How to Pre-Screen Prospects With Your Book

By Sophfronia Scott

When you write a book to promote your business, you’re encouraging people to knock on your door to potentially hire or buy from you. You do this with a powerful lead generation strategy including many calls to action placed throughout your book. However, you don’t want just anyone coming to you. You want prospects who are potentially ideal clients–people you’ll enjoy working with, who respect your expertise and have no qualms about paying you what you’re worth. But here’s the good news: you can actually pre-screen prospects by making key choices in your book. Here’s how. You can qualify prospects with…

Your Material
If you’ve listened to your audience and designed your content really well, then the material in your book will automatically appeal to the people you want as ideal clients. If you’re not sure, just interview past clients and ask them what they most want to know or need help with right now. Also survey your list often so you know what’s on their minds. If your content is compelling, you’ll draw the right prospects into the fold.

Your Questions
You’ll want to continually ask questions in your book to make the readers qualify themselves. “Do you want do this?”, “Is this you?”, “Is this what you want?” Ideally you want a person to answer “Yes!” and raise their hand by going to your website or contacting you by mail, fax or phone.

Your Offers
The things you give away will also tell you what type of prospect you’re getting. I’m willing to bet that the many different giveaways Dan Kennedy offers in his many books all bring him different types of prospects. A person signing up for a free email series is a valuable prospect, certainly. But someone who entered his National Sales Letter Contest (an offer from his Ultimate Sales Letter book) to win a Mustang car is someone who digested his material, acted on it and jumped through a major hoop by completing a lengthy application process. That person would be ten times more likely to spend serious money with Mr. Kennedy and would do it sooner rather than later.

Now this doesn’t mean you want all your offers to be big. Having a range is better. Offer a free tool, or a newsletter subscription. But offer other items as well that require a little more work. Maybe you’ll invite them to a live event that requires a $50 deposit. Or create a contest of your own. This way when the crowd shows up, you market to each person based on their current level of interest–and save money by knowing how to divide up your marketing budget!

© 2008 Sophfronia Scott

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, but you must include this complete resource box with it: Sophfronia Scott is Executive Editor of the Done For You Writing & Publishing Company. Learn what a difference being a published author can make for your business. Get your FREE audio CD, “How to Succeed in Business By Becoming a Bestselling Author” and your FREE online writing and book publishing tips at www.DoneForYouWriting.com.

Be Sociable, Share!

•