Creating the Slam DunkCreating the Slam Dunk
Effective Calls to ActionEffective Calls to Action
by Dan Kennedy
The most common failure in struggling business owners is not product, place, price, or profitability. Their businesses basically work. They just fall down when it comes to selling. This is something of a lost art and a newly disdained activity. People want to send out proposals by email instead of getting face to face to present them. They want an iPad on the wall in their store to do the work of a live, human demonstrator. Sometimes, they hear customers say they prefer such approaches, but it’s vital to realize that the customer is NOT always right. We must never surrender to expressed preferences that sabotage the most effective selling. For a lot more on selling, I urge getting a copy of another book in this series, No B.S. Guide to Sales Success.
The worst of all selling failures comes when it is time to ask for specific action. Most advertising peters out and meekly ends, without a clear and direct call to action. People are routinely permitted to wander around in stores, look at merchandise, and leave empty-handed without ever being put through an organized, scripted sales presentation that leads to a “close” or even having their names and contact information captured for follow-up. In social media, there is a cultural idea, and a fear, about moving people too quickly or definitively to an offer and a call to action—only somewhat justified by the interference of the gods of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. The fact is, there’s no money made until somebody sells something, and damn little gets sold without somebody directly asking for the order.
My famous friend and colleague, the great Zig Ziglar, observed that “timid salespeople have skinny kids,” and said that what separates the poorly paid professional visitor from the kingly compensated professional salesperson is asking for the order. All advertising, all marketing, all media—social and otherwise—must be engineered to get prospect and seller to a time and place where the order can be requested. Anything else is mere professional visiting.
In advertising, the vital skill is knowing how to ask your prospect to take action. Your experience in effectively closing in-person sales will pay off when you sit down to create effective advertising. The same techniques, words, phrases, and ideas used in personal selling should be used in your marketing.
A “Slam Dunk” Customer
If you’re trying to target the entire world, you’d better be prepared to go head-to-head with big, dumb companies with billions of dollars to waste in the effort. Going after every possible person who could ever use your service is a fool’s errand.
Instead, you need to figure out who your favorite clients are. Where do they come from? How do they act? What do they read? How much do they earn? What do they like to do for fun? What is it about YOU that they resonate with?
Get a grip on WHO this person is, WHERE to find him, and WHAT he really wants that only you can provide. And then figure out what PRICE you want him to be able to pay. This should be your first step to building a smarter lead-generation system.
An Easy Layup—Your Lead Generation Magnet
Give your leads a clear reason to contact you and get that reason in front of your “slam dunkers.” Narrow down your perfect clients from the unwashed masses. This “thing” you’re creating is an incentive to respond. It’s your Lead Generation Magnet. It can be informational, like a report, guide, book, CD, or webinar, or it might be some other kind of “gift.” Obviously, the more desirable your magnet and its offer, the stronger the pull it will have to your perfect prospect.
Here are a few Lead Generation Magnets that work very well:
• My friend Larry Levin, seen often on Fox Business News and heard on radio, offers his options trading technique that made him over $1 million—for free. If you’ll just call his 800 number and leave your email address, he’ll send it to you.
• My client Ted Oakley, a wealth manager seen in Forbes and other investor-oriented publications, offers his free book, $20 MILLION AND BROKE, for business owners selling or who have recently sold their companies.
• My client Arthro-New offers a free online video about chronic and arthritic pain relief featuring Dr. John Frank, M.D., and Super Bowl player and a free month’s trial package (to move prospects to tele-reps).
• Doctors with local practices I’ve worked with offer books like The Official Consumer Guide to Cosmetic Surgery and How To End Back Pain and Golf As If You Were 10 Years Younger—Without Drugs or Surgery.
• A B2B consultant offers a “Special Research Report” on expense reduction and cost control case histories to hospital CEOs and CFOs.
• A company of which I was part owner taught people how to start homebased information-publishing businesses. It successfully advertised its Lead Generation Magnet in over 50 national magazines for years—its “little yellow book” was titled How to Make $4,000 a Day, Sitting at Home in Your Underwear, with Your Computer.
• My longtime client Ben Glass, a personal injury attorney in Virginia, creates and advertises many different free reports and books and is a master at using Lead Generation Magnets. You can take a look at www.BenGlassLaw.com. Ben is so good at this, thousands of lawyers all across the country use his LGM formats and models, and you can see that at GreatLegalMarketing.com.
Answer the WHY YOU Question
“Why should I do business with you rather than any other option—including doing nothing?” The answer is what I call your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Your lead magnet should make dead certain that the factors that make you different are clearly spelled out. This provides fuel to your Call to Action (something else you need in your magnet, do NOT forget that critical piece) that compels them to act without hesitation, knowing that the benefit they want can only be found with your products/services.
Don’t rely on hope, networking, or prospecting grunt work to get customers through your door or to your website. Create a lead-generation system that includes these key components to get them to raise their hands and ask for YOU.
The Seamless System Wins
Many big, dumb companies wind up with separate, separately ruled little fiefdoms. Advertising. Marketing. Social Media. Sales. Their princes view each other with suspicion. Often, they compete with each other for budget dollars. They don’t respect each other’s roles or value. The whole thing winds up a patchwork quilt, with big, ugly seams separating each patch. You probably can’t afford this all-too-common level of corporate dysfunction.
In its place, you want a seamless system—a customer-centric system.
It’s entirely about the customer, and totally designed and organized to move someone seamlessly from first point of contact along a single, well-paved and fenced-in path to the point of sale. If that point of first contact is in social media, terrific—but then you must move that person from the avenue through your driveway, onto your garden path, and ultimately to the point of sale.
Making the SaleMaking the Sale
by Kim Walsh-Phillips
“Well, it was a gold bomber jacket. How could people stay away?” said art advisor Stefano Basilico after the sale. “I think we’re going to start seeing a lot of bomber jackets come out at auction from now on.”
This quote ran as part of a story on www.ArtNews.com after Christie’s Auction House ran a record-breaking auction of contemporary art including Seth Price’s Vintage Bomber 2006 that sold for $785,000, beating its high estimate by more than ten times.
That night, Christie’s grossed $852.9 million. The artists included Cy Twombly, Ed Ruscha, Peter Doig, Martin Kippenberger, Elaine Sturtevant, and Seth Price. Seventy-five of the 80 lots on offer found buyers, for an impressive sell-through rate by lot of 94%.
Warhol’s Triple Elvis [Ferus Type]) 1963 sold for $81.9 million and Warhol’s Four Marlons made $69.6 million. An untitled Cy Twombly from 1970 handily surpassed its estimate, $35 million to $55 million, selling for $69.6 million with premium.
“The evening was primarily made up of people buying for themselves,” Brett Gorvy, Christie’s chairman and international head of postwar and contemporary art, said at the postsale press conference. He pointed out there were 500 bidders from 43 different countries and that new buyers were facilitated by recent “outreach” efforts in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and the Middle East.
“This was a collecting-buying pool tonight, rather than dealers,” he said.
Christie’s got it right. It wasn’t inviting people to an art opening or gallery event. It was cultivating relationships with qualified art buyers from around the world in order to make a sale.
And it was record-breaking.
Many brands on social media stay in the engagement stage and never move onto the sale. They want “Likes” because it makes them feel good to have people connected to them.
Likes can’t be deposited in the bank and won’t pay your bills.
How you make the sale has to be determined BEFORE you create content. Using the famous Covey tactic, begin with the end in mind.
How to Do It Right
Michael Kors, world-renowned, award-winning designer of luxury accessories and ready-to-wear, did a fantastic job of incorporating a sales strategy into Facebook marketing.
According to its case study on Facebook:
Michael Kors launched a new sneaker product line. The launch, the brand’s biggest new product launch, reached the target customers (women, ages 15 to 35) for the shoes—“decked out with luxe textures, metallic accents, and high-shine studs”—so Michael Kors decided it would make Facebook a key focus. The launch kicked off the brand’s move into sneakers, and was part of a broader effort to attract new customers to the brand. The campaign primarily aimed to increase awareness and drive purchases of the new sneakers.
It created an exclusive sneaker line of 500 pairs that sold out in a matter of seconds via Facebook, prior to releasing a full new line in its stores. In many locations, that second release sold out as well, no doubt spurred by the frenzy social media caused.
The overall results:
• Reached 36 million people in its target audience (Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings)
• Sellout of many sneaker styles in-store and online
• A 16-point increase in awareness of the new sneaker (Nielsen Brand Effect study), equating to 5.8 million incremental users aware of the sneaker
• A 16-point increase in association of Michael Kors with “Jet. Set. Go.” (Nielsen Brand Effect study), equating to 5.8 million incremental users associating the brand with the message
• 1 million views of the sneaker videos attributed to the ads (www.adweek.com/socialtimes/michael-kors-limited-edition-shoe/417663)
We’ve used this same model for something a little less sexy than sneakers: furnaces.
For One Hour Heating and Air Conditioning in Omaha, Nebraska, we wanted to drive direct sales to a profitable offering but one that gave great value to its target market. Here’s how you make a furnace sexy: Make your offer exclusive, special, and time-limited, and watch your audience behave differently. This offer was available for only 57 furnaces at a price of $981 (normally valued at $3,000) with the purchase of an air conditioning system.
When it’s time to make the sale, if you’ve followed my advice and focused your attention only on your perfect prospects and spent time perfecting the skill of community engagement, your job will now be easy.
But how exactly does this happen?
Sometimes it’s better not to ask for the sale of what you really want, but rather for the sale of something else entirely.
If you are old enough to have owned a Walkman, then you probably remember Columbia House’s special introductory offer . . . eight records (or tapes or CDs or eight-tracks even!) for the price of one. Started as a mail-order business in 1955, Columbia House secured over 125,000 members and $1.7 million in net revenue its first year alone. Its model was, and still is with a DVD-only program, to give away its product with a small level of commitment in order to secure a customer.
The popular Asian restaurant P.F. Chang’s ran a Facebook promotion in celebration of its anniversary. All of its Facebook Fans received a coupon for complimentary lettuce wraps with the purchase of any entrée. While of course this attracted a lot of new fans, the real success was that it drove 50,000 people into the restaurant for the offer, 40% of which were first-time customers.
Or in the business-to-business space, give a seminar on a topic of interest for your prospects and include one-on-one consultations as part of the event. Your attendees get a sense of what you have to offer in a trial run yet in the most-likely-to-purchase environment. Include a time-sensitive call-to-action introductory offer to your services or product to drive more prospects into your “upsell” marketing funnel.
Offering a transitional stepping stone is a strategic way to speed up your sales cycle and convert more leads into paying customers. How can you give your prospects a compelling reason to give you a try while ensuring they are committed and serious potential customers? Because if they aren’t then they aren’t worth pursuing any further.
Ever hear the saying that an idea is worthless without action?
Along those lines, a prospect is worthless without conversion. If you aren’t actively turning your prospects into buyers, then you are missing out on a lot of potential revenue. It would be like closing your flower shop that is overflowing with red roses in inventory the day before Valentine’s Day.
THE DIFFERENT METHODS OF CONVERTING YOUR LEADS INTO SALES
While there are many different ways you can convert a lead into a sale, here’s how I have had the most success for our clients and firm:
• Email follow-up sequence with a call to action. Following up after a prospect doesn’t convert means more than just emailing additional sales messages. It requires answering objectives and providing content to further nurture the relationship before making the sale.
• Follow-up training event. If you had a training event and your prospects did not convert, that does not mean it is a one-and-done deal. When we held our FB Sales Funnel launch in the fall, almost 500 people watched videos 1 through 4, but many did not convert until they attended a follow-up live webinar. Give your audience different ways to learn and buy for the greatest ROI.
• Direct-mail campaign. If your prospect entered your marketing funnel through digital channels, it doesn’t mean your conversation needs to stay there. Test taking your conversation offline to gauge whether or not that increases your conversion rate.
• Facebook advertising. Through Facebook’s Ad platform, you can target your email list by creating a Facebook Custom Audience. Leverage this by uploading your email list and creating messaging specifically for those you targeted with your sales messages, yet did not convert, with a follow-up offer or piece of content.
• Follow-up call. This is the most effective, yet least often used method of sales conversion—the good ol’ follow-up call. Our clients who utilize telemarketing as part of their sales process achieve a better ROI than those who don’t. Sure, there is a time investment involved (which means more risk), but there’s always risk when you’re making money.
LOSS LEADERS
There are almost as many ways to structure your sale as there are things to sell.
GKIC Insider’s Circle starts with a loss leader in order to get people into its membership. Most of its offer funnels start by offering a product that is worth more than the person is paying for it, plus two free months of membership. Yet, it knows it makes money on this. In fact, back when it used a three-month free membership program, it retained even more members. It chose to spend thousands a day going after leads because it is getting a high enough return on its investment.
This loss leader funnel is only advertised after the prospect has seen blog content, by seeing a content-rich ad, clicking on it, and going to the blog.
For some smaller entrepreneurs, loss leaders are not an option, at least at the beginning. Nonetheless, the goal should be to spend the most you can to acquire a high-quality customer so you can obtain them and keep them for life.
Like Dan Kennedy says, the one who can spend the most going after his target market wins.
What Do You Do to Make the Sale without Breaking Trust?What Do You Do to Make the Sale without Breaking Trust?
by Ari Galper
Side note from Kim: If you head out for the night and ask the most beautiful girl in the room for her phone number and she happily gives it to you, that is the first step in successful dating. Following through, you have to actually call her in order to take her out on a date. The same is true with your social media marketing. Bringing in qualified leads is just the first step in increasing revenue. You then need to close the sale. Ari Galper, www.unlockthegame.com/NoBSGuruSecrets, is a master at selling. Many of my clients have used his coaching and training products to dramatically improve their results. I asked Ari to share some of his fundamentals of successfully selling and in this chapter, he does just that.
So you’ve implemented everything you’ve learned in this book, and now you’re moving prospects through a lead-generation process to a phone conversation with you or your sales team—to ultimately make the sale.
How are you going to make sure you are building trust with them?
What happens if you start to “sell” your solution, and they hold back from telling you the truth of their particular needs and problems?
What if you end up chasing them after the call only to hear them say, “I want to think about it”?
What if you end up burning social media leads by trying to sell the traditional way?
I’d like to introduce you to a new way of making the sale that keeps your integrity and values intact. You’ll also be able to stop chasing “ghosts,” prospects who express interest in your solution, but never tell you the truth of where they stand and never call you back.
Are you chasing any ghosts in your pipeline right now?
This trust-based selling approach is called Unlock The Game®. It is being used successfully by thousands of business owners and sales consultants in more than 38 countries and has been received as a “bombshell” to the entire sales industry.
Here are some of the core beliefs:
• The sale is lost at the beginning, not the end of the process.
• If your sales process starts with “pitching” your solution, you immediately signal the sales game is on and prospects will retreat to the point they are unlikely to move forward with your solution.
• If your prospective customers don’t buy how you sell, they aren’t going to buy what you sell.
• Once your prospects realize that you operate differently, they will open up to you. They will share important information about their budgets and timelines. They will explore options with you. If you can solve their problems, they will initiate the buying process.
How you sell makes a big difference.
Here’s why, now more than ever, it’s time to be open to a new way to sell. Traditional selling has become so artificial, potential clients put their guard up as soon as they sense they’re being drawn into a process designed to get them to buy.
The traditional sales mindset has made selling a polarizing and dehumanizing process for both you (the seller) and your prospect (the buyer). It is a painful process of chasing people until they say “yes.”
The Unlock The Game mindset is the core missing link many business owners and sales consultants have been yearning for. Once you consider adopting this new view of selling, you’ll find it easy to incorporate—to begin to do less chasing while creating a sales breakthrough in your business.
Selling Can Become an Enjoyable Experience Again—Void of Pressure or Rejection
If you can view prospects as human beings instead of “targets,” you’ll see new and productive results immediately. You’ll shift your attention away from your needs (“making the sale”) to your potential clients’ needs.
This means focusing on solving their problems. This will free you from the traditional sales conditioning that may be holding you back from your true sales potential.
Why is the mindset shift so necessary?
If you try to change your sales behaviors without first shifting your thinking, you’ll eventually slip back into old habits. This can be frustrating if you’re attempting to make permanent change. For years, business owners have tried to distance themselves from the negative “salesperson” stereotype by taking the “asking questions” approach. Through asking questions to uncover potential clients’ needs, you make them feel that you care about them, and they stop suspecting you have a hidden agenda.
To be sure, this is a crucial way for you to learn how you can help potential clients. However, need-oriented questions will do little to make them feel comfortable with you if they suspect your questions are only part of a strategy to lead them closer to buying.
Unless you first change the intent behind your questions and unless you’re sure your mindset is open—beyond the notion of thinking about the sale—there will always be an inherent conflict that makes it difficult for your potential clients to trust you.
The Unlock The Game mindset is based on three simple core principles:
Principle 1: Let go of the traditional sales goal of “making the sale,” and replace it with a new goal: to discover the truth of your potential client’s situation.
Principle 2: Stop defending yourself.
Principle 3: End the chasing game.
If you understand and live by these principles, you won’t ever slip back into traditional sales thinking again.
These core principles are like having your own “sales culture,” just as organizations have their own “corporate culture.” They will guide you to make decisions and sell in alignment with your new mindset or “culture.”
Let’s review these principles in more depth.
PRINCIPLE 1: DISCOVER THE TRUTH OF YOUR POTENTIAL CLIENT’S SITUATION
Let go of the traditional sales goal of “making the sale,” and replace it with a new goal: to discover the truth of your potential client’s situation.
“Going for the sale” has always been the driving factor behind selling. Most of us have a voice in the back of our minds after a sales call, “Okay, things are looking good, he seems interested. Keep asking questions, and maybe he’ll commit to setting up an appointment, and that’ll bring me closer to a sale.”
The problem is, that voice is keeping you in your world and not in your potential client’s world.
Your prospects can immediately sense you’re not 100% focused on solving their issues. That can trigger suspicion that you’re more interested in the sale than actually helping them solve their problem.
Discovering the truth of your potential client’s situation is the most crucial part of the mindset, because if you remain in your own thoughts, it’s difficult to genuinely help the other person prior to when they are ready to buy.
Sometimes, we don’t always want to hear the truth (you know what movie that phrase came from) because it’s not in line with “hoping” for a sale.
When you reach your prospect’s truth, you may discover your solution is really not a fit for them.
As business owners and sales consultants, we want to believe that what we’re selling is right for as many people as possible. But coming to terms with and feeling comfortable with the truth about whether you can help certain prospects allows you to eliminate false expectations and feelings of rejection associated with selling.
In other words, if you can get to a “no” as efficiently as you get to a “yes” (through trust-based selling), you’ll find yourself spending more productive time with clients who are a perfect fit.
Giving equal weight to a “no” as well as a “yes” will help you untangle your conditioning from traditional selling—where it’s always been about the “yes”—to creating the best relationship with your prospective client.
PRINCIPLE 2: STOP DEFENDING YOURSELF
When potential clients challenge us or bring up objections about our solutions, it’s easy to react defensively. It’s a natural reaction.
And when we hear common objections like, “Why should we choose you over XYZ company?” we often times overreact. We put even more pressure on the potential client to choose us and move forward to the sale.
Although our natural reaction is to “sell harder,” this predictably only reinforces your prospect’s mistrust.
Suppose the person you’re speaking with says, “We’ve been looking at similar services. Why should we go with you?” Instead of staying locked into the traditional mindset and defending yourself or trying to persuade him, use trust-based language to diffuse the situation and re-engage the conversation: “That’s not a problem [relaxed, soft tone]. I’m happy not to make any assumptions that we are automatically a fit together. If you’d be open to it, how about we talk through each of your needs to see how we can address them differently so you have all the information you need.”
This response comes directly from our own trust-based language we created for virtually every sales objection and scenario.
When you let go of the idea that you have to use persuasive skills to “move” your prospect down your sales process, with all the subtle sales pressure that invariably includes, you no longer have to defend yourself ever again.
Letting go of defending and persuading frees you to explore whether what you have to offer will help solve your prospects’ problems.
PRINCIPLE 3: END THE CHASING GAME
Chasing prospects has been a basic pillar of traditional selling for decades. It’s just part of the “game.” The thinking goes, “The more I pursue, the more I increase my chances of making a sale.” It comes from the traditional sales mindset, in which your primary goal is to make the sale rather than focusing on whether you can help a potential client solve a problem.
Chasing is so commonly accepted as a normal part of successful selling that even business owners who try to distance themselves from the negative stereotype of “selling” still find themselves pursuing potential clients.
Because most of us believe so strongly in our solution, we make the instinctive assumption that everyone who fits the profile of a potential client actually needs what we have. That assumption causes us to shift into “chase mode” whenever we meet someone who fits our profile.
We then try to create forward momentum by hoping (I call it using the drug “hopeium”!) that because this person fits our profile, the conversation will lead to a sale. Unfortunately, “hopeium” only creates false expectations that, in many cases, lead us to rejection and loss of the sale.
Chasing positions us to feel that we’re bothering or distracting potential clients from their normal daily activities. It’s easy to feel as if you’re intruding on their time, and that can eventually take a toll on your sales self-confidence. With a shift to the Unlock The Game mindset, your thoughts no longer get caught up in premature expectations based on your own needs.
Instead, you’ll discover what it’s like to not make immediate assumptions about every potential client you speak with. You’ll begin saying to yourself, “Because I don’t yet know the truth of this person’s situation, I’m not sure whether I can help them or not, or even whether they have a problem, or whether they feel that solving that problem is a priority.”
Most sales consultants don’t realize they could stop chasing by gracefully telling potential clients something as simple as: “Would you be open to us circling back on our calendars to set up a time to chat again, so we both don’t end up chasing each other?” This is another way of asking to set up a next call without applying sales pressure so they respect you each step of the way.
When you’ve developed enough trust with your prospect using mindset and trust-based language, they will feel you’re genuinely interested in helping them solve their problem and not there just to make the sale.
Like challenging-and-defending, chasing-and-avoiding is an “old mindset” game. Taking a personal vow to end the chasing game will take your sales results and peace of mind to a whole new level!
You see, chasing puts you in a subservient position to your potential client. It fuels the negative “aggressive” sales stereotype that so many of us hate and want to avoid at all costs.
The responsibility is on us to start new relationships with humility and the sincere intention of helping others instead of ourselves. A modest, unassuming manner makes it easier for potential clients to open up and begin telling us the truth of their situation so we don’t have to chase them along the way.
The Sale Is Lost at the Beginning and Not the End
As you’re reading this, thousands of business owners are reviewing their monthly sales pipelines, scratching their heads, and wondering why so many of their sales consultants’ “leads” never pan out. And when they talk with their sales teams, the focus of discussion is usually centered around, “What happened at the end of the process that caused the deal to drop off?”
My hunch is that they’re probably not discussing what happened at the beginning of the sales process that triggered the sales opportunities to disappear.
With the Unlock The Game approach, the emphasis shifts to building relationships that allow trust to emerge at the very beginning of the sales process, literally at “Hello.”
That way, you can be sure you’re operating with truthful information about your potential client’s true goals throughout your presales relationship.
Humanizing the Sales Process
Subconsciously, many of us use words and phrases that categorize us as someone who has the intention of making a sale. This immediately associates us with the negative “salesperson” stereotype.
Common phrases such as “I’m just calling to see if you’d be interested” or “I’m calling to see if you’d be willing to explore” categorize us as someone with the traditional sales mindset.
At the end of what has been a good conversation, traditional sales conditioning kicks in and we attempt to close an appointment by saying, “How about we set up a time to discuss the next steps?” or “How about we schedule a time to move things forward?”
But those “closing” questions are a dead giveaway that you’re really focused on moving things forward to reach your goal: the sale.
What if you attempt to move them forward and the prospects aren’t ready yet?
What can you break between you and them? Trust.
Remember, the goal of this mindset is to build trust.
It’s important to change to trust-based sales languaging that doesn’t connect you to the negative sales stereotype. Rather than closing an initial conversation by pushing them to the next step, try asking (with a soft tone and relaxed voice): “Where do you think we should go from here?”
You’ll be amazed what happens when you ask this question at the end of your initial sales conversations. Miraculously, they start opening up and telling you the truth, which is your new goal.
Here are more samples of our Unlock The Game trust-based language:e
• “Does it make sense to”
• “Would you be open to”
• “Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable about how we might be able to work together?”
Trust-based phrases like these are a big relief to potential clients who may start to suspect that, as the conversation draws to an end, you’re going to pressure them to move to a next step.
Trust-based language diffuses inherent pressure in the sales conversation and gives the other person the message that your thoughts are not about your goal—the sale. Instead, you’re simply asking them how they’re feeling so far and where they want to go next. Their response will tell you whether the two of you have really created trust.
You’ll discover this kind of trust-based language also makes you feel much more comfortable because it makes rejection impossible. Instead of pushing a potential client for a “yes” or a “no,” you’re simply talking about the possibility of whether both of you are a fit together, without making any assumptions.
For more from Ari, visit www.UnlockTheGame.com/NBGuruSecrets.
Where’s Your Hidden Money?Where’s Your Hidden Money?
by Kim Walsh-Phillips
If you haven’t yet launched a product, program, or service to sell or you are looking for supplemental income, then you are just like me a few years ago.
I have always been a public speaker, sharing my expertise in a (fingers crossed) entertaining way to audiences around the world. I have also always written a lot of content and used it to connect with my audience.
Until I was introduced to the world of information marketing, I didn’t sell anything when I spoke. I would get paid by the event organizer and hope that someone in the crowd would become a client.
Fast forward to today where we have developed programs that teach people how to monetize their marketing (see examples at www.NoBSSocialMediaBook.com). While we run these programs and promotions readily as part of our overall business structure, I can also call upon them to bring us quick surges of cash.
Before I took my friends and family on the Disney VIP Tour in celebration of my 40th birthday, I ran a one-hour webinar and made enough money to pay for the entire trip without having to dip into my savings.
We can activate our list when needed to drive them to the sale because we have products waiting that we’ve developed with their needs in mind. This is the hidden money in our business.
Where Is Your Money Hiding?
The easiest place to start is with the hidden money you already have in your business. These are moneymakers that are sitting there, waiting to give you revenue. You’d be surprised how many there are.
FINISH YOUR ONLINE COURSE OR PRODUCT
If you are almost done, go ahead and launch the product. Set a deadline for yourself, and stick to it. If you want to be really aggressive, give yourself 30 days to finish the content and 30 days to build out a promotion. Or do something like the project I worked on with content-marketing superstar Ahava Leibtag, my interviewee in Chapter 11. She produced a webinar to give content and sell the program, and conducted the next three webinars live, recorded them and then sold the recordings.
GKIC Insider’s Circle has developed a brilliant way to create products. It invites people to attend a livecast for free. The livecast is then recorded and sold during the program. It uses the sales funnel as the product. It also sells a product and membership during the livecast opt-in process that more than covers its production costs. And it can retarget anyone who opts in with future offers.
I have learned a lot over the years about getting people engaged on the webinar, keeping them engaged, and getting them to respond to your call to action to buy. A lot of the strategies I have found to work may be controversial as they are manipulative and persuasive. And they are. If you have a product or service that can help people, then you have a moral obligation to do everything in your power to get them to take action. Everything. This stuff is powerful, and so it is all about using your powers for good and not evil.
I’ve perfected my webinar selling technique over time and have a show-up rate of around 50% and a 100% engagement level throughout the whole presentation. I generally close 20% to 40% of those online.
In my pre-event promotion, I make a point of telling people to show up early in order to secure their spot. I get on the webinar early and welcome guests, telling them to close all other windows down and put their phone on silent. I let them know that I will be moving quickly and they will want to devote all of their attention to this training to get the most out of it.
In my welcome, I always have a slide that includes my headshot and media logos of where I have spoken to set up credibility. I also come on screen during the beginning, so the viewers can see I am an actual person. This creates bonding and rapport with my audience.
I start by asking an interactive question. I usually ask people where they are watching the training from and what snack and/or beverage they are enjoying. I announce these to the audience so they know the depth of the attendees.
As a key strategy, I call out a few people in my attendee list who didn’t answer. This lets the audience know that they must pay attention and stay engaged or they are going to be called out on it. Anytime you see your attention rate go below 90%, ask a question and call out someone who doesn’t participate. It will only happen once or twice, and everyone will be fully engaged.
I open with telling them the transformative value they will get by being on the training. I say, “You made the right decision being on here today because you are going to discover how to drive qualified leads and sales through Facebook. I am also going to share a few mistakes you are most likely making that’s costing you money and a compelling, albeit controversial, landing page strategy.” In this one sentence, I have given them intrigue, curiosity, and suspense, all tied around keeping them involved and engaged in the training.
Next, I share who this is for and who it isn’t for. Here, I self-identify with the audience. I like to connect with them in a way that is uplifting and supportive.
I share what topic we are focusing on and why it is an issue now. People need to know why it is urgent that they address it right now. I explain what the consequences will be if they don’t deal with this problem right now. I give instructions to take notes and tell them a few phrases that they should write down. This helps to keep the audience engaged and paying attention and sets up my authority as being in charge.
I then share my story. It is important every time that I share where I was before, how I found a solution, and how it got me to where I am now. I have to let the audience know that I wasn’t always this successful. I understand their journey, and I want to share what helped me make a change for the better. I feel compelled each time to share with my audience how I struggled to survive for a long time and only once I discovered how to make direct response social media marketing work did our company turn around.
I then present problem agitation, sharing mistakes a lot of people make that they are probably making, too. Of course, I provide some real content. I have experimented and tested this multiple times, and have found that I should never give any more than three ideas, lessons, or tips to my audience. I am sure that doesn’t sound like a lot, but anytime I have given more than three my audience is lost and overwhelmed. People are also much less likely to buy, and they don’t leave my training nearly as satisfied. Giving no more than three gives a quick win they can take right then that feels good and they can move forward on.
I transition into the close with, “Of course you want to (outcome you have been talking about), and now you have two choices. You can either do it alone, wasting time and money as you figure it all out, or you can let me come alongside you, holding your hand every step of the way as you _________________ (outcome).”
I finish by giving my offer, describing the transformative value of what will happen if they buy, not the products themselves. An advanced strategy that works very well is that I gave proprietary names to my strategies with course offerings and products. This increases the curiosity factor, the value of the course, and my authority.
I recognize early-bird buyers by name and thank them for signing up. This gives them the appreciation and recognition they deserve and encourages others to buy. Besides taking live questions, I also always add on a fast-action bonus. While there are those who will jump right in and buy, many need an extra push to get into action. Announcing the names and giving a fast-action bonus will help.
I never send out replays. I have a much higher showing rate and my overall sales have increased. But I do send out follow-up emails to those who attended. There are always a few stragglers who buy after the training ends.
To check out this strategy and see my process in action, sign up for a free Facebook sales training at www.FBSalesLaunch.com.
Follow this template as a starting point, and then test your own strategies to produce the best results. Between what I do for our firm, affiliates, and clients, I give over 50 webinars a year and I am still perfecting my process.
SELL A WEBINAR
Hold a live event online that you charge for and use the recording as a digital product to sell after the event. You can simply use PowerPoint or Keynote and GoToWebinar to deliver your presentation and produce the recording One of the courses I created this way is our LinkedIn Domination Course (http://www.lidominationworkshop.com). I hold it first as a live event and then sell the recording ongoing. That is, until I host the next live one and do it all over again.
WRITE AN EBOOK
The thought of writing a book may seem daunting. I get it. Writing this book is no walk in the park. (I do not drink nearly as much coffee when walking in the park as I have writing this book, for example. And I may smile more when in a park.) But writing an ebook does not need to be daunting. If you have a collection of blogs, you could simply book them together, add in an opening and closing chapter, and voila! Your ebook is complete. Or if you want to start from scratch, there is a simple process to follow that can get your book done in one day.
1. Come up with a book theme. For example, for an accounting firm, the book might be “How to Increase Your Profit Without Increasing Your Sales.”
2. Write ten questions to answer as part of that theme. Questions might include: What are the hidden business deductions I am probably missing? What company structure is most profitable? What employee classifications benefit my bottom line the most?
3. Write down three bullet points answering each question.
4. Record yourself answering each question, using your bullet points as your guide.
5. Send your recording to a transcriber. (We use www.InternetTranscribers.com but there are many out there that will work for you.)
6. Edit the final transcript.
7. Hire a freelancer on ODesk or HireMyMom.com to design the book for you.
8. Lift up your hand and reach over your shoulder to your back and pat yourself because you have your product and you are officially a published author.
9. You can either sell the book directly on your site or sell it through Amazon’s Kindle publishing program KDP. If you want to add in a bonus, include an audible version of the ebook as well.
OFFER GIFT CERTIFICATES
If you sell products or services, a gift certificate can be an effective entry point to help pay for your marketing and get customers in the door. This is really a coupon with a higher perceived value. You are giving a time-sensitive reason for the recipient to act now in order to receive something of value. We run a campaign for a bath remodeler using this strategy.
PACKAGE THE HOLIDAYS
We all know to wish our fans on social media well on the big holidays, but have you ever thought how you could turn those holidays into a promotion? More creative than a 20% MERRYXMAS20 code, use the holidays as an opportunity for a unique offering.
A lot of the messaging for The Fertility Center is centered around women because we’ve found that the female partner is doing the majority of the research in family planning. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t focus a bit on the dad-to-be as well. For Father’s Day we developed an exclusive package that none of its competitors were even coming close to. The Quick Start Paternity Planner included a miniconsultation, a semen analysis, and weekly fertility-boosting tips. (It was an email that the company was already doing, so it wasn’t any extra work.) For very minimal effort and costs, we got four couples to sign up and buy the package, equalling about $100,000 in potential revenue for a promotion that cost about $150. As an added community-relations bonus, this promotion also connected with couples who were struggling. Instead of being sad or frustrated on Father’s Day, we wanted to give them an outlet to help reach their goal of starting a family. (See Figure 13.1 on page 250.)
CREATE A BONUS GIFT
The founder of Digital Marketer, Ryan Deiss, has a lot more going on than this online membership organization. Ryan’s holding company, Idea Incubator LP, employs more than 80 people all over the world and owns dozens of companies, both online and offline, ranging from survival blogs to industrial water filter manufacturers. One of the companies he owns is RAW, Really Amazing Women, which describes itself as “A community for women, by women. Our goal is to nurture an environment where we can be the best version of ourselves. Where we can grow, connect, engage, but most of all be free to express ourselves and learn more about embracing our world and loving this life.”
FIGURE 13.1: The Fertility Center Holiday Package Offer
In a promotion for RAW, Really Amazing Women, its sales funnel does not start with a promotion about RAW. Instead, it starts with a free gift that pulls the viewer in to a series of micro-commitments. The site www.MakeUpTutorials.com starts the customer relationship by offering one makeup brush for sale. Once the purchasers say yes, they are then taken to another landing page where they are offered the chance to add more brushes and sign up for the makeup tutorial subscription. (See Figure 13.2 and Figure 13.3 on page 252.)
FIGURE 13.2: RAW Free Gift Promotion Landing Page
FIGURE 13.3: RAW Free Gift Promotion Nurture Page
Not until step three are you asked for credit card information (see Figure 13.4 on page 253).
When you complete the purchase, you are then invited to get an entire set for free as long as you take the subscription to RAW, which is $19.95 a month. (See Figure 13.5 on page 254.)
It is building subscriptions for an online community of women that focuses on building self-esteem and self-confidence. It is leading with this, though. They are leading with makeup brushes, a much easier sell.
FIGURE 13.4: RAW Free Gift Promotion Credit Card Page for Shipping and Handling
We have used this strategy for other clients as well, from products in front of membership to a book as the starting point in a launch. We are reaching people where they are with what they want and giving them what they actually need later on.
FIGURE 13.5: RAW Free Gift Campaign Upsell Page
Be creative when you are thinking of lead generation and that first sale. It does not need to be directly tied to what you do, but instead aligned with the needs of your target market. Remember, those that buy from you are 70% more likely to buy from you again. Your goal should be to get that first sale in place.
From Sales Funnels to “Income At Will”From Sales Funnels to “Income At Will”
by Dan Kennedy
A business that obtained a mailing list of over 100,000 well-chosen potential customers launched a major marketing campaign, with high hopes. The list was targeted to match up with the demographics of its current, avatar clients. There was significant disposable income to be had. The copy was good. And the open rate and click-through rate were high.
The campaign was a total bust.
A mystery, but not one without clues. To borrow from a Sherlock Holmes tale, it’s about what was missing, not what was there. The dog that didn’t bark.
The one thing not known and certain about these 100,000 was whether or not they were buyers in this product category who bought by the means through which this marketer was selling. Matched demographics do not equal matched behavior.
One of my best rules is that buyers are buyers and nonbuyers are nonbuyers. Offline, with direct mail, lists available in the rental marketplace are divided into compiled and response lists. A compiled list contains people chosen by age, gender, geography, household income, and other demographic facts and statistics. A response list, which costs considerably more to rent, has that information but also only assembles people who have responded, that is, they have requested information or purchased.
An example of the difference is women, age 45 to 60, married, with household income above $100,000.00 vs. women, age 45 to 60, married, with household income above $100,000.00 who have purchased a $100 to $200 collection of anti-aging skin-care products within the last 90 days from a direct-mail piece or catalog. The first group has only potential customers eligible to buy; the latter group has buyers. It’s the difference between fishing where we hope there are fish and fishing where we know there are fish.
For more about mailing lists, I recommend the book The Direct-Mail Solution by Craig Simpson, to which I contributed. Craig is my “go-to guy” for lists, and, beyond that, an expert freelance direct-mail project manager handling hundreds of campaigns for hundreds of clients, totaling many millions of pieces mailed each year. His clients include Beach Body, which you’ve seen on TV, a “brain doctor” frequently seen on PBS, groups of local financial advisors, a 23-store chain in the pet industry, and many others. You can meet Craig at www.Simpson-Direct.com.
Online you are more often building your own list, rather than renting lists others have already built. Social media plays a big role in this. That’s the source of the list of 100,000 that so bitterly disappointed its owner.
So, what went wrong?
It’s one thing to attract people and arouse their interest. It’s another thing to extract money from them. In fact, the entire culture of social media (and a lot of other online media) is all about “free” and “cheap.” It acts in conflict with a marketer’s desire to convert visitors and wanderers and freebie-loving citizens into paying customers. These 100,000 were drawn from that population, then this marketer spoiled them rotten by giving them enormous amounts of free content for more than a year before attempting to move them into a sales path or funnel.
Yes, during that time, the marketer included blog links to other people’s products and services (to earn affiliate commissions) and occasionally showcased some of their products and services, ever so gently. But they never once opened a door and asked the potential buyers in this population, the gold needles in the giant haystack, the ready-to-buy-now folks in the giant herd of casual window shoppers—to come on in and then to sell them something. It put a store in the mall, then kept its doors locked for a year, hoping to build fascination and desire. Too long. Too slow.
A key strategy you need to put in place is an open door (with more doors opening frequently), through which real buyers can step to separate themselves from all the rest. By doing so, they identify themselves to you as legitimate potential buyers so you can aggressively sell to them. If your media and social media approach lacks this, you are at high risk of winding up with a low-value list that’s damnably difficult to monetize. In fact, the ready-to-buy-now buyers tend to be impatient about not being invited to a good sales presentation and an offer to buy now, so they wander off and are lost forever.
You also need to teach people to respond. People need to be told and shown how they are supposed to behave with you, in your world. That’s why specific Lead Generation Magnet offers (See Chapter 6) are so important. They teach people to step forward, raise their hands, ask for, and say yes to something. It’s a very bad idea to push all the information you can share out to everybody. It’s a much better idea to offer some of the best of it only to those who say yes to a specific offer.
Much of this is contrary to most of what you see in social media or are advised to do by social media promoters who care only about bragging-rights numbers like likes, views, retweets, etc., but not about money in the bank. Don’t let that bother you. The majority is wrong about everything, particularly money. And the majority is definitely wrong about this. Marketing is mostly made up of monkey seeing, monkey doing, with no real knowledge of direct marketing, split-testing, or harsh accountability. Just money spent. Don’t copy that. So,
• Do not leave everybody together in one space, free to wander.
• Do not create spoiled-brat children by overfeeding them for free, for very long, without at least asking for some action and indication of responsiveness.
• Segment your list by areas of expressed interest and by responsiveness.
• Speed up the sales cycle by opening doors for the ready-to-buy-now buyers.
• Create well-structured sales pathways or funnels leading to a buying decision.
• Last, don’t be overly afraid of repelling or alienating nonbuyers. Don’t be overly sensitive to criticism from nonbuyers. The votes that really count belong to the buyers.
#NoBSsm Tweetable Takeaways#NoBSsm Tweetable Takeaways
The most common failing of struggling entrepreneurs is the fear of closing the sale. #NoBSsm
Going after every possible person who could ever use your service is a fool’s errand. #NoBSsm
Don’t rely on hope, networking, or prospecting grunt work to get customers through your door or to your website. #NoBSsm
“Likes” can’t be deposited in the bank and won’t pay your bills. #NoBSsm
Sometimes it’s better not to ask for the sale of what you really want but rather for the sale of something else entirely. #NoBSsm
A prospect is worthless without conversion. #NoBSsm
The one who can spend the most going after his target market wins. #NoBSsm