How to Pre-sell Effectively in Todays Market

Pre-selling is all about building relationships and trust. Consumers see every type of advertisement imaginable and they are quickly turned off by the sales copy form of advertisement. People don't like to be pressured and they don't like purchasing from companies and sales reps that they don't trust. In order to compete you have to gain your prospects interest through effective pre-selling. You need to make your words do the selling by writing a good article or review on whatever product that you are promoting. The key is to familiarize your prospects on what you are offering by pointing out the benefits and also informing them of the negatives. Of course, the benefits are going to far out weigh the negatives because you wouldn't promote a product that you don't believe in or use yourself. By doing this you are being objective and building trust. You are showing that you are human and honest which starts the relationship building. To further build on the trust you need to give away something of value. This is a key point to the pre-selling process. The competition is banging on their door, they have done business with the competition in the past, and now it is up to you to win them over. The give away should not be a price war this will defeat the whole purpose of pre-selling and could cause you to go broke. Your job in the process is to give away free information and steer clear of selling. The vendor will do the selling once you have your prospects in an open to buy frame of mind.

Now that you have an idea on what pre-selling is all about you need to work on a marketing strategy. The obvious first step would be determining who your exact target audience is and how they will benefit the most from your product or service? Male, female, young, old, single, married, etc. If you already have an e-mail list you can send out a survey to narrow down your prospects interests. There are numerous ways of defining your audience such as : blogs, e-zines, and social networks. Off line you can do flyers, surveys at the doctors office, local supermarket, banks, etc. One important point to remember is the 80/20 principle. 80% of revenue comes from 20% of customer base. So you need to focus on the 20% keeping in mind that a happy customer will talk to friends and colleagues and that is the best pre-seller ever.

The next step is what drives your target audience crazy? What are their pet peeves? What do they search on line for the most? Once you narrow this down you will understand their needs and this is where the give away comes in to play. You now have determined your target audience and in your pre-sell article you offer free relevant information that will be useful to them. This could be anything from a free e-book, free consultation, to free DVD. As long as it is relevant and addresses their peeve or craziness discussed above. Think like you are the customer and what would be beneficial to you. In doing this you have shown that you are worthy of their trust and gained their respect . They are now in an open to buy frame of mind and you have gained a lifetime customer because you pre-sold them effectively.