Monday, July 18, 2011

I'm Engaged and You Aren't Engaging

I'm engaged, yeah! While I don't think you want to hear all about how I got engaged (Grand Cayman, dinner on the beach, harpist playing Wonderful Tonight, and a dream bling ring), I'm sure you want to hear about this.

As a future bride, I've been receiving solicitations via phone, email and snail mail. Invitations this, photographers that, venues, caterers, and flowers, OH MY! It's quite overwhelming, so in the massive landfill of wedding solicitations, it takes a lot to grab my attention.

About a week ago, I received an envelope in the mail that did just that. It not only grabbed my attention, it choked it! When I opened the envelope I found a nicely, tri-folded piece of normal white printing paper with blue, purple and black ALL-CAPS text, exclaiming to me:

"ATTENTION: FUTURE BRIDES
COME CHECK OUT THE BLOW-OUT SALE OF THE YEAR"

As I read down the rest of the 8x11 flyer, I started to realize a few things:

No phone number.
No address.
No email address.
No web address.
No contact name.

It wasn't until I read the flyer for the 5th time that I caught the name of the company. Are you dying to know who it was? More about that later.

My point is, I'm engaged! And you, Ms. ALL-CAPS, Multi-Color Font, Flyer Maker Extraordinaire, are not engaging me. You're piece offers NO value. It doesn't even offer simple contact information. What if I, for some silly reason, want to do business with you? Who do I call? Where do I go?

This flyer was an opportunity for "Bridal Company X" to engage me and they failed, miserably!

So, how do you engage the engaged (or anyone for that matter)? I have three easy ways:

1. Make it about them. Newly engaged people (primarily the bride-to-be) love soaking up wedding anything. It's what is most important in their lives at that moment. Your job, when attempting to engage a prospect or customer, is to find out what is most important to them. It's never about you, it never was. Businesses are built to create products or services for other people. When you work with a servant mindset, to help others first, you'll find that more people want to engage with you.

2. Make it easy for them. The biggest problem with this gorgeous flyer was that it didn't make it easy for me to find the company. I honestly couldn't find the company name until I re-read the flyer again while writing this article - NOT GOOD. And I just realized (literally, right now!) that there are no dates for this fabulous sale! How am I supposed to find further information or answers to my questions? When you are engaging with your prospects or customers, make it easy for them to contact you. Make it easy for them to understand your message. Make it easy for them to do business with you!

3. Make it valuable to them. This is the trickiest on the list because value is in the eye of the beholder. What is valuable to me, future bride, is different even to my fiance, to my mom, and to my dad. When trying to engage your prospects or customers the easiest way is to talk in terms of their perceived value. How do you know what they think is "value". Easy! Ask them. Use power questions to uncover their needs, wants, and hot buttons. This will lead you to what value you can bring to the engagement.

Wedding bells aside, being engaged both in life and business is fun. I love to become engaged with a company. All they have to do is make it easy, full of value, and all about ME!

Want to know who "Bridal Company X" is? Go to my Sales Barista Facebook Page to see a picture of the flyer and I'll let you try to find the company name!

I'm your Double-Tall, Non-Fat, No-Whip Sales Barista, how can I help you, help yourself?

Stephanie Melish, one of the few, hand-selected, Gitomer-Certified Speakers is the ONLY Double-Tall, Non-Fat, No-Whip Sales Barista in the world! Stephanie trains, sells, and speaks to companies and associations all over the country. To book Stephanie for your next event, please visit www.GitomerCertified.com or contact the friendly folks at Buy Gitomer via email or by calling 704-333-1112.

13 comments:

  1. Congrats on becoming engaged!! And great post, you would think including contact info would be a priority.

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  2. You just inspired me for my next blog. I've been uninspired and downright failed at it. Thanks for the jolt I needed!!

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  3. @ Jess - Thank you for the Congratulations! You would think :)

    @ Deserae - Glad I could inspire you. Please send me a link to your blog post, would love to read it.

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  4. Great article. I try to send this message to people but my methods are not as smooth as your writing. I'd love to reprint your article in my e-zine next week including a link to this blog post. Please.

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  5. @John - sorry I missed to your call to our office. YES! please reprint and send a copy to me when you do!

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  6. Congrats!!!
    I'm glad I'm not the only one who notices such things. It makes me what to nicely go to that company and say... "I know who you need to help you, ME!" :)

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  7. Congratulations on your engagement.
    I am amazed at how much time and money people spend on certain aspects of their business, but neglect their marketing and sales pieces.

    P.S. I followed the link from Sales Caffine, I plan on sharing this with my industry sales colleagues.

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  8. @Kyle - Thanks for sharing!

    @JEberhard - Exactly what I was thinking :)

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  9. Very good points, Stephanie. Thank you for your well-written posts, every one has good value in it.

    Oh, and congratulations on your engagement! You're going to be a beautiful bride!!

    Neil

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  10. Thanks, Stephanie. It's great for you to articulate a sales/marketing basic that is lost on most wedding pros. Having spent 21 years in wedding marketing I understand that most wedding pros are craftspeople, not sales people. It keeps me very busy speaking to and training wedding pros on marketing basics. They need to know how to include 3 basics into their marketing:
    1) Who are you?
    2) What's in it for me?
    3) What do you want me to do next?

    It's not second nature to them as it is to people like you and I. Kudos on a great post and your engagement.
    Alan

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  11. @ Alan - thank you for the kind words! Any wedding connections in Charlotte, NC?

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  12. Stephanie, I finally posted my latest blog. Thanks for letting me reference this one! louversdeserae.blogspot.com. Happy planning!!

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