Empire Research Group – building “core stories”
for companies who want to be their market leader.
To be contacted by a research
expert about developing your company’s “Ultimate Strategic
Position,” click here for an Empire Consultant
Research increases your knowledge. Learn
how knowledge is power.
Whether you are building your core story or simply looking to
put together your collateral material, everything is more powerful
with research. The more knowledgeable you are about your industry
and the trends going on in it, the more strategic you can be in
taking market share.
What are your strategic objectives?
Would you like to:
1) Be positioned as an expert in the eyes of
your clients?
2) Dramatically upgrade the “influence”
you’ll have with your
clients?
3) Show market data that makes having
your product more
important?
4) Get people to buy more, more often?
5) Build information that positions you
strategically above all of your
competitors?
6) Dramatically improve and upgrade the
communication experience
between you and your
prospects?
7) Build in a sense of urgency that makes
your buyers buy faster?
8) Create an unstoppable anti-competitive
strategy?
9) Breed more loyalty toward you over
every other competitor?
10) Attract your buyers over all of your
competitors whenever they
seen an ad, a
brochure, a sales letter, etc…
Research, carefully orchestrated, can do all this and so much
more. To read a comprehensive article on the power of core stories,
click here for an article written by Chet Holmes Core
story Article.
An example in a nutshell:
Research on your industry can dramatically improve everything,
from your marketing approach to your sales paradigm to your tactical
executions. Wouldn’t it be great to have an ad that says:
“The five things you better know before you buy XYZ.”
This ad focuses on the BUYER and offers them information
that can help them choose more successfully. Instead, most companies
usually focus on themselves. Wouldn’t it be great if this
information was supportive
of your critical need to buy from YOUR company over everyone else’s?
Here’s a test. See if you know the answers?
How many buyers are there for your particular product?
How many were there 20 years ago, versus ten years ago versus
today?
What are THEIR biggest challenges?
How much money do they earn on average?
How has it changed over the years?
Are their market trends that make you more important?
Do you have reliable and quotable sources that say so?
One of the research projects we did was for a company selling
into gift shops. They were quite proud of their strategy. They
let everyone else fight to get the large chain retail business
while they concentrated on the small gift shop market. We did
a research project for them and discovered that in the last 15
years the number of gift shops had fallen from 90,000 to only
25,000. What was happening to them? They were being put out of
business by the large retailers of the world. The client quickly
switched their strategy and thank God, it helped them dramatically
increase sales in a single year.
Another client was selling to Lawyers. Some quick research showed
that lawyers were having some serious problems, and some of those
problems were directly solved by our client’s product. That’s
the key right there. If you can find problems that your
market has, and you can show them these problems and then go the
step further to show them how YOUR product solves these problems,
you suddenly become way more important to them.
Let’s say that you sell grommets to car manufacturers and
you are trying to design an ad/promo piece, sales letter or even
a telephone call to get their attention. Here’s the typical
approach and then we’ll go to the approach you COULD use
if you had compelling data.
Typical approach: “Our grommets work better, faster and
more efficiently than anyone else’s grommets”
It would be nice if you could say that about your products or
services, but you can’t always be the best. It’s great
when you can, but even then, research can dramatically strengthen
your marketing ability. Here’s the same company with a much
more compelling offer: “We’ll teach you the five most
dangerous trends happening in auto manufacturing (for example)
and the three things you need to know to avoid them. Call for
a free briefing.”
Chet Holmes invented the concept of the “core story.”
Essentially, you make the decision to become the one that helps
your market succeed. You will offer free outstanding information
to any buyer and in the process, if you expertly orchestrate the
data, you show why YOU are the ONLY logical choice for all their
needs. It works remarkably well and in Chet’s article, he
details many, many examples. Click here of you want to read more
detail: How
to triple your closing ratio, using data.
Instead of pitching prospects on the value of using you or buying
your product or service, educate them about the trends that make
you WAY more important. Nobody wants to be sold anything. Everyone
wants to learn more about their business, their industry and what
they can do, to offset the competition. This is the value of research.
Getting appointments easier:
Let’s say that you are a software manufacturer, trying
to break into the retail field. You could spend countless hours,
burning leads and calling retailers. If and when you do get the
decision maker on the phone, you might try to explain to them
why they must see you. You may pitch your product for several
seconds, only to hear that either they have software, don’t
feel they need it or simply ask you to quote them a price. Your
opportunity to get in front of the customer has rather easily
been eliminated within a matter of moments.
If on the other hand, you called and explained that you had a
full briefing about their industry, and that their competitors
have seen it and loved it, you might be more likely to spark their
interest. If you told them (in this example), you had a full report
about retailing, the current trends and forecasts, and some surprising
data about success and failure, as well as future trends that
could likely cost them dearly, they would be crazy not to want
to hear it—especially if its free. You are therefore much
more likely to get the appointment.
What Empire Research Group does for you:
Research: We have expert researchers
who go in a do an in-depth study of your market for you. Everything
you ever wanted to know about your market, your buyers, the trends
they are facing and most important, how all that data helps YOU
become your market’s more logical choice.
Data Analysis: This is the
most critical part of the equation. It’s one thing to get
raw data about your market or industry. The manipulation of that
data is critical. In Chet’s article he gives an example
of a company that was selling to day spas. He wanted us to find
data that indicated that health spas were in trouble, that many
of them were going out of business. In this regard, he could show
how his client’s products would help them NOT go out of
business. The research came in and not only were they not going
out of business, they were growing like wildfire, from a handful
15 years ago to thousands and thousands today.
That data then when into a section entitled: “The Super
competitive Day Spa Market.” The data still served us to
motivate Day Spa to look at the client’s products, but it
took a keen eye to realize how to use that data.
The average research project will yield between 500 and 700 pages
of raw data. Do you really want to sit around for a month trying
to analyze and maneuver that data to your advantage, or would
you rather have experts do it? Experts who do this every day,
all day for hundreds of clients all over the world in every kind
of industry you can imagine.
Panel, by panel presentation
(“Orientation,” as per Chet’s teachings). Once
you have this massive data and now you’ve managed to maneuver
it in a way that totally positions you above all your competitors,
now you need the panel-by-panel layout completed. What should
be the header on each panel? What should be the specific bullets
that begin to create the [core] “story” you want to
tell to the market? What graphics should you use? Did you know
that the right graphic can triple the impact of a statement you
might make?
The Empire Research Group will do all this for you. We’ll
supply you with a full-blown, turn-key complete industry “briefing”
that radically positions you above all your competition. This
will be the finest sales presentation you have ever used to sell
your services. Why? Because every other time you sold your services,
you just told people their strengths and tried to persuade them
that these are important. The difference now is that you will
show them market trends and market information that suddenly make
your products or service WAY more important in their mind.
What do you have to do? All you have to do is let us interview
you. A single interview with one of our heads of research, during
which the interviewer will give you dozens and dozens of examples
of what kind of data would “position” you above your
competitors.
Rates: A Core Story is priced
at an all inclusive rate. This includes research rates, data analysis
rates and graphics staff to give you the final product. For most
companies, who virtually triple their closing ratio with a well
oiled “core story,” the investment pays for itself
very quickly. You can’t afford NOT to have your core story
built. Ever day that you delay, you’re missing opportunities
that you simply cannot achieve without one of these. Again, how
would you like to achieve all these strategic objectives with
one single marketing move, building a core story:
1) Be positioned as an expert in the
eyes of your clients?
2) Dramatically upgrade the “influence”
you’ll have with your clients?
3) Show market data that makes having
your product more important?
4) Get people to buy more, more often?
5) Build information that positions you
strategically above all of your
competitors?
6) Dramatically improve and upgrade the
communication experience
between you and your
prospects?
7) Build in a sense of urgency that makes
your buyers buy faster?
8) Create an unstoppable anti-competitive
strategy?
9) Breed more loyalty toward you over
every other competitor?
10) Attract your buyers over all of your
competitors whenever they seen
an ad, a brochure,
a sales letter, etc…
At Empire Research Group, we have built research and core stories
for some of the country’s most successful companies.
To have a free visit
with a research expert, please click here to have an Empire
Research Expert contact you.
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- 2008 Chet Holmes International. All Rights Reserved.
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written permission of Chet Holmes International.
