Often, when businesses embrace content marketing and They Ask, You Answer, the tendency is to think, Okay, I’m just going to post this on my site and great things are going to happen!

Unfortunately, publishing content on your site simply is not enough. You can’t just passively post content on your website or social media channels and expect it to work its magic. You must find ways to actively help your prospects and customers read and view your content if you’re going to truly move the needle. Furthermore, you cannot be passive about this, and you can’t just leave it up to chance.

The process of actively using your content in the sales process is what I’ve dubbed “assignment selling.”

To help you catch the vision that is assignment selling, we’ll again use swimming pools as an example. But before we go any further, let me explain what I’m talking about when I use the phrase “assignment selling.”

I define assignment selling as the process of intentionally using information:

• That you have created via text, video, or audio
• That is educational about your products and/or services
• With the purpose of resolving the major concerns and question of the prospect so they are dramatically more prepared for a sales appointment (or multiple sales appointments)

I reference this as something to do before and during the sales process.

An Example of Assignment Selling in Action

As you read the following, I don’t want you to think you necessarily have to apply this to your business in the exact same way that I show here. The key here is the principle that relates to the way information or content is used to help your prospects either move down the sales funnel and advance, or become disqualified because they discover they’re not a good fit for you.

Here is how it works: It used to be that someone would call my swimming pool company and say something like, “Hey, Marcus, I’m checking out your site and I think I’d like to get a quote for a swimming pool. Can you come out to my house this Friday and give me a quote?”

After asking them a couple of qualifying questions, I would say, “Sure, I’ll be right out.” I did that because that’s what I thought sales people were supposed to do. If I was asked to go out and sell, I wanted to immediately go out and sell. Simply put, I didn’t know any better.

This occurred because I wasn’t truly thinking about the readiness of the prospect. I wasn’t asking myself, Well, wait a minute here. How much does this person really understand about the world of swimming pools?

When I responded immediately to their request for a swimming pool quote, I had no way of knowing how educated they were with respect to buying a swimming pool. A person might be very informed and educated regarding our products and services, or they might be totally ignorant and aloof. I really knew nothing about my prospects and customers, and for all I knew, they knew absolutely nothing about that thing I was trying to sell them.

But I was not alone in my struggles. Many sales professionals are experiencing this very thing to some degree or another.

So, how does one overcome this? How does a sales professional take a prospect from “uninformed” to “extremely educated?”

At River Pools, we changed our entire sales conversations, starting with the first call. This is how it now sounded:

POOL SHOPPER: Hey Marcus, I’ve been checking out your site and I think I’d like to get a quote for a swimming pool. Can you come out to my house this Friday and give me a quote?

ME: Of course, I would love to come out to your house this Friday and give you a quote. However, you’re getting ready to spend a lot of money on a swimming pool, and I know you don’t want to make any mistakes with a project of this magnitude. So as to ensure you don’t make any mistakes, we’re going to help you become well educated.

In order to do this, I’m going to send you an e-mail. In this e-mail, you’re going to see two main things. First, you’re going to see a video of a fiberglass swimming pool installation. This will let you know how the swimming pool is going to show up to your house; it will show you the excavation and shell going in the ground; and it will also allow you to see the final grade-work and cleanup. In other words, you’ll observe the whole process so that, when I come out to your house, you won’t have to ask me, “So, Marcus, what does this process look like?” You will already know. That will save us both a lot of time.

The second thing I’m going to do is attach an e-book to this e-mail; it’s essentially a buying guide. You will find this literature extremely helpful as well, as it will answer many of the questions you have right now. For example, it will address questions about what would be the best cover for your swimming pool: solid, mesh, or maybe even an automatic cover. The guide will also go over subjects like pool heaters and address questions of whether gas or electric is better, or whether you even need a heater at all. It’s a little bit long—about thirty pages—but I promise you, it will be well worth your time.

Then I close by saying, “So, Mr./Mrs. Jones, would you take the time to review this e-book before our appointment on Friday?”

Having had this exact conversation with hundreds of swimming pool shoppers, I can tell you that 90 percent of the time, the simple response is “Sure.”

At this point in the conversation, I would respond by saying, “That’s great. Friday morning I will give you a call just to confirm our appointment as well as make sure you took the time to do those two things.”

The Special Rights of the Teacher

You may think, upon reading such a statement, that asking a person to do this type of “homework” beforehand, and then letting them know you’ll confirm whether they did said homework or not, is audacious.

I understand why you would say that. It is bold. It is audacious.

But it’s also incredibly effective.

And the reason we have such an approach to selling is because our focus on teaching gives us the right to make such commitments with prospects.

First of all, in this case, I have taken the time to give this prospect tremendous value by producing a video that is going to walk them through the process of buying a fiberglass swimming pool. Second, we’ve created a guide that is going to answer the majority of their other pool-related questions.

There is an extreme amount of value in producing this content for them. And because I’ve done this, I’ve earned the right to ask more of the prospect, which, in this case, is to review the video and e-book.

But I couldn’t, for example, say, “I found a book all about buying fiberglass swimming pools written by a guy in California, and I want you to read it before we meet.”

First, the book I would be asking the prospect to read would not be filled with my words, and I would not have therefore earned the right—nor authority—to ask the prospect to read the book (or do the homework).

Second, by producing content in the form of text or video and posting that content on your site and other platforms, you take on the role of teacher. And the moment your prospects see you more as a teacher versus a salesperson, the amount of respect given dramatically escalates.

Remember: The rights of a teacher are greater than those of the person who does not teach.

You may be asking yourself, What happens if they say, “You know, Marcus, it’s great that you put together this e-book, but I won’t have time to read it before Friday. Just come on out and give me a quote.”

How do you respond to that? Before you read the response, keep in mind here what I stated at the beginning of this section: The way we are able to sell at River Pools and Spas may be different than the way you sell. At River Pools, we can be a little pickier with our clients. Because we get a massive number of leads every day, we can qualify harder than other companies based on what we sell, who we sell to, and how much we have to sell in order to be successful.

That being said, we should all be looking for ways to help our prospects become more educated before we talk with them the first time, and then we continue to educate them throughout the sales process.

Here is our response at River Pools when someone says they don’t “have enough time”:

Mr./Mrs. Jones, I appreciate the fact that you don’t have the time to review this content, but here’s the thing: Over the years, we have found that when our customers are very informed and take the time to review these things I am sending over to you, we have a wonderful experience when we meet with them in their homes. In other words, it makes for a much more productive meeting, and seriously eliminates buying mistakes on their part. This way, the customer is happy, and we are happy. But when they don’t do these things, the experience is not nearly as good nor productive. So, Mr./Mrs. Jones, if you don’t have time to become informed and educated about these things, then we are probably not the best fit for you.

As you read this, you may be thinking, Really Marcus, do you actually tell them they’re probably not the best fit for you?

Yes, we do. And I can tell you exactly how they’re going to react because I’ve heard such a response many times. In fact, everything you’re reading about assignment selling and using content as a sales tool has been vetted and experimented with hundreds of times at River Pools and Spas.

Not only that, but this is exactly how we do things at the Sales Lion with our clients, giving us the opportunity to apply these exact same principles to large and small businesses and brands all over the world.

Remember, the principle of making sure we are dealing with educated prospects and customers essentially does not change from business to business, regardless of what you sell.

Now back to Mr./Mrs. Jones’s reaction upon me telling them that if they don’t want to become a bit more educated, then they’re probably not the best fit for my business. I can tell you almost all prospects have responded in one of two ways:

• Response #1 sounds like this: “Okay, Marcus, fine. I will read your e-book and watch your video.” And at that point I would say, “Well, that’s wonderful! Friday morning, I will call you just to confirm you’ve done those things.”
• Response #2 sounds like this: “Forget you! I don’t need you to come out to my house and I don’t need you to sell me a swimming pool. I’ll go somewhere else!”

When this happens, your response as a business should be one of gratitude, because you now know they’re clearly not a good fit.

Here is the core principle we are really discussing:

If becoming educated with respect to your products and services is not a variable in a prospect’s buying decision, it almost always means they are basing their decision on what to buy solely on price. So unless your business model is one of being the lowest-priced guy every time, the prospect is very likely not a good fit for you.

What Homework Can Tell Us about the Prospect

By this point, you may be thinking, But, Marcus, what happens if you call the prospect on Friday morning to ask if they did their homework and they say, “Well, no, I haven’t done it, but I still want you to come out and give me a quote.” What do you do then?

That’s a very good question, and that situation has happened many times as well.

When I first started this process, and a prospect would tell me, “I am so sorry, I got busy. But I still want you to come out and give me a quote,” the salesman in me would think, Well, they didn’t take the time to do it, but I guess I can still go out there.

I tracked those sales appointments over the course of six months, and I was shocked at the results. Guess how many of the prospects who failed to do their homework but said “Come out anyway and give me a quote” turned into customers?

If you guessed fewer than 5 percent, you are correct. This goes back to my point:

• Homework (education) can tell us a lot about the prospect.
• When people don’t take the time to become well educated, they are most likely making their decision based solely on price, which generally means they’re not the best fit.
• When it comes to success in business, the difference between happiness and frustration comes down to knowing who is, and who is not, a good fit for your organization.