Charlie Cook's MArketing for Success Insider's Club

Converting Sales

How To Sell To Skinflints

By Charlie Cook   |   June 23, 2009

In this economy it seems like everybody has become a skinflint!

Money is tight and a lot of people are worried. While there have always been skinflints out there, it seems like more of your previously free spending buyers have morphed into skinflints.

What can you do to your small business marketing to get skinflints to buy and get your profits back on track in this economy?

Find out how to increase your profits in this economy >>

My Dad The Skinflint
I grew up with a dad who was always looking for ways to cut costs. He’d turn out the lights to save on electricity, often before the rest of us had left the room.

During the winter, he’d turn the heat down to 50 degrees at 9 p.m. and I learned to sleep under piles of blankets.

When gas first hit a dollar a gallon back in the late 1960s my Dad focused on getting the most miles he could out of a gallon of gas. He’d shift into fourth gear at 20 mph. Even before cars like the Prius ever existed he was getting over 30 miles per gallon.

Even when I take my Dad out for a meal, he stills asks for the cheapest beer they’ll serve. Last time I think the waiter must have gone into a storage room and dusted off a Pabst they’d had sitting around for years.

My Dad ascribed his money-saving ways to his Scottish heritage and now your customers are blaming their reluctance to buy on the economy.

What You Should Know
My Dad was a skinflint by nature. It wasn’t that we were perpetually broke or in dire straits. He saw saving money as a game and took great pride in seeing how little he could spend on electricity, heating oil, gas and even beer.

Did that mean he didn’t spend money or spend big on certain items?

Of course not. Over the years my Dad has spent large when he wanted a sailboat, antique furniture, or the latest Toyota Prius with all the bells and whistles.

What you should know is that even people who are skinflints by nature, are happy to spend money when they want something. And that’s just as true for people who are temporary skinflints due to economic worries.

Find out how to overcome your prospects reluctance to buy

Even in today’s recession-racked economy people are buying. Sales of BlackBerries, iPhones and other smart phones are up 25% in 2009. And even people on tight budgets are buying including job seekers.

They’re buying because the connectedness that smart phones provide has a high value for a growing number of people.

How To Get Skinflints To Buy
Are you getting more and more objections when you try and close the sale? Are more and more prospects telling you, price is the problem, it’s not the right time, they’ll need to think about it?

The one thing you need to know is that whenever your prospects seem to be waffling, appear to be morphing into skinflint mode, the problem 9 times out of 10 isn’t that they don’t need or want your product or service.

When prospects take on skinflint characteristics, what they’re telling you is they don’t understand the value of your product or service. And it’s rare that price is the issue either.

If my 90-year old Dad still drove, you couldn’t sell him a top rated Nissan Sentra or a Ford Focus for around $15,000. But you could sell him similar sized gas sipping Toyota Prius for $22,000. That’s $7,000 more!

The small business marketing secret to getting your prospects to spend more

Your Buyers Are The Same
While I think of my Dad as unique, he’s just like your buyers in one way. He’ll spend money on things he wants and perceives have a high value to him.

If you want to generate more sales in this economy, use the same marketing strategies that get skinflints to buy. Appeal to their wants and clarify the value in their terms. Do this and you could easily make this one of your most profitable years ever.

– Charlie

P.S. There is plenty of money to be made in this economy but it’s not going to fall into your lap. To get it you need to change the way you market your small business and how you close the sale.

Find out what works to close more sales in this economy

P.P.S. Visualize more clients buying from you. Imagine more people chasing you, calling you and wanting to work with you.

Sound too good to be true?

All you need to do to make it a reality is take action and discover how to eliminate the obstacles to sales.

Discover what works to bring in more buyers and more profits

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What’s The Impact of Advertising on Sales?

By Charlie Cook   |   November 2, 2006

“I am going to be an expert witness on the impact of an ad campaign. The ad has already proven to show a great ROI with testimony that the campaign increased sales by 39% from the Director of Marketing. The problem is that I need general information on what ads should expect to generate as a ROI from high to low. To show the nexus between sales and advertisnig. Any advice?” – Ed

Any ad that can increase business by 39% is a success! Typically most ads bring in far less new business.

What’s the key measurement of ROI?

Cost of sales minus the cost of the ad campaign. If the numbers are positive then the campaign was a success, if negative, it needs rethinking, rewriting and redesign.

Could an ad bring in an even higher ROI than 39%?

Yes it’s possible. I wrote one newspaper ad at the beginning of my career for which I only charged the client $450. In the first 3 weeks the ad generated over $180,000 in sales, tripling the client’s business within a month. I’ve also rewritten clients web sites and increased their sales by 4-15 times.

What’s the nexus between sales and advertising?

A successful advertising campaign pre-sells the prospect minimizing the effort that needs to go into sales. I’ve detailed this approach in ‘Eliminating Obstacles to Sales‘. Use this link to get the details >>

– Charlie Cook, Small Business Marketing That Works

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I’m Getting Lousy Leads, What Do I Do to Improve My Lead Generation?

By Charlie Cook   |   May 3, 2005

“My company provides me with 18 leads each week, they even schedule the appointments. All the I need to do is to make the visits to each of the companies. They problem is that few of these leads are qualified and after spending a half hour or more to get to the company I find most of these leads don’t meet the basic qualifications for our services. What do I do?” – Paul Shaw

Following up on unqualified leads is frustrating and a big waste of everyone’s time. Imagine instead that every call or appointment you made was with a prospect that was happy to see or hear from you. Imagine they were interested, already aware of your qualifications, credibility and the value of your product or service? You’d waste a lot less time, improve lead generation and close a lot more sales.

Paying others to generate leads for you is generally a waste of time and money. I use a lead generation system that each week provides me with more qualified leads than I can handle. Each lead arrives on my desk with enough information for me to determine whether the prospect is a likely match for my services and worth following up with.

Instead of accepting unqualified leads, its far more effective to put your own lead generation system” in place. Learn how to improve your lead generation with “Creating Web Sites That Sell“. – Charlie Cook

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