What Our Audiences Are Actually Hungering After

Happily, there’s a way out of this squeeze, and it’s great news. The answer lies in what our prospects and customers really want. At the most basic level, what’s one of the most persistent questions you hear from customers? “How do I…?” That’s why we see such an explosion in wikis, for example. Even online reviews, which are answers to the question “What do you think of X?” are actually a step on the road to answering “How do I…?”

Instead of the traditional quick-fire response of “Quick, sell ‘em something before they can think for themselves!”, a growing group of leading entrepreneurs are providing something far more valuable, engaging and effective for their audiences, and their bottom line… Education. The kind you really want and can put to use readily, under your own steam.

More than ever, people are hungry for answers – on all kinds of levels. And they want to experience your expertise, product, service or solution before they buy. By contrast, the traditional response was to keep handling objections until your prospect says yes or gave up and walked away. That approach is wearing really thin, and smart businesses have cottoned on to a new truth.

Welcome to the Learning Age, where Learners are your best Buyers

Just telling people what we do and what we have to offer is no longer enough to get leads, make sales or create an impact in our industry. We need to EDUCATE our audience about our topic, not about our products. We need to empower, inspire and enlighten them with our knowledge and expertise. And we need to be recognised as thought leaders in our field.

Along the way, we need to create interactive conversations with our audience in a way that provides them with immediate insights, tools and actionable information that makes a positive difference to their business and/or their life. This method of ‘edu-preneurship’ not only acts as an invaluable entry point for new customers, it also will see you piling up testimonials and a tribe of raving fans far faster than traditional sales meetings.

The entrepreneurs that have become edu-preneurs, are proof that providing informative and results-generating value upfront, is a far more effective approach than starting the customer relationship by resorting to traditional selling techniques. Like the delicatessen salesman who lets you taste the cheese before you buy, all of the leading entrepreneurs know that giving your customers results in advance is the new way of getting business – and that’s what edupreneurs deliver in their content, before going on to teach their customers the full ‘how to’ on what they do.

But What If You’re Not A Natural Born Educator?

There’s even more good news. You don’t have to do a degree in education to help people. For starters, you already have all of the knowledge your customers need. You are quite likely already an expert in your field. All you need to do is to extract it from your head and present it in a way that your audience can learn from and get results.

(And if you’re not yet fully qualified in your field, you’d be surprised at how much you do know that’s of value to others, that you can start teaching. And by the same token, in this Learning Age, it’s easier than ever to upskill, get results and pass on your learning to others.) Your positioning and credibility in the market place is also likely to increase as a result of sharing your expertise. This approach also generates free exposure, PR and marketing – especially when your audience finds it so valuable that they begin sharing it with their networks and talking about you to their peers.

Ripples That Extend Around the World, Literally

I recently experienced this amazing effect of edupreneruship when a man I’d never met before, who lives on the other side of the world, had seen one of my free online webinars about edupreneurship. He had a meeting with a woman he’d never met before and she too had happened to have seen the same webinar and began talking about me. Despite being strangers to each other, and to me, on the other side of the world, they both came to me and became my clients that week!

Finally, True Differentiation

Educating your audience also gives you a sense of exclusivity in a blue ocean, as you raise yourself above all the other people who are just talking about their topic, and leverage yourself as the only one who is teaching people how to do it. This automatically increases your influence, leads, impact and ultimately your earnings. Before long, you position yourself as the go-to expert in your field, the guru (in the original sense of respected teacher) who teaches us how to do what you do.

This is when your small efforts to prime the pump generate a growing flow of customers coming to you. No more scrabbling for table scraps. Ever.

We Do Need More Education

Hopefully, this article has opened your eyes to the seismic shifts in business, and on the flip side, the tremendous opportunity for meeting the growing hunger for valuable knowledge. And hopefully, you’re beginning to see how being an edupreneur is a far more valued and lucrative place to be than a business that just ‘tells and sells’.

We need more edupreneurs. The demand is huge, and so are the rewards, financially and on so many other levels. And you can become an edupreneur – far easier than you think. Edu-preneurship is the new Entrepreneurship and the time is now. Are you ready to hop on board?

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