No I am Not Crazy:

Now you might think I am crazy telling you to train others to do your job. Especially if you are a freelance person like myself. But doing just that can help you gain new customers, position yourself as the expert in the customers mind, and get you the kind of customers you want. (ones that respect your work, and don’t expect welfare prices).

Weed Out the Real Prospects:

The idea here is to show people what you do. The customers that want to really do it themselves (and don’t want to pay you anyway) will leave more educated and come to you for help in the future. The customers who decide it’s too much work for them will now see YOU as the expert and pay what you ask.

Note: Positioning yourself an expert is nothing new. Sales consultants talk about this all the time, but rarely do to they tell you HOW do it. Thats where they make their money. The HOW.

Lots of Money$$ Can be Made in Training:

In my example below I talk about how a SEO expert uses training to not only gain new customers for his consulting business, but makes great money by training others to do his job. All with less hassle then actually doing the work.

How this Works:

Example #1 Create a Meetup & Share Your Tips & Tricks
In todays world it’s relatively easy to share your knowledge with others that may eventually be a prospect for your business. Meet-ups are a great way to do this, and using the site Meetup.comcan help you connect with others looking to learn more about your particular subject. There are other sites that do this, but Meetup’s tool and established user base is a great way to quickly market your event.

Combine your Meetup.com account with a very active Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin account and you could really have something. Below is an example of one such meeting I went to myself recently. I found this meeting through a Linkedin group post, went to the meeting and was so struck by this concept, that I had to write something about it. I have done this type of thing in the past, but this meeting really reminded me of the sales power something like this can provide to your business.

EXAMPLE #1: THE SEO MEETING MEETUP:
I recently began going to networking events again as I start to really pick things up 2010. One of the meetings I recently went to was an SEO Meetup where an SEO expert puts on regular monthly meeting where people can come and talk about the tricks that make sites rank in the search engines, or have their sites critiqued by the group. This was a great meeting and I am sure the expert receives lots of sales lea ds by doing this.

The sales idea here is show others he knows what he is talking about by sharing tidbits of knowledge for free. Thereby peaking the interest of serious buyers. After sharing and helping the group the expert tells people  they can learn everything about SEO at his classes that range from 2 days to 5 days. If you don’t want to learn it and just want them to do the work for you, then they do that for a fee. (he already sold that he knows what he is doing in the free meeting, so of course you want to use the expert)

His training ranges from $1000 (for 2 days) to $2500 for 5 days. If he trains10 people (his limit for 1 class) he could make $25,000 in one week (now thats my kind of money) Even if he only fills the 2 day class that is still $10,000. Offering discounts to the group of course cuts the profit down, but still a nice weeks wage if you ask me.

Now you are thinking that he trained all these people and so he has just trained his way out of having customers right. WRONG! – Most of those customers are still going to think that it’s too much work for them to do themselves so they will have the expert do the work anyway. The difference is that now they have paid the expert to learn what they are going to pay for anyway… and the expert has really sold them that he knows what he’s doing, so he can charge what he wants without the question of price.

To me this seems like a great way to make money…

Example #2: Your Friends Don’t Respect What You Do, and Think it’s Easy.
Back in 2004 as I began building my business in the Detroit area I was approached by an old friend who was an electrician. He asked me to set up a website for him. I said I could, but it would take some time. Some time later he decided he didn’t want to wait and asked me to show him how to build his own site. After thinking about I decided to help him.  Of course he wanted a flashy site (everybody wants these things right?) with tornadoes blowing down houses, and some other stuff. I told him… you have no idea how much work this is do you. He said… “it’s easy all you have to do is sit in front of the computer and whip it out.” – Well let the lesson begin then I said.

After about 2 hours of showing him how to setup a page in Dreamweaver and showing him some basic things of setting up a site. He gave up. He said he never realized how much work was involved in building a site I said well now you understand what I do. Since then that same friend has asked to pay me to build the site. Of course I am giving him a great discount, but he knows I don’t just whip things out…. and bye bye Tornado (thank god. That thing would have taken a day by itself).

In Closing:

As you can see Training Others to do YOUR job can be a very profitable enterprise in itself. You should think about what you do and come up with a training program in your area. It’s one of the best sales techniques there is…