rich: And do they do it for Fort Knox?
Pete: Ah, no.
Rich: So they would have to find someone else. But if you do the security for Fort Knox, no one is going to question whether you know how to do your job. If you do catering from time to time or you’ve done it once for the White House, then I’m not going to second-guess your ability to cater some function that I have in my office. Obviously, it’s not as uptight and as specific as the White House.
This is a really; when people get their head around this they realize that for the most part, they haven’t really scratched the surface. So one of the things that I’ve done in my own business, I’ve coached a large majority of today’s top internet marketers. Most of the gurus today, 80, 90% were clients of mine at one point. So that’s another type of demonstration. That they can look at this list and recognize all the names.
I can legitimately say these are all people who have paid me and they weren’t as well-known as they are now when they paid me. That’s not a live demonstration, but it’s a demonstration of competence and it’s a demonstration of authority and when you have that, you tend to be able to get buy in from your prospects at a much higher degree. So is there anything else you wanted to share about that.
Pete: Yeah, a couple things that popped up in my mind when you spoke through that. An example I’d give is if you take that locksmith example again, something they could do to prove demonstration would be to put $5,000 of cash in a glass box in a middle of a busy strip mall with some security around it and say anyone who can break into that, gets that five grand.
Rich: For those who are in America, because I don’t know if it’s in Australia, but there’s a famous commercial here with Life Lock which protects people against their identity being stolen. It’s a very successful company and what the CEO does is put his social security number on screen. Now, for those of you who don’t know this, don’t read the newspaper, he has actually suffered identify theft numerous times, but that doesn’t get share in the commercial and that commercial has been incredibly effective at growing their business.
It’s impressive, it’s like you’re watching this, you’re worried about identity theft and you know that you have to safeguard in the United States, your social security number and then all of a sudden the CEO is posting his social security number in a commercial, it’s a powerful demonstration.
Pete: So if you’re an accountant, I guess you could sort of potentially show how little tax you pay. You say I’m going to show you how I am reducing my tax $2,500 a year and that could be proof of how you could be an accountant and reduce tax effectively.
Rich: I have another really close friend of mine who is Clayton Makepeace. He does all the marketing for Weiss Financial and they did a launch where the premise of the launch was; and this was at a time after the crash when there was tremendous uncertainty. People wanted to know what should they do.
The hook there was I’m going to put a million dollars in a trading account and whenever I trade I’m going to give you three days advance notice before I buy something and three days before I sell something. Impressive, right?
I’m putting a million dollars of my own money and you’re going to be able to watch the trades. Now, what actually transpired was that launch brought in 14 million dollars. So it really wasn’t some big sacrifice to take a million and put it into the trading account.
Pete: I would do that every day.
Rich: Right. But that’s another powerful demonstration. It shows a certain amount of substance and confidence in yourself. That’s what the example of putting money in a glass jar. What they all show is that I know I have the chops. I don’t expect you to know that yet so I’m going to do something here that’s going to prove it to you and anyone else who is skeptical. And so I’ve had clients that have said I’m going to take $100 and I’m going to build an internet business out of that.
To show you how easy it is and that I know what the right way to do it is. So if you think about your area, your marketplace and what value you provide, what products you offer, what is something that if you were to do, it would erase all doubt that you’re the person to go to.
Pete: The story that comes to mind for me is about Robert Allen. A lot of listeners would be familiar with Robert Allen because he wrote the One Minute Millionaire that gave him the ideal from the whole MCG stores that listeners will be familiar with. He went to San Francisco I think it was…
Rich: Somewhere in California.
Pete: … took a full-page newspaper add and said I’m going to take a homeless person and help them buy their first bit of investment property, no money down within three days. So he really put is balls on the line in a national newspaper and succeeded. That is really what gave him the big notoriety back I the early 90’s with No Money Down, which was his first book.
Rich: The one thing I would share is that you don’t necessarily need to go as far as Robert Allen. You don’t need to necessarily put a thing in the newspaper. And I think he did it again where he went on an unemployment line or what have you. But what I would say is that as someone who might not be incredibly world famous that well known, you can take that chance and if you fail, no harm, no foul. You’ll have another chance, right?
So it’s not like it’s all on the line at that moment. Because all you need is one big success and it trumps it all. So don’t think that it’s now or never, it’s make or break, because it’s not. All you need is one huge success. One Sinatra test that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you know what it is you’re talking about, you know how to deliver and it can literally transform your business.
Pete: Beautiful. So we’re going to keep this episode PreneurCast short because of bringing a live demonstration we’re doing right now. We wanted to go use your 45-minute show because that would just take up too much time on the wide stream. So what we normally do at the end of every episode is give everybody an easily achievable action step. Something you mentioned earlier as a way to demonstrate success is make sure in your marketing material you’re showing clients what you’ve done before.
That’s another way of demonstrating the success you’ve had; that White House example you gave. So if you’re an accountant, maybe you’re a roof installer, you’re a communications company, whatever you are, try and communicate to future prospects and clients other clients and past wins you’ve had because that’s another form of proof and demonstration.
Rich: It’s thinking about what do your prospects, clients or customers believe would be so much more difficult than their situation, their problem? And do you have anything in your past that is more difficult than the norm? If you have that, then share that. If you don’t have that, maybe you need to look for that.
Pete: Beautiful. Well, Rich thank you so much for coming on PreneurCast this week.
Rich: My pleasure. It’s an honor.
Pete: Thanks for having me on your live stream. And we’ll be back to regular scheduled programming on PreneurCast next week. Dom and I will be back in the studio doing our usual 45-minute episodes for the show nights. As always the transcripts, the links to Rich’s site, to the book we mentioned PreneurMedia.tv. See you guys next week on PreneurCast.
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Links:
Online:
http://www.strategicprofits.com/ – Rich Schefren’s site
Books:
Made to Stick – Chip and Dan Heath
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