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The following excerpt is from Dan S. Kennedy and Dustin Mathews’ book No BS Guide to Powerful Presentations. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes
Persuading people can be extremely difficult, just difficult, comparatively easy or very easy. One of the things that moves the needle on that scale is the offer itself. A lot of people do not understand this. They worry over every other part of a presentation, particularly the visual elements — slides, graphics, video, stories and themselves. Ultimately, people buy what they really want and do what they really want to do. When an offer connects with that, it alone can drive extraordinary results from an un-ordinary, just serviceable presentation.
Related: The 12 Parts of a Successful Signature Presentation
When you have an irresistible offer advantage, you can:
- Sell without having to hard sell;
- Sell at a premium price instead of a price like your competitors or at discounts; and
- Attract new clients, patients or customers easily.
I created our Irresistible Offer Architecture® out of a need to have a blueprint that would enable any speaker or presenter to offer any product or service to any audience anywhere, by any media and get a desirable result. Further, I wanted it to be “fill in the blank” quick, because frankly, a lot of people find themselves getting opportunities to speak and giving presentations without the time or without taking time to properly prepare. This blueprint or template allows you to put an offer together on the fly.
There are nine keys to Irresistible Offer Architecture®, which I’ve organized into three triangles:
Triangle 1: Hot buttons
Different people have different hot buttons. A hot button is the one that, when pushed, sets off the strongest possible “I want that — and I want it now — regardless of what I have to do or pay” response.
Related: Why Every Personal Brand Needs a Target Audience
Let’s assume you have a product or service that’s just not connecting with the hot buttons of your audience members and you can’t figure out why. I always challenge myself with this: I suppose that no one in my audience will be hot-button motivated by any part of my product, service or offer. Maybe I’m offering colonoscopy exams, or I’m a CPA offering a second-opinion review of your past three years’ tax returns. They have benefits and benefits of benefits, but still, they aren’t exciting. I’ll turn to the bonus. One of the most famous examples of this, from TV commercials — which are presentations — comes from Sports Illustrated magazine. A great presentation about Sports Illustrated might sell an acceptable number of subscriptions, but offering the “football phone” (yes, before smartphones, in the days of landlines) sold an amazing number of subscriptions. People who didn’t really care about the magazine couldn’t resist the football-shaped phone. Keywords: couldn’t resist. This ties to Triangle 2.
Triangle 2: Added value
Everything has intrinsic value. But a truly powerful presentation of any product or service focuses on personal and emotional reasons to have it. Its value is made by those things. For example, we know that scarcity or assumed or perceived scarcity causes people to make buying decisions faster and to pay more than they would if buying in a calmer environment. Go to an auction and watch this happen all around you. You’ll even hear bidding stall, often at a right price, then start up again in a renewed frenzy when just one person surrenders to pressure and bids a new, higher number.
Marketers talk about price-value equations. Picture a two-sided scale, with price on one side and value on the other. When value feels like it’s much, much higher than price, people in an audience surrender to an irresistible price-value equation. They literally sit there watching, saying to themselves, “No, I’m not going to buy this. No, I’m still not going to buy this. No, I’m s-t-i-l-l not going to buy this. Oh, OK, gee, how could I not buy this?”
There are two ways to get this effect.
The obvious one is deep discounting against a real or artificially inflated price. The trouble with this is that it can cost you serious money or, if artificial, can compromise your credibility. Some presenters also feel badly about the tactic, and any negative feelings you hold about what you’re doing will be smelled by an audience. You can use this, but use it cautiously.
The other one I like better is “perpetual contrast.” For example, my real estate training course is $1,000, but it will help you become a real estate millionaire in 36 months or less, and it’s as complete and systematic as a McDonald’s® franchise that would cost you $250,000. The contrast is $1,000 vs. $1 million, and $1,000 vs. $250,000. You can also contrast to trivial items: That same $1,000 system that makes you a millionaire in three years costs just 91 cents a day, and you can’t make a Starbucks stop once a day for that.
In our field, with seminars, we can often make a case tied to nominal income increase. If, for example, a seminar carries a price tag of $5,000, and you earn — or intend to earn — $200,000 a year, the fee is only a measly 2.5 percent. We say, “Do you really think you can go through this entire seminar and not go home empowered to increase your income by at least 2.5 percent?”
Triangle 3: Reassurance
The number-one reason somebody in your audience doesn’t accept your offer is that they remember a time or times when they believed somebody like you about some comparable promises and feel they were let down or deceived. This can explain why 100 people go to the trouble of coming to watch your presentation as a webinar and stay all the way to the end, but only 20 purchase your product.
People can get reassurance several different ways. One is by your guarantee or guarantees.
Related: How to Target the Right Audience in 5 Simple Steps
Another is a bigger reason they identify with. An example is the business donating a percentage of sales to a charity or worthy cause the audience has affinity for — like The Wounded Warrior Project, to which boomers and seniors have affinity, or to animal and animal rescue charities. Or maybe your business has a mission, or a movement, so people are supporting and are part of something bigger and more important than just the transaction. This can provide a good story, halo-effect credibility, pictures and video for your presentations.
Another way people get reassurance is by identifying with a bigger reason (for doing business with you). In the seminar world where we do a lot of work, it’s not uncommon for the seminar promoter to let certain people attend an event free if they get two or three of their “tribe” to pay the fee to attend. An audience can be motivated by some secondary opportunity they must first own and use the offered product or service to get.
These triangles connect with each other, and when you can use all three, you make it very hard for people to say no to your offer, which is the goal!
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