By becoming a RecEx, and producing Expert Proof Materials (EPM), our main aim is helping our clients to invert the typical sales process – or at least pave the sales path to make it smooth going.
What is the stereotypical sales process? The first and most basic version is the lone salesman, out trudging the road and knocking on doors. If Ms. Prospect has just a few minutes, we can introduce her to a product or service that will – ah, another door closed in our face. We trudge to the next door and try again.
Even if we’ve defined a target market for ourselves, prospecting for new customers is essentially a one-to-many guessing game. We attempt to ascertain several companies or individuals that might be interested in what we’re offering, and then we go and try to get them to listen to our sales pitch. For the few who listen, we attempt to make a sale.
In our society today, many people (most, I’d say) hate being sold to. However, we love to buy!
So how does the owner of a company, or any sales person selling a product or service, come out on top? By using EPM to turn the sales process on it’s head, and make it become a buying process.
Here’s a warning note: the sales process overall does not disappear. Becoming a RecEx and disseminating EPM adds the buying process tool to the mix. Like any tool, it’s meant to make your work easier.
What exactly do we mean my “inverting the sales process,” or “turning the sales process on it’s head?” By using EPM to make first contact, instead of the one (salesperson) to many (prospects) ratio, the prospects self-select and contact the salesperson instead, therefore making it a many (prospects) to one (salesperson) ratio. The idea is to use your EPM as the tools to sell you as the RecEx, and the prospects should really come to you for the most knowledge, best product or service, and so forth. From your standpoint, you’re turning the “I need to sell you something” process into a “We want to buy from you” process.
Many people don’t want to be “sold to.” Look at the typical reaction of almost anyone entering a retail establishment – a sales associate approaches and the customer nearly yells, “I’m just looking!” A salesperson calls you at work, and you avoid them because. . . you don’t want to be “sold to.”
But by introducing ourselves not as a person here to sell you something, but rather to educate you, to help you become a more informed and better consumer, we re-position ourselves from “salesperson” into “helper.” The EPM we get out there contain links to more and better education tools, and eventually to the RecEx themselves, so that the buying process can happen as naturally and easily as possible.