This powerful free ad technique was probably first discovered out there in the caves or wherever else the history of mankind begun. And yet this weapon has been used way too sparingly over the centuries. It is so powerful that those surprisingly few who have stumbled on to it and appreciated and respected its power have ended up with results beyond their wildest dreams
It’s a FREE SAMPLE.
Picture a small business selling doughnuts at a street corner. Potential clients in their hundreds pass by and ignore the seller’s smile and well displayed juicy-looking doughnuts. At the end of the day, he has barely sold a dozen.
Then a simple selling system involving tiny, miniature versions of the doughnuts being given away for free to passersby is introduced. A few people stop to sample the free doughnuts, at least half of them end up purchasing a doughnut or two. The small business owner does some arithmetic at the end of a hectic day. The bill for the samples was high, but his cash box is bulging like it never has before and the sheer volumes of business has reduced the expense for the free samples to a tiny fraction of his takings.
No matter how complex your business is, it can benefit tremendously from the power of a free sample. A few more examples;
An office cleaning concern wanted to expand its’ client base to restaurants but had a lot of difficulties making any head way until they came up with a simple selling system. They approached restaurants and offered to clean up free of charge, the only condition was that the owner sees the dirt that will be cleaned off their premises before it’s disposed of. (If you know the right places to look, any premises will give you a load of dirt enough to make anybody sick.)
Well, almost anybody because only 80% of the restaurants that were cleaned free of charge, signed up to have the firm clean up their premises on a regular basis. Not good enough for the city health inspectors but an unbelievably high percentage for any selling system. It naturally revolutionized this cleaning business.
A media company was facing very stiff competition getting advertisements into their newspaper. They designed a simple system where the company sales representatives approached a carefully selected client list with samples of their advertisements re-designed and placed on a dummy page. The response rate? Well, 4 out of every 10 clients approached in this way signed up for advertising space on the spot.
A company selling solar panels in the heart of Africa wasn’t making much headway until they bit the bullet with the following crazy selling system. They found a simple way to assess the income capabilities of rural homes that had no access to electricity. They would then knock on doors and offer to install solar electricity free of charge. They would then come back a week later and if the house owner liked it, they would pay for it and keep it. If they didn’t the solar firm would simply take their equipment and leave. One out of every three installations paid and kept their solar systems.
And I could go on and on with hundreds of other examples.
A free sample is the most powerful free ad I know and will always do it where everything else has failed.
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Interested in a list of other amazing Free Ads techniques and tricks you can use to boost your sales?
