Episode 2: Increase Value to Increase Sales

Hello, and welcome. This is Alex Branning, your marketing coach. Today we’re going to be talking about increasing value to increase sales. I’m going to share with you how you can not only change your mindset to bring in more leads, but also change your offer so that you can charge more for every single customer that comes in the door, and keep your customers in the door by providing them massive value after the sale.

I’m excited to talk about this. I know that you guys are looking forward to learning how you can increase your leads and grow from each sale. I’m going to give you examples that I’ve done in my own business and things that I’ve learned from my coaches.

The first thing I want to talk about is providing more value to the market; providing more value to your marketplace. Now, this requires that you know exactly who you’re talking to and what their pain points are. You do that by figuring out, okay, who is my ideal client? I talked about this a lot in my Level 10 group coaching program. Who is my ideal client? For me, I have really narrowed it down and my ideal client is a real estate agent who is working by herself, struggling to make ends meet, and is willing to invest in herself. She’s looking to build a team of which I would be the marketer on her team, but she wants to maintain control. In other words, she doesn’t want somebody to come in there and start calling the shots. She wants to make sure that she knows exactly what’s going on and that she’s in charge, and she knows what we’re doing. So that’s my ideal client.

What pain points does my ideal client have? She is not generating enough leads, she’s having a hard time running her business by herself. There are things that she comes across in business where she just doesn’t know how to handle certain situations, like for example, her listing appointment presentation; the list goes on and on. So once I’ve figured out what her pain points are, I can then provide more value. When she reaches out to me, whoever this real estate agent is, I could just offer her “done for you” services that I have. But I provide value to my clients by doing my very best to address all the different pain points that they have in their business.

For example, my automation webinar where I teach you how to automate your business when it comes to lead gen, follow up, etc. That is a massive value to my ideal real estate agent client because it helps her do more and leverage her hours more. I help her with the lead generation; with the giveaway funnel system and the free funnels that I provide for my real estate agent clients. I also help her with the one-on-one, with the group coaching programs that I have, with my marketing program, the Level 10, and then the Double It program where I teach her how to double her profit. And that’s open … if you’re reading this and that sounds good to you, both of those are now open. So I can help her in so many different ways, and that’s going to keep her around longer and it’ll allow me to generate more revenue from that client because I’m touching on more things.

But when it comes to bringing value to my marketplace, I need to attract those real estate agents into my world, and how do I do that? Well, if I was just running Facebook ads, that’s one thing and that works really well, and I’m able to get leads on a daily basis using my Facebook ads where I offer a free lead magnet to my target clients and bring them into my world. However, this podcast is me bringing value to the market. I’m now delivering massive value in the forms of free marketing lessons every single week. I’m also writing blog posts, doing Facebook live videos. I have a Facebook group where I drop real estate marketing ideas. So there’s a lot that I’m bringing to that real estate agent market. And the reason why I’m doing that is because I’m looking to grow my business in a big way in that marketplace. And I know that if I want to grow in a big way, I have to provide in a big way.

And so I look – and I try to ask myself if I am a real estate agent client, number one, what are the platforms that I use to get information? And when I did a survey, I found that most of them like watching YouTube videos or blog posts. Many of them also listen to podcasts, and so this is a great way for me to reach them. But it’s also, what are their needs? And so I ask people when I talk to them, how can I help you? And then I try to fulfill those needs. And if I can’t fill those needs then I want to introduce them to people who can, which brings in affiliate marketing, how I increase the revenue from some of my real estate agent clients. I introduce them to programs and software tools that will help them in exchange for a small piece of the sale.

I’m increasing my value to the real estate agent by answering as many pain points as possible to the highest degree of excellence that I can. And if I cannot provide that degree of excellence, I introduce them to someone who can. So the question for you is, what value do you bring to your market, and how are they going to find you? Here’s the deal. If you just rely on referrals, your business will grow if you have a referral system in place. However, if you are relying providing content or bringing them in through other forms of advertising, you need to ask yourself what can I do to make it easier for my ideal client to find me, and what can I do to make it so that they can trust me more? And that really comes down to providing value.

When people get on the phone with me, they have a really good idea of who I am, what I do, how I can help them, and the different areas where I, myself, can assist them. And so when I get on the phone, they’re usually excited to talk with me. And if your prospects are excited to talk with you, you have a very good chance of closing the sale. Does that make sense? So I want you to think about what value can you bring to the market.

Now, let’s talk about my second main point which is all about increasing the amount that you get per sale. You have to give more value in your offers. First, before I really dive into giving more value in your offers so that you can get more money per sale, I want you to have a mindset shift on what it is that you are selling. You are not selling products; you are not selling services; you are selling offers. Here’s what that looks like for me.

I provide website hosting. I love hosting people’s websites for multiple reasons. Number one, it is a very passive revenue generator for me. Number two, we always attach a maintenance agreement to the websites that we host. In other words, they’re not just paying us to leave their website on our server and make sure that it stays up. We could do that, but there’s not a lot of value there. I’d have to start competing with the Go Daddys of the world who are doing it for two bucks a month.

I also provide maintenance, which means that any time they call me and they ask for a change on their website, unless it’s something extravagant, it just gets done. Now, if you are a small business owner and you know that all you have to do is call your web host and ask for some changes to be made to your website and it doesn’t cost you anything, how taken care of do you feel? How much comfort do you have in that level of service? A lot.

And so my clients feel comfortable; they feel like I’m on their team; they know that I have their back; they know they’re not going to get nickel-and-dimed on small changes. There’s just a lot of comfort, they feel secure. And they know that the Branning Group as a whole is on their side. And so they feel good about that.

Now that’s a lot of value, so what am I able to do? I’m able to charge more per month. So my hosting plans start at 50 bucks a month because they come with those maintenance agreements. And I have no problem getting people to pay it because I offer more value; because I have more to give. So if you have a service that you’re providing and you want to charge more, what can you do to enrich those offers? I’ll give you another idea.

One of the things that I started doing with my website clients that come in and they want a new website. We started 17 years ago as a purely web development firm, and now we’ve grown into marketing and doing the other services that we have. But a lot of people still know us for our websites that we build because they’re everywhere. We’ve literally built thousands of them.

Somebody calls us up and says they want a website. One of the things that I started doing was I started giving them an option of setting up a one half-hour or an hour coaching call with me – however long I think they’ll need  – and I offer that with the website package that I provide for them. Now if these small businesses are struggling to make ends meet and they want to make sure that their website’s profitable, they have a lot of questions about the direction for their business. And they know that they need a new website, but they also … they’re in this big place where they’re about to go through a transition, that transition is their new online presence, and they just want to make sure that they’re going the right direction.

When I say I will give you that coaching session at no additional charge – and normally an hour coaching session with me is 250 bucks – so that’s something that’s given to them for free. Number one, they feel like they have good value. They know that after the conversation’s over they’ll have a marketing plan set up. And the other guys that they’re talking to, to get websites from, are not offering that. They’re not offering marketing coaching. Most of them, because they’re just not marketers; they’re website developers and they’re really good at website developing, but they don’t have the marketing mindset that the Branning Group brings to the table. And so the other people are now offering only one service, whereas I, within my offer that’s price-competitive to what they’re getting, they’re getting multiple different services provided with the one proposal. So that’s a big game changer.

Another way that I provide a lot more value to my clients that come in the door is I show them how we can build them a mobile app to help grow their business and social media marketing. How does this apply to you? You’re like, “Alex, that’s great but I’m not in the marketing business.” I want you to think about other ways that you can serve your clients with more.

For example, if you are a heating and air conditioning company, you can say, “By the way … every single time that we come out here, it costs you this much per hour. However, if you sign up for our service and maintenance agreement for the annual price of X, then every time we come out it’s significantly lower or it includes these free checkups.” Whatever makes sense for you. We don’t want to hurt ourselves here while we’re providing more value. But your goal is to get these customers to pay you more for the services that you’re providing and to come back to you for service when they need it. So figure out a way for you to put in more services, more opportunities for them to work with you, and ask for more money because you’re providing more value.

You know, I’m not the cheapest website development company and I don’t need to be. We do, we probably get a website a day, which is just phenomenal for the industry that we’re in. And the reason is because of our reputation, the quality that we deliver, and the additional stuff that we provide for all of our clients. I’m not competing with the guy working out of his mom’s house. I’m not competing with the big, custom development house. I am a marketing firm that also provides website development services. I’m able to carve out my own little niche in the market, and because of that, I’m able to charge a good amount.

Now again, we’re not the most expensive in the market. Usually when people are pricing us out, we’re right smack dab in the middle. But because of the additional value that we provide, we get a lot more clients than most web development companies. For us as well, with these new coaching programs that we’re starting, we’re also providing massive value. And one of the things that I’ve found is that the more that I’m able to give people a push with their marketing plan, the more that they trust me. And with trust, a lot of magic can happen in the marketplace.

People who are my clients and my coaching students, I’m able to create a deeper relationship with them. I’m able to learn more about them and what their goals and dreams are, what their visions are for this year and beyond. And with that knowledge, I can give them a much better marketing plan than somebody who just does website development. Does that make sense? So, if they’re on the phone call with them and they talk to him for 20 minutes, they’re not going to have all the insight that I have because they’ve been a coaching student of mine for over a year. So it’s another way for me to provide value and give good guidance.

For you, figure out how to put more into your offers. Figure out how to provide more. And again, when you start thinking, “Okay, I’m not providing a service, I’m providing an offer,” an offer immediately means that there are more things included in the proposal than just the one, single service or product. So when you do that, now you’re increasing the value of what it is that you’re selling, and you’re able to stick out to your customers, to your prospect as they’re pricing out what decision they’re going to make.

We’ve talked about providing more value to the market. It’s all about putting a ton of stuff out there that’s high quality and there’s excellence, and addressing as many pain points as possible for your ideal client. We also talked about putting more value in your offers and changing up your mindset so you’re not providing a product or a service, you’re providing an offer. You’re selling an offer.

The third thing I want to talk to you about is increasing your value to your current customers. As small business owners we depend on our marketing bringing in new people, and we depend on our current clients bringing in new people. Our lead flow has to be from multiple sources. But if you’re customer doesn’t feel like they’re being taken care of, they’re not going to refer you. If your customer doesn’t remember you, they’re not going to refer you. If your customer feels like they just got a satisfactory experience, they’re not going to refer you.

Your customer needs to feel like they got a monumental, excellent experience so they feel like they’re taken care of and they’re secure in their relationship with you. That’s when they’ll refer you. If your prospect feels like, if your customer feels like they got a good value, or if they feel like you were right what they expected as far as the value and the timelines and all that, you’re not going to get a lot of referrals from that.

But if you provide excellent value; if they feel like they should pay you more. At the Branning Group it’s not uncommon for us to get gifts from our clients as a thank you for providing the services that we’ve done, whether it’s a new website or an app, or the social media marketing. People send us gifts. Why do they do that? Because they feel like they owe us something because the price that they’re paying me, there’s no way that this is enough. Now I’m not saying that as a boast; I’m just telling you that’s the amount of value that we bring to our customers on a regular basis.

Our customers love referring us to their friends because they know that we’re going to take good care of them and they’ll look like a hero for setting their friends up with a good marketing firm. So are you doing that? Is that something that your customers say about you? Do they say, “Wow, they gave such massive value, I feel great about referring them”? If they don’t, then you really need to look at what you’re doing. Do you really need to look at the level of customer service that you’re providing? So I’ll give you some ideas.

1. Regular Check-In Emails. You can do this on an automated fashion using email software, which I highly recommend. You could do it using a text message; that goes a long way. A phone call. I mean, look, if you’re in a place right now where you’re like, “Man, I really need to generate more business,” the best way to do that is with the people that you have already gotten as customers. And if they’re not ready to buy more, then ask them to refer somebody who is a good fit for you. It’s all about creating that value and that customer experience where they feel like they almost have to refer you to people because you’ve done such a phenomenal job.
2. Connect your customers with people that can help them. In other words, if you know that your customer needs business cards for example, connect them with a great printer. And this is going to accomplish two things. Number one, you’re providing them with a great connection that they’ll be able to use for a long time. Number two, that printer is going to feel really grateful for what you just did, and they may refer people to you as a thank you. So you’re creating a great relationship by providing more value to the person that has already been a customer to you, and you’re providing a referral to another business that is probably talking to your ideal clients.

So I want you think of value … in closing, I want you to think of value like this. Number one, provide more value to the marketplace. You can do this using fun, live events; creating good content; creating a networking opportunity. You could provide more value in your offers. Again, you’re not selling your product or service, you are selling an offer. So include multiple things in there that make them feel taken care of and make your proposal, your invoice stand out amongst the others. And increase your value to your current customers. This is going to get them to come back, it’s going to create referral opportunities for you.

There’s a book that I want to recommend that you read on this, and that is “DotCom Secrets.” And in that book Russell Brunson talks about the “value ladder.” I’m going to give you a link so you can grab that book for free; you’ll just have to pay shipping. And in that book, he talks about a “value ladder,” he talks about a lot of other things related to internet marketing. But really pay attention to the “value ladder” chapter in that book. If you need help with this, I want to give you an offer. If you go to alexbranning.com/coaching; if you need help creating some more value for your customers, for your audience, or for your prospects, I’d love to walk you through that and what it looks like for your specific business. You can hire me to coach you for a half-hour or an hour, it’s up to you.

I also would like to invite you to join my Level 10 group. In the Level 10 marketing coaching program, I teach people on a weekly basis what I’m learning and what I’m going through. And every single Friday we have an ask me anything call, which means that you can literally ask me anything that’s going on in your business and I will answer it live on the call. So Level 10 is only $30 a month at the time that I’m recording this, so I highly recommend that you check that out. Go to alexbranning.com/level10; so you can check that out. I would love to have you in the group.

Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It would be great if you could leave me a review on iTunes or Google Play, wherever you are listening to this podcast so that I can read it and get your feedback and take it into consideration and implementation for the next time. So this is Alex Branning. I am your marketing coach. Thank you so much for joining me, and I look forward to chatting with you next time in a week. Talk soon.

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