We often think we need to educate our way to the sale. But really, we need to entertain our way to it.
To grow a business, we know we need to get leads and we need to convert those leads into sales. Simple, right?
But then there's that space in the middle - what we call "nurturing leads." And usually what we do here is create content that's designed to teach, explain, and/or provide "value." In short: We nurture leads by educating them.
We make how-to lists, "ultimate" guides, product demonstrations, and checklists designed to impart knowledge that we hope will spark action.
But in all our efforts to "educate" people, what we're actually doing is boring and overwhelming them. We're doing the opposite of moving them closer to the sale; what we're doing is pushing them away from a transaction with us and toward entertainment from someone else.
We have to stop acting like our job is to merely educate people and instead begin to wrap our information in the comforting embrace of entertainment. Entertainment gets people to let down their guard and embrace new ideas.
Educating our way to the sale is like airing the weather report with commercials all day long without ever getting to the stuff people actually care about:
- Conflict
- Change
- Drama
- The Bizarre
- Laughter
- Wit
- Stories
- Controversy
- Opinions
It's not even an attention span problem - we have plenty of attention for 10 hours of Stranger Things, 3-hour Joe Rogan interviews, and entire cinematic universes. It's a problem with entertainment value.
If someone has become a lead in your business, that means they are receptive to what you have to say. The question is...
How will you say it? Will you bore them with a book report? Or will you delight them with a story... a joke... a metaphor... or your reaction to current events?
We nurture leads toward a sale by entertaining them, not merely educating them.
❤️ Zac "The Email Guy" Garside
