Educating is selling
Educating may be the pinnacle of selling.
Educating the world at large, your target market, referral sources, clients, and prospective clients about why they need what you can expertly do for them is the highest and purest form of marketing.
An education approach really helps with need recognition. If your market doesn’t know it has a problem – or isn’t aware of the extent or impact of the problem it confronts – it isn’t ready to buy expertise to solve the problem.
The educating or teaching angle has much to commend it when it comes to selling:
- It will help establish you as an authority.
If you’re up to educating others, you will earn respect as an authoritative source of knowledge and information. - It will help you form strong relationships.
Based on early life experience, we are pre-programmed to love those from whom we learn – most of us have fond memories of teachers, and other adults, who taught us from their skill base. - It will help you overcome paralysing fear.
By educating a client or prospective client about a business problem, and options to mitigate, you’ll minimise their anxiety and reduce tendencies to bury heads in sand or simply “dig in”. - It will help you parade your success in advising others with similar challenges.
You’ll be able to cite anecdotes, share case studies where you’ve helped others, and powerfully showcase your expertise. - It will help you sell “comfortably”.
Sharing knowledge and educating others is a lot softer sell than “hard selling” – and you’ll be comfortable doing it. - It will help you to powerfully connect with new prospective clients and referral sources.
Many of the most desirable prospective clients and sources of work don’t have time for a sales spiel – but they probably have time to learn something to their benefit.
Without stretching the analogy too far, educators are some of the most important and successful salespeople: they constantly sell ideas, the value of learning, and expert knowledge.
Take a few leaves from their book and leverage opportunities to share your knowledge and skills by educating others – prospective and existing clients, referral sources, and your network at large.
Your success indicator of the educating is selling approach will be that your market recognises its needs and learns to like what you do and then buy what you do!
If you need help to educate and sell your clients on the results and value your expertise can deliver, please get in touch.
Select articles
Feature article
Tender readability – tips to improve your tender presentation and some tender presentation no-nos
Tender readability remains a problem for some in the 21st century. I still see submission documents that cling to a handful of really old hat tender presentation and formatting techniques. I suspect this is because some of these ‘rules’ are viewed as being more appropriate to a ‘formal’ style of document such as a tender. […]
