Giving Away a Service as a Prospecting Tool

Free works for some but not others and the only way you're going to know is to try it. I offer free seo audits to gain a lead, then I can sell them later because they value advice about their website. Give what you think they will value to get your foot in the door.

The best way to offer free work is as a charitable contribution. Usually that person/company will hire you to continue to help them with whatever service your provided (if you did a good job). Plus, you can now use this as a tax write-off.

I offered a 20 minute consultation with my marketing course when I was starting out - it worked well because I used it as intake, relationship building, and to lead-in to further relationships.

It's not about the technique (free service) it's about organized, planned, intelligent execution that makes the difference between success and failure.

The thing to keep in mind that offering a free service can be just as challenging to "sell" as a service/product that someone is actually paying for.

In other words you're going to have to market it like you would anything else.

-Sequential mailing
-Phone call follow up
-Webinar
-Personal visit

You many need any or all of those marketing steps in your funnel in order to have success giving this free service away.

The problem with offering free services or consultations is that everyone is doing it. By virtue of something being 'Free,' arouses suspicion, and no one appreciates something that didn't have to work to get. It lowers the perceived value of you, and your services, so it is harder to charge higher prices.

You may get in front of people for your free service, but it does not mean they will buy, in fact it will probably hurt your chances more than you think.

I like your logic and see the point in using it as a prospecting tool.. perhaps instead of it being free offer it at a discounted rate, (don't tell them that), but something cheap such as $197 dollars, which can be taken off the final sale price if they decide to buy. Your real buyers will happily pay the fee, while tyre kickers will not, you will quickly know who is serious and who is wasting your time. The problem with free services is that it attracts people with no money, people that take advantage of your time, people that demand the world for (literally), nothing.

Read some of the threads here about offering a free web design mockup and you'll quickly see how much frustration this causes. If you were a taxi driver would you give someone a free ride across town so the customer can 'Try before they buy?' Of course not. There is little to no business sense in offering a free service as a way of generating offline leads, at least in my experience.

I'd much rather know that the person is experiencing a big problem and is used to buying similar products that I sell, they have the budget and are prepared to fork out for talented expertise. Doesn't that sound better than 'Sure. I'll take your free ___'? With no commitment to buy afterwards. The whole free trial thing I think works well for SOME products, but not for high value complex sales to experienced business owners.

Two problems;

The business valuation doesn't lead to a sale.
The business valuation isn't a good enough gift to force the appointment.

The free gift doesn't have to lead to a sale, if you just want to get in front of a prospect. I used to use portable TVs, and was booked solid. but the gift had nothing to do with what I was selling.

Do your prospects have employees? i sold life insurance in my early 20s. I would offer the CEO, to set each employee down, at the company, and explain all the benefits the employer was giving them. Of course, then I would also offer an insurance policy, that was paid by payroll deduction.

The employers loved the idea, because they were paying a lot of money, for benefits the employees weren't aware of. And the employees got out of working for about 30 minutes.

This was the kind of gift, that led directly to sales.

If you are selling the owners, and they have no employees, just offer a gift for an appointment. Something that has a price tag.

The only reason I don't like the business valuation idea, is....who would it appeal to? Would it appeal to your typical buyer? It sounds like a gift that was invented....because it was easy, not because the clients would value it.

Ben Feldman (the World's Greatest Life Insurance Man), used to simply offer $500 for 5 minutes of the business owners time. It got him in a lot of doors. Too much for my blood.

But I did offer laminated articles about the company (or the CEO, or his kid). They were mounted on wood, and looked great. I just stopped by to deliver it in person. Out of a few hundred attempts to see the CEO, I can't remember one time I was refused. That doesn't mean they all bought. But I think they all at least met me and thanked me.

I would say "No" to a business valuation. But a laminated, mounted article about me, my business, or my son? My vanity and ego would never let me turn it down.

The real problem here is finding those magic words and phrases that will open the doors to you. The pain points that make business owners not just allow but INVITE you on inside.

You cannot learn these without mixing it up and getting out there, involved in that marketplace.

In other words, you kind of have to suck first.

That's OK. Be willing to begin badly and you will obviously end up far ahead of the person who never starts.

As you make your bad prospecting calls, or deliver your ineffective elevator speech at networking events, you will start to notice common words and phrases your prospects are saying back to you. When two or more business owners in a niche say the same problem back to you, this is a pain point. If you have a solution to that problem, immediately start saying that pain point to new prospects in that niche...using exactly the same words and phrases the owners who told you use.

Back in Vancouver I turned around a mostly-dead metal fab shop. For the first week or so I made lousy calls to builders, architects and contractors. Then I noticed they kept telling me the same two things:

1 > they didn't have fab contractors who were reliable enough to deliver on time, and that kept screwing up their delivery schedule...sometimes to the tune of a performance bond smack, and certainly messing up municipal inspections that couldn't easily be rescheduled for the next day

> they had a problem finding metal fabricators who could consistently deliver top quality work.

There was a construction boom going on at the time and these were huge problems for these businesses. As soon as I started saying we helped builders who were frustrated with fab subs who failed to deliver on time, and were upset that quality levels kept varying with each job done by other contractors, I got an order literally from every single company I talked to thereafter. I reactivated some builders who had been let down by the previous owners of my own shop. These were very powerful phrases. Six months later we had to expand. The problems then were entirely operational--no longer about sales & marketing.

In the OP's case, he or she has to find out the pain points the business leaders feel who permit agents like him or her to enter the business. If I was doing this, I'd make exploratory calls (which I *knew* were going to suck, and who cares, because the payoff is worth it--how much competition do you think you'll have once you figure this out? The barrier to entry seems almost insurmountable to the average bear) for a couple weeks to target businesses and get those one or two or three pain points. You only need one really good one to be effective.

Then I'd build a marketing collateral piece around it. Maybe a Kindle report. Something to give to new prospects to allow them to SORT themselves with...and make the decision about whether to invite you in or not without you risking your self-esteem on each and every initial interaction going forward.

Doing what you do is easy. The hard part is getting IN. If you never get IN, you can't ever do what you do. So get good at getting In.

Before you run amok creating the perfect "free thing" ask yourself this ...

Have you ever once ... valued something you received for free?

I bet your thinking to yourself ... "yes, yes I have".

Now ask yourself - who did you get it from?

You will realize that you only valued it - because you already had an
established relationship with that person / entity.

Free = "hook" - "catch" - "gimmick" and a thousand other derogatory words...
that's the layman's perception anyway and .... perception is always king.