We’re all in a rush to sell more of our wares to our audiences, but what if a slow method can more quickly grow the bottom line? I’ll show you a way to sell that starts at a snail’s pace but invariably picks up to hummingbird speed. The approach is called presell.

When the police officer gave the young man a ticket, he smiled.

It wasn’t a smirk either. It was a genuine smile for a very good reason. The young man had earned a “positive ticket.” A reward for good behavior that could be exchanged to see a movie at a local theater, get a hamburger, or a chance to see a local hockey team play.

The town is Prince Albert in Canada and the officer was a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.  This young man received one of 40,000 positive tickets given that year for good behavior.  Before the positive ticket policy, the town had experienced increasing rates of crime, 65% of juveniles who were caught and punished would re-offend and every year 4 young people would die during illegal street racing.

But after the positive ticket policy, these numbers dropped. Repeat offenders are now just 4% and no one has died from street racing in years.

Instead of the uphill battle of tougher laws, longer sentences and more police on the ground, the authorities in Prince Albert tried a much easier approach.

They reinforced useful behavior and that useful behavior grew. When we seek to market our products and services, often we too take the uphill battle approach. We try ever harder. We write more. We speak more. Yet sales don’t increase. There is a way to transform our promotions into a feeling of coasting along downhill though — The Presell Approach. I’ll present it to you in three parts.

1: The Problem: The Downward Trend

2: The Marvel Film’s Not-So-Secret Secret

3: Presell Steps: The Event, The Waiting List, The Limits

1: The Problem: The Downward Trend

The founder of the company I worked for died in November of 2015. His wife and I kept the company going but we had a problem. The sales of the courses were on a downward trend.

Our most expensive course which cost $1295 went from selling all 20 spots in October 2015 to having to be canceled in June of 2016 and February 2018.  The course limped along at other times with between 4 and 7 participants at any given offering.  And our cheaper courses which were just $595 were doing no better.  By May of 2018 and January of 2019, the cheaper course sold only 2 and 3 spots. 

Clearly, this was not sustainable. And I’d seen the company’s revenues so I knew that I would have to be let go if this continued. But I’m sure you know my story doesn’t end with me losing my job. Sales came back over a two-year period.  How did we save the courses?  We learned a trick or two from the movies.

2: The Marvel Movie’s Not-So-Secret Secret

Which do people value more?  An instant surprise or something they’ve been waiting for?

Fortunately, we don’t have to use just our own experience for the answer.  Economist George Lowenstein conducted several experiments to examine this question.  In one study, his researchers asked people to estimate how much they would pay to get a kiss from a famous celebrity.  

Each person was given a time frame in which the kiss would happen from 24 hours to several days.  You’d think people would pay more to start smooching immediately but they did not.  They paid more when the kiss was three days away.

This shouldn’t be so surprising.  We all know that half the fun of a vacation is dreaming about being there. We imagine the sun in our hair and the sand between our toes while we’re still in the office pouring a cup of coffee or waiting through a board meeting. We enjoy the vacation before we arrive at our destination and this adds value.

Marvel’s Cinematic universe uses this secret as well

When does a fan find out about Marvel’s latest slate of films? Does it happen a week before? A month before? How about a few years in advance? They make the movies in phases and in any given phase they’ll publish the list of films that will be released for the next few years so fans can drool over them. The films haven’t been produced yet. The cast is not decided. The script is not written. Yet the fans are already getting interested.

By the time a film is released, even for unknown characters, the flood gates are opened. Who besides comic geeks knew about Ant-Man? Yet the movie made $519 million at the box office. Practically no one knew about the Guardians of the Galaxy before 2014 when the film debuted in theaters. Yet it made $772 million. Marvel’s secret is to sell before the sale. Most well-marketed films do this. But Marvel does it better than most.

The secret, if you haven’t already guessed is anticipation. And it doesn’t just work for movies.

In 2018, I learned from my teacher Sean D’Souza about The Art of Presell – a way to use positive anticipation to get clients to buy in their minds long before they pay with their wallets.

Once I learned his approach, I applied it to those courses whose sales were flagging. Here’s what happened in numbers.

The pricey course went from having to be canceled in February 2018 to selling all 20 spots in February 2019 and in September we sold 14 seats.

But in January 2020, our sales hit a surprising milestone.

A course that had to be canceled in 2019, sold all 20 spots in 2.5 hours. Even on our best days in the past when a course sold out it required up to 10 days. To sell out in hours was a watershed moment that changed our plans for the rest of the year.

The world went into lockdown in March of 2020 due to COVID-19 yet we were determined to continue our previous plans and offer our next course in April. This time in just a few days the course sold 15 of 20 spots.

Still, we were quite happy as we’d expected less than that. Presell was working even when the world seemed to be falling apart. But, by now you may be wondering, how do you work some of this presell magic for yourself?

3: Presell Steps: The Event, The Waiting List and The Limits

So how do you engage in preselling? There are quite a few factors. But my suggestion is to start with just three: The Event, The Waiting List, and The Limits.

A: The Event

It’s just as it implies. It’s an event. There must be a day in which the doors are thrown open and the customers are allowed inside. And like a Marvel movie, you must let customers know in advance that the date is coming. They should find out at least 8 weeks before the sale the exact moment they can buy.

What happens when you telegraph the exact date and time, clients can purchase?

They count the days, the hours, the minutes. OK, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. However, more than once I’ve gotten an email from a client saying “I haven’t gotten my link yet” when I’ve been a minute late opening the cart.

When you give a date and time, you communicate that this date and time are important.

It is assumed that the clock is ticking. And to make sure it doesn’t tick forever, you will also tell them when the offer period is over. There must be a final countdown or some people will procrastinate. You tell them the start date and the final date to order. Then get out of their way so they can join.

B: The Waiting List

But you don’t have Marvel’s budget, so you can’t pummel people with ads, hire PR agents to generate press releases, or get bloggers from here to Mars to write ‘till they are blue in the face about your plans.

So how do you make sure the right people are focused on your event?

You create a captive audience of sorts. They aren’t really captive of course since they join by choice and can leave any time. However, most won’t leave. Once they join, they’ll stick around so you can keep your offering in their mind for weeks, months, or even years at a time.

You create a waiting list and you only sell your offer to people who join the waiting list.

Yes, this might seem a bit mad. Won’t we lose sales? What if someone wants to join later who didn’t join the list? There are answers to both of these questions.

First, about losing sales.

Remember the results above, the courses were on a death spiral until they were resurrected … and my job saved. All those results came from building waiting lists. The waiting list allowed us to know who was interested and who couldn’t be bothered. That way we could keep our message in their minds for months until the date of the sale.

Second, what if someone wants to join later who didn’t join the waiting list?

Well, let them join the list late. There’s nothing stopping them. But they must join or they don’t get to see the offer page. This might sound a bit odd or even controlling. However, people don’t feel controlled by it. They just accept the rules. Even a week before the sale, I’ve sent out a note letting people know they can still join the waiting list. Those who put it off will join so they can buy.

So now we see that we need an event to focus attention and a waiting list to make sure we can keep attention focused. But there’s an additional factor that puts the pressure on and makes sure people don’t want to miss out on an opportunity.

C: The Limits

Some stores have a curious way to increase sales. They make a special offer, then say “Limit two per customer.” And what happens? Do the customers buy 1 as they normally would? No, they buy two. Why? Because that’s the limit. Why not go all the way to the limit? Why not get as much as we can when we can’t have more?

However, as business owners, we are often a bit afraid of limits. We don’t want to tell the client “Sorry but we are full.” And we can even be afraid to let them know “We only take 20 in this course.”

Yet, that’s what we must do if we want to maximize sales.

We must establish limits and then stick to them even when they are uncomfortable. You decide the maximum participants you can have in a course. You let the clients know this in advance. They take notice and they file in. Once the limit is reached, you turn off the option to buy. You thank everyone on the waiting list and let them know they can get in next time.

But with no limit what do clients do? Well, they put off their decision.

They don’t know they are in such danger of missing out, so they relax and do nothing. Or like, I did recently, I thought I had a day to talk over with my wife the decision to take a course. This course would be hard to fit into our schedules so I wanted to get her agreement first.

Once we had the conversation and I had the green light, I went to the order page. I was dismayed to discover the offer was taken down. I had no idea if there was a time limit for the offer. If I’d known, I would have made sure I’d gotten to the page in time to buy. As it turns out, the course didn’t fill so the offer was closed. I only wondered how many more were like me, putting off the decision to join for one reason or another because no time limit had been mentioned.

Summary

• Presell solves the problem of the downward spiral of sales
• The secret to presell is the power of anticipation
• Three steps to presell are: The Event, The Waiting List and The Limits

There are other factors in presell as well such as The Samples, The Announcements and The Snippets. But these three alone can dramatically improve your results.