When you primarily sell products, you have a great many freedoms that a service professional doesn’t have. However, these freedoms can also have a dark side that service professionals don’t need to bother with. Here are several ways in which marketing a service is different from marketing a product.
Relationships are key.
If you sell vacuums, you [...]
Referrals are golden. And when you are a service professional, referrals can mean the difference between thriving and dog paddling.
About a year ago I went to a workshop given by David Frey on how to get more referral business. The presentation was pretty much a big sales pitch to join Send Out Cards under him, [...]
“Success comes from taking the initiative and following up.”
~ Anthony Robbins
Although a retailer can get by without following up after a contact or sale, a service professional really can’t. Remember, it is far less expensive to keep a client and get repeat business than it is to find a new one. Also, your best source [...]
Providing a sample of your product can be much easier than providing a sample of your service. For example:
An auto dealer offers a test drive.
An ice cream shop offers a taste.
A computer store lets you play with computers on display.
A pet shop lets you visit with the animals.
A book store lets you browse and even [...]
When I conducted a survey of all my readers a few months back, one of the top questions was “How do you market services? Is it different than marketing products?”
That gave me pause. For on some instinctual level I knew that marketing services and products was both the same and different, but I had never [...]
