When I was a business consultant working for one of the “Big 5″ firms back in the 90′s I sold a LOT of high end services work.
- Software implementations
- Customer service reviews
- Supply Chain service
- IT infrastructure reviews
- All that stuff and more.
We were the #1 consulting firm in Houston at the time.
One of the secrets to our success was “whitepapers.”
What is a “Whitepaper”?
A whitepaper is essentially a special report that educates your prospect about the topic that “pre-sells” them on your product or service. Whitepapers work because B-to-B people want to be educated, but they don’t want to be sold to.
So we created lots of whitepapers we did entire marketing campaigns to get people to REQUEST our whitepapers.
(By the way, that’s the secret to super high close rates. Getting people request your whitepaper)
If you sell B-to-B and you want to know more about using whitepapers, here’s the ultimate resource.
It’s called the “Definitive Guide to Writing and Promoting Your White Paper” by Perry Marshall.
http://www.DavidFrey.us/whitepaper
How to Write a Whitepaper
You don’t have to write a 30 page dissertation to write a good whitepaper.
All you need to do is pick out the biggest, baddest, ugliest problem that your product or service solves and write about how to solve that problem.
Give some meat to your whitepaper, but write it in such a way that your prospect believes that your solution is the only choice. You do that by writing down all the ways that your product solves the nasty problem and weave them into the whitepaper.
In Perry Marshall’s guide, he takes you step by step through the process of very quickly writing your own whitepaper.
Here’s a link to his guide.
http://www.DavidFrey.us/whitepaper
How to Promote Your Whitepaper
Promoting your white paper and getting people to request it is where the rubber hits the road. Instead of using a bunch of expensive paid advertising, you can get thousands of people to request using publicity.
When you have a resource that’s valuable to the industry, the trade mags, industry newsletters and websites will want to publicize it for you!
In Perry’s guide he shows you exactly how to get the press to market your white paper FOR YOU.
So again, here’s the link to his guide.
http://www.DavidFrey.us/whitepaper
Go check it out.
If you’re in B-to-B sales, you MUST be doing white paper marketing.
About David Frey
David Frey is the Founder, MarketingBlogger.com. He is also the author of the best selling book, "The Small Business Marketing Bible" and many other marketing courses. To find out more about this author, visit www.WhoIsDavidFrey.com.
