Had a chat with Susan Austin yesterday, as we were putting together a memo to announce the Website Clinic class with Dean Jackson.
And it occured to us, there is a difference between making a “warm” offer vs. a “cold” offer. Warm being to people that already know/trust you, cold being to people that do *not* already know/trust you.
With a cold offer you need to provide lots of information on the value/benefits of what you are selling… people do not know you so you are selling on the merit of the product alone.
With a warm offer you don’t necessarily need to provide as much information as you already have a relationship in place. For example, when Susan sent a memo to her r&d team about the Website Clinic class, she pretty much just needed to say “Dean is great, come to this call”. She gave a bit of info as you can see, but not alot. And people are signing up because they know/trust Susan.
Of course, they must be interested in what you are actually offering. If someone does not want to learn how to improve their website to get clients then they wont make the purchase, no matter how great the relationship is.
Kinda reminds me of that super long website I was whining about in a previous post. They would need to provide alot of information because most people coming to that site would be *cold*… now I get it! Although I still think its too long… 😉
The moral of this story? Build relationships with people and it will be easier to sell stuff to them along the way. There are a variety of ways to do this, one of the more common is to do a newsletter and provide great value as people get to know you… (hint hint).
I could be totally off my rocker here, but it seems to make sense. What do you think?