268 – September 25
“Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.”—Thomas Edison
“Chellie, your workshops are always full! How do you do it?” exclaimed my friend, Marti, at the networking meeting. “Would you be willing to coach me on your sales techniques?”
I said that I would be happy to, and arranged to meet with her. Soon after that, two other people approached me at the same meeting for the same reason, and I said to myself, “Sounds like I should do another workshop!” and the $ecrets of $elling seminar was born.
The class was designed to be a three-hour session on Saturday morning, and I charged $65 for it. My thought was that everyone who wanted to come to my Financial Stress Reduction Workshops but didn’t like the $1,000 price tag, would flock to this class. I figured this would be an easy enrollment!
Nothing could have been farther from the truth. I quickly discovered that it took just as much time, trouble, energy, networking and follow-up to enroll someone for a $65 class as it did for a $1000 class. Then I did the math: It took fifteen sales class enrollments to equal one financial class enrollment. So I did fifteen times the work and spent fifteen times as many hours to make the same money, plus I gave up my Saturdays. More hours—less money. Not my concept of smart.
I had forgotten that another seminar leader once told me, “The more you charge for your workshop, the easier a time you will have enrolling it.” I have found this to be true. There is a perception that if it’s expensive, it must be good. I was either going to have to raise the price of the sales class, or stop teaching it. Since all the extra work was taking a toll on my time and energy (and I hated giving up my Saturdays!), I decided to put the sales class aside for the time being.
Stop right now and do your math. Each task, each product, each business has a profitability factor. Look for the one that is taking the least time and bringing in the most money. And do more of that.
Today’s Affirmation:
“I work smarter and richer every day!”
Once I had a client in my class who was a seminar leader. She complained to me that she filled up her 6-week seminar but she still wasn’t making any money.
I asked her how many people she had enrolled and much she was charging. She said she had 10 people and charged $125.
I said, “Well that’s not enough is it?”
She said, “No, that’s the problem.”
So I asked her, “Who picked that number?”
She stopped in her tracks, looked at me and said, “I guess I did…”
“Right. So pick a different number!” I exclaimed.
People often charge low prices in the mistaken belief that price is the determining factor in whether or not people will choose to buy their product or service. But that isn’t it. It’s the value of the benefits provided and the urgency the consumer feels to have these benefits that creates the sale. As a salesperson, you have to get really good at helping people get past the pain of paying the price to seeing the pleasure of the benefits they will receive after the purchase.
