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"Tire Kickers" Are Driving Us Nuts
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Puzzle
Company President: "We have a very complicated project management service that virtually everyone must do, either by doing it in-house themselves or by hiring someone like us.
"We constantly find ourselves explaining every aspect of our services to prospects, only to have them not buy. How can we close more sales while saving time with these low-level tire-kickers?"
Diagnosis
After an extensive analysis of the company's marketing material, website, sales processes and contracts, we were still puzzled as to the nature of the problem. So we decided to analyze the profiles of companies that only "kicked the tires," and compare them to the companies that signed on the dotted line.
One very clear difference came to light. The companies that purchased the solution already knew how to solve the problem themselves, but didn't have the resources to do the work. Whereas the companies that only kicked the tires had the resources to solve the problem, but no clue how.
Solution
This solution had four components:
- We wrote a 5,000-word article that explained virtually everything you would need to know to solve the problem, and posted that article on the company's website.
- We modified a small software program the company used to manage data related to solving the problem, and posted a free copy on the company's website – visitors had to register to receive the free software.
- We created a public list server that allowed tire-kickers to get answers to the questions they had about managing the projects themselves.
- We changed the company's response to all inquiries so that tire-kickers were encouraged to read the article, download the software and join the list server.
Results
In one year's time, more than 6,000 tire-kickers downloaded the software and more than 5,300 questions were asked and answered on the list sever – most questions were answered by other tire-kickers.
The article we wrote was reprinted in more than 40 industry publications around the world.
The company's close rate jumped from less than 5 percent to over 90
percent – virtually all wasted time was eliminated, because tire
kickers got what they wanted without bothering the salespeople.
In most cases, successful sales calls took less than 45 minutes – most of them were conducted over the phone – because executives who called had almost always read the article and already knew precisely what they were buying.
The company doubled the price it charged for the service while
quadrupling its sales volume in 12 months.
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