Chapter 3 - Your Offer

jamesmaduk.com

You have to Stake a Claim

Key Point!
Make Big Fat Claims!

In January of 1848, James Marshall had a work crew camped on the American River at Coloma near Sacramento. The crew was building a sawmill for John Sutter. On the cold, clear morning of January 24, Marshall found a few tiny gold nuggets. From those first few nuggets came one of the largest human migrations in history, as a half-million people from around the world descended upon California in search of instant wealth.

The excitement around the discovery of gold grew quickly. By the summer of 1848, outlandish stories about fabulous discoveries came back to the East Coast from the gold mines at Sutter's sawmill. In fact, everybody was talking about "Gold! Gold!" The buzz got so bad that soldiers began to desert. Ordinary citizens were fitting out trains of wagons and pack-mules to go to the mines.

What was it that caused people to act so decisively, to pack up and travel from one side of the country to the other? It was a single bold idea, a Big Fat Claim!

Selling your products and services requires that you make some claims that engage your visitors. A claim is something that follows the attention step and is part of the "interest step" in the sales process.

Your job in this interest step is to get the prospective customer to focus on what is important to them. After you have grabbed their attention, they need to know logically why they should give you any more of their time.

So how do you engage them further? How do you make sure that they will continue to give you their time?

Pull all of your research together and create a BIG FAT CLAIM.

A Big Fat Claim is engaging because it builds an image in the mind of your potential customer. They actually see, and hear themselves living as if the claim was true. If you have some good Big Fat Claims they will want to find out more about what you have to say. They are hungry to hear and see more.

Now I am not talking about an elevator pitch or features and benefits at this point. The claims that you make highlight specifically how you can provide value to your customer. Increased sales, reduced cost, saved time, higher productivity, and reduced workloads are all examples that might interest your prospect.

Every product or service that you offer should have a specific Big Fat Claim. It s a single idea that you can use as a reference point.

"We can reduce the time it takes to complete your payroll each week by 20%."
"I can show you how to save 50% on your ......"
"We can increase the number of leads you convert to sales by 25%."
"We can reduce the time you take administering your Computer Network by 20%."

Make sure every claim that you make can be backed up. Have you earned that result for a previous customer or are you making an educated guess? If you cannot back up the claim, do not make it.

Key Point!
Be Ready to Back up Your
Claims!

Common Big Fat Claim Mistakes

1. Trying to Close the Sale in your Big Fat Claim. The purpose of the Big Fat Claim is only to create interest. You want the prospect hungry to hear more of what you can do for them. If you try and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are the only solution for them, you will lose them.

2. All features, No Benefits. What is in it for them? A claim does not make reference to the features and details of your product or service. The claim contains the biggest potential benefit specific to the prospect you are talking to.

3. No Meat. It is a BIG FAT CLAIM. A claim with no substance will fail to create any interest. In addition, no interest means your visitor or prospect will tune out or click away from your site. The meatier the claim that you generate the more interest and more qualified the prospect becomes.

4. Making the Wrong Claim. This mistake is easily preventable by knowing your audience. The wrong Big Fat Claim simply will not work. The key is to know your market and how your product or service represents the ultimate solution for them.

5. Making a Generic Claim. Making a claim that is big, meaty and meets the requirement of your market is not enough. If your competitors can make the same claim or if your benefit is readily available you are wasting the customer s time. Make claims that include uniqueness and you gain a competitive advantage.

6. Unreal or General Big Fat Claims. The tabloids are filled with them. So is the SPAM e-mail you receive on a daily basis. "Make a fortune" or "earn six figures" overnight. Instead of creating the intended interest, these claims trigger doubt, disbelief and inaction. Once bitten, twice shy. If you are going to make a bold claim that you may think is questionable you can create interest by being specific, with actual numbers that also appear to be more realistic.

This interest step makes your claims important. Too many sales people make the mistake of jumping this step and try to present a solution before they have really connected and a tiny claim does not get the attention of the visitor. A wild claim with no proof sends the prospect away. A proper Big Fat Claim has to be big enough to get attention and have enough valid proof so that it is believable.

The worst thing that a small business can do is load the website with generic products and services&.just because you can. The glare of the huge Internet market can blind the small business owner. While the competition is intense, the sheer size and absence of business barriers are especially suited to a small business who maintains a niche focus and persistence.

Next Steps

What is next? Understand that this is only the first of five key steps. Step 1 provides you with a solid foothold where you can push forward to the next step.

Complete the following before you move on.

1. Download and install free software tools to help with your research.
2. Decide on a niche that fits with your personal and business goals.
3. Look for products or product ideas in your small business.
4. Confirm an existing market and customers. Reverse engineer the existing market.
5. Document your corporate profile and write out an elevator pitch.
6. Document a sales process for the products that you have decided on.
7. Test and research your ideas in your market.
8. STAKE A BIG FAT CLAIM

Use the Right Tools

Every artisan has favorite tools. They just feel right and no matter what the job is, they use those tools to get the job done. Some of the tools are used for more than one job while others are used in specific jobs. A small business that wants to market on the Internet requires some standard issue tools.

You do not have to fill your toolbox with all of them. There are some that are a must, while others are good to have. A couple will require an investment on your part. The others are free of charge.

1. 1. A HTML editor creates, publishes and manages your websites. Try Microsoft FrontPage, or Macromedia s Dreamweaver. My personal choice is FrontPage.
2. You are going to want to track your website visitors with www.stats4all.com or www.webtrends.com. If you host your own websites, like I do, FrontPage includes most of the same reports.
3. Want to keep track of where your website shows up in the search engines? What is going on in discussion groups and on your competitors sites? Subscribe to www.trackengine.com and you can get a daily report with all the changes e-mailed to you.