Keeping Tabs

Keeping Tabs

Many years ago I knew a trainer named Marcie. Marcie attended all of my workshops and routinely asked me for help when I was still providing it for free to anyone who asked.

She had a training program which a client loved, and she put all 200 client employees through the training. The buyer said, “Please do something else for us, everyone loves to learn from you.” So she developed another relevant program.

Then they wanted more, and Marcie had a breakthrough. She created a three-ring binder with tabs for her materials and performance aids. She place the first two programs’ materials in their places, and then had the participants insert the third and latest program during the course she delivered.

But Marcie had created 12 tabs on different topics, and now 9 were still vacant.

Participants soon lobbied management for the other 9 programs, which Marcie hadn’t even created yet. But she managed to fill that binder, training 200 people 12 times, or creating 2,400 participants out of 200. Over the years, that was close to a million dollars, from one client.

Are you creating healthy and fascinating expectations? Are your buyers—whether for coaching, consulting, training, facilitating, speaking, or related areas—eagerly seeking more content from you to “fill the vacant value spaces”? Are you whetting appetites, creating evangelists, suggesting continuity?

A three-ring binder with only a third of the value present, and the rest a highly desirable quest for fulfillment: Not a bad marketing tactic. Does your “binder” seem very slim, already filled, or hard to follow?

Or is it the eagerly awaited promise of things to come?

© Alan Weiss 2012. All rights reserved.