if you try to sell your services using marketing strategies that were designed for product-based businesses you're going to end up pretty disappointed with the results this is because selling services and doing marketing for a service-based business requires a very different approach than the standard advice and strategies and tactics that are out there strategies and tactics that were designed primarily for selling products and that rarely translate well over to selling services so if you want to get more clients grow your business and sell more of your services there are three things that you need to know
first you need to use Finish Line language get this wrong and it doesn't matter how great your services are how much you care or how smart and funny and creative any of your sales or marketing materials are they're just not going to work don't worry if you've never heard of this before I'm going to walk you through exactly what it means and how to use it in just a minute next you need to nail the feature to benefit ratio which will make everything you say in your marketing immediately more powerful and believable and will make
the whole sales process about as close to effortless and automatic as possible lastly you need to be using something called a case funnel this is a simple but incredibly effective sales and marketing funnel for service businesses that's been proven to turn leads into clients and it will allow you to replace hoping and wishing in your sales and marketing with knowing and the confidence of being able to generate New Leads new clients and new sales any time you want so let me show you how it's done starting with the all important Finish Line language the biggest
difference between selling services and selling products is clearly the fact that Services aren't physical items they're intangible and your clients can't see them or feel them or hold them or do anything like that ahead of time prior to making a purchase sure you could offer trials or demonstrations or show videos and graphical representations of what it's like but it's still not the same as being able to pick something up and hold it in your hands before making the decision to buy it this is why one of the biggest mistakes service business owners make when describing
their services is focusing too much on the service itself and all the deliverables that go along with it rather than what is actually important to the client because the fact is when it comes to selling and marketing Services the single most important thing is the end result this part's really important so let me say it again the key to selling more services is to focus almost obsessively on the end result and how the client will be better off after than they are right now there's a quote in marketing that's commonly attributed to Theodore levit that
goes people don't want quarin drill bits they want quarin holes basically meaning your clients and customers don't want the thing you're selling they want the benefits of what that thing is going to provide they want the end result the outcome but we could take this a step further and we should because people don't want quartering tools either so what I'm thinking here is we just fill it with as many quartering holes as possible yeah that's perfect rather people want to hang a picture or a shelf or a guitar or anything else that people hang on
walls and this is where Finish Line language comes in which is all about highlighting the end State the end result the outcome of whatever service that you provide how will they be better or healthier or stronger or wealthier or whatever or you see your potential clients all have some kind of pain or problem or fear or frustration that you could help them with they're all at the starting line suffering needlessly and in desperate need of what you have to offer but because they can't see or hold or feel your services ahead of time you need
to show them what the Finish Line looks like and show them how it will feel when you guide them across it victoriously like a winner let me give you some examples if you're a coach or consultant then you're not offering a package of 460 minute consultations delivered in person or over the phone what you're actually selling is better performance or health or relationships and showing them how their lives will be better once they get this taken care of if you're an agency then you're not giving clients social media or content or video Services you're actually
offering the promise of more customers more clients and more sales and revenue which in turn will give them a feeling of success and pride and safety knowing that their business is growing and in demand if you're a service professional like say a landscaper or lawn care specialist where you show up at someone's house and take care of their backyard for them well you're not just offering a freshly cut lawn you're giving them back time and freedom and the opportunity to spend their weekends doing what they want instead of baking under the hot sun getting hit
in the face with grass clippings a photographer you're capturing memories and helping preserve someone's Legacy child care services you're offering Freedom security and peace of mind to parents meal preparation Services you're selling convenience and time and maybe Health depending on what kind of food you cook I think you get the point next let's make sure sure you nail the feature to benefit ratio one of the biggest sales killers in all of services marketing comes down to failing to do one simple thing and that simple thing is failing to clearly communicate Why Your Potential Prospect or
client should care about what you're selling that's it because if they don't care they're definitely not going to buy and this is where so many service businesses go so wrong spending way too much time on features and not enough on benefits but I'm getting ahead of myself and I don't want to totally trash features here because they are important yeah bro what you got against features nothing against features so with that said first let me uncover the key differences between features and benefits the simplest and most clear way to put it is that a feature
is what something does and a benefit is what something does for you or to put it another way a feature is about the service like how long it takes what's included are there any guarantees and things like that and the benefit is about the client and how they're going to be better off because of the feature like how it'll make them cooler or safer or smarter or better off in some way the feature is what enables the benefit but it's not the feature they care about it's the benefit and the result they're going to get
by engaging with the feature this stuff can be a bit confusing so here's some examples a coffee cup has a handle that's a feature the benefit is that you can hold a hot cup of coffee without burning your hands a pen has a removable cap that's a feature the benefit is that you don't write all over yourself when you're carrying it around a baseball has stick stitches that's a feature the fact that these stitches help you throw it farther and faster well that's the benefit catch now those are useful examples to help you understand the
difference between features and benefits but now let's put that into a service context a good example here would be something like say Domino's Pizza which I appreciate is also a product however the service is pizza delivery and the feature is 30 minutes or it's free the benefit is you know you're probably going to get your pizza in 30 minutes it's not going to be very good pizza but at least you're going to get it and while we're on the topic of time based features for services well FedEx is another good example well their tagline of
when it absolutely positively has to be there overnight well overnight delivery is a feature but the benefit is you're going to get things whatever it is that you're shipping fast overnight fast I think you get the picture so now let's get a little bit more practical and tactical and a little bit mathematical that rhymed more than I thought it would because it's time to break down one of the most effective service business sales and marketing funnels of all time the case funnel just to make sure we're all on the same page here in case you're
not already familiar with a marketing funnel it's also known as a sales funnel and it's really just a visual representation of the steps that a prospect or potential client would need to take in order to go from having no idea who you are all the way through to becoming a paying client and over the past 10 years I found there's one simple marketing funnel that continues to beat pretty much anything else I test against it it's perfect if you sell your services through a sales call and it helps you to pre-qualify clients overcome objections in
advance and really just just makes the entire process faster easier and a whole lot more enjoyable I call it the case funnel which stands for coaches and Consultants agencies service professionals and experts and it looks like this we start with traffic we move on to the opin then the authority amplifier then to the application the calendar booking and ultimately a sales call where they become a client I'll walk you through the steps now every marketing funnel starts with some kind of traffic this could be a social media post a blog a podcast a video an
ad pretty much anything the key here though is to to drive this traffic to the next stage of the funnel which is the opt-in page the opt-in page exists for one simple reason to get someone to opt in that was profound I know what you want to do here is offer something valuable like a free downloadable cheat sheet or a checklist or a blueprint or a guide or some kind of downloadable training and you're doing this in exchange for your prospect's name and email address so you can follow up with them later once they enter
their name and email address and they hit submit they're immediately taken to the next stage of the funnel which is the authority EMP amplifier it's here in the authority amplifier stage that you want to provide value and establish your credibility and expertise what works best here is to provide a short training and ideally in video form that helps your prospect with a problem that they have now you don't have to give everything away but try to provide a quick win and then follow it up with an invitation to apply to your services by clicking a
link somewhere on the page once they click the link to apply they're then directed to an application form which is the next stage of the funnel having an application form for your services is one of the most valuable things you can do because it not only allows you to collect valuable and relevant information on your prospect and whether or not you can help them but it also sets the frame that you're the expert and you're not necessarily just going to work with anyone just cuz they have the money you can choose to review each application
manually or most online form software will allow you to automatically redirect depending on the quality of the application and take them to the next stage and the next stage is the calendar booking here in the calendar booking stage you can allow your prospect to choose use from one of your available times in order to have a quick call with you to go over their application discuss their goals and decide together whether or not you're a good fit to work together all of which of course happens in the final stage the sales call if everything goes
well up to this point then your prospect is going to show up to the sales call interested and informed and with many of their questions already answered through the help of your Authority amplifier if you're anything like me and you don't particularly love sales calls you're not a pushy person and you just want to help people then you're going to love this because by setting your funnel up in this way and providing so much value and information ahead of time when your prospect does show up on the sales call they've pretty much already decided whether
they want to work with you or not so now the choice is yours of whether you want to work with them or not no pressure no persuasion no Hard Sell tactics required it's a whole lot more fun too but as great as this is there's still a few more things you can do that I didn't have time to get to in this video and this is why I've linked up a video right here with seven of my most effective marketing strategies so make sure to check it out now and I'll see you in the next
video we offer higher quality and we offer better service and all of that stuff that everybody's heard a million times before and they're completely blind and deaf to so the best way to solve this is to move on to our next Point here which is that you need an IA IC is marketing talk for ideal customer Avatar
