Sales Strategy

What is your biggest asset? It is your existing customer and client base. Even further than that, it is a very specific SEGMENT of your existing base, something I call your E300. We’ll talk about that very soon, but for today don’t forget the people who ALREADY love you. I know from talking with you that many of you have been in business for quite a while. Not all of you, but some. But you still focus a great deal of your attention on getting NEW customers. Why?

If I could show you how to spend 1/10th as much on marketing while getting 1000% higher response rate, would you be interested? This is something I often go over with clients in great detail, because it’s REALLY powerful. It all BEGINS with focusing your attention where it will have the biggest impact.

Focus on your biggest asset

For those of you new to running your own business, you may not think this applies to you, but it does. Even if you’re new and don’t already have a list of 1,000+ past customers, this still applies to you. You have a base also. You have what many people call a “sphere of influence”. These are people who know you. They trust you. Your friends, fellow business owners, old bosses, etc. These are people you can have a real conversation with. This is bigger than you might realize.

There is a time and a place for spending thousands of dollars marketing to people who don’t know you from Adam, but why would you ever do this without FIRST engaging the people who matter most to you?

This is not a pitch to start selling your wares to your friends and family. That is old school crap. I’m talking about focusing on marketing to people whose attention you already have. Why yell when you can whisper? It takes way less energy, and it’s way more effective. What happens when you whisper? People listen more closely.

Can you whisper?

To whom can you whisper…and still be heard? This is where your focus should be placed. Please understand that building businesses is not dependent upon huge marketing budgets and how loud you can yell your message from the rooftops. That ain’t what gets it done. What does get it done? What does get people to buy from you? Engagement. I’m not referring to “grabbing people’s attention”. I’m referring to real, honest engagement. An honest-to-goodness exchange of ideas between people who actually LISTEN  to each other.

What’s crazy to me is that marketing this way is not only accessible to EVERYONE, but it’s also dramatically more effective, less expensive by far, and most people DON’T do it. It blows my mind. Yes, there is technique, and there are tactics to learn, but it’s not more complicated than any other form of marketing. It just WORKS better is all.

Do you have the guts to admit the core of your business is really a lot smaller than you realize? It’s good news actually. It means you don’t have to spend your life yelling and doing other stupid things. You can whisper. You can communicate quietly and effectively, and you will be heard. And if you do it right, you can reach far MORE people than you can imagine, by actually ENGAGING just a few people.

How to engage fewer people and sell MORE at the same time

By engaging your most powerful assets (your existing base), you greatly increase your effectiveness. Do the math…it just makes sense, right? Your sphere of influence and existing client base is where the gold is. They’ve already bought with you. They already trust you. You already have momentum going, so you don’t have to push nearly as hard.

There is a key question you need to get good at asking. The question is not “Will you buy this thingie I’m selling?” The question is “How can I help?” And if you really WANT to help, the people who know you will let you. They’ll WANT your help. That’s how you build a sustainable, profitable business after all…by helping people. It’s not about selling thingies. It’s about helping people.

You MIGHT have a huge gold mine you’re sitting on that you don’t see right now. OR, your people may be best served by buying your thingies. I don’t know. What I DO know is that you learn, uncover new opportunities and grow your business by listening, not by talking and always trying to sell more thingies.

For those of you who’ve been in business a while…start focusing on your past clients. We’ll cover specific marketing tactics in future articles, and we can always hit this up in details during our consults as well. But for today, start looking at your biggest asset. There is gold. Lots of it. More than you think. So much gold in fact, that it will change your paradigm. I promise.

For those of you new in business…you may think your old boss or the friends you grab drinks with on the weekends are not good potential clients of yours. That is probably true. But you have their ATTENTION. You don’t have to make an ass out of yourself in order to have a legitimate, engaged conversation with them. This is more valuable than you realize. Given the choice between engaging these people first or spending your entire net worth on mass media, I think you know which I’m going to recommend.

And remember, the question isn’t “Want to buy my thingie?” The question is “How can I help?” Your friends know people, and those people know other people. With tact and some tenacity, building a million dollar client list is not more than a few months away if you really go to work on it.

Or, you can continue yelling. Louder…and louder…and LOUDER. Your choice 🙂

This is a quick follow up to my last post, “Why People Who Like You Still Don’t Buy From You“. Go read that first 🙂

I understand that most of us don’t like the idea of selling. In fact, most of us avoid it like the plague. I’ve always found it interesting that this is such a common trait amongst business owners. I mean, we need sales, right? Business owners should LOVE selling and study the craft intently.

But this doesn’t happen, because something horrible has happened to the sales industry. It’s gotten a bad rap. It’s all a big misunderstanding, but the damage is already done. People associate sales people with high-pressure, slick-haired sleaze bag used car salesmen. This is a largely deserved reputation. The sales industry is not regulated for the most part, so a lot of selling is done very badly. Most people see only the worst of sales, and as a result we lose sight of the fact that selling is an honorable profession and an essential part of our economy.

In my last post, I basically said all small business owners need to study the craft of selling and that “relationship marketing” doesn’t work. One of the biggest objections I’ve heard so far is that Scott Stratten (I don’t know why I’m singling out Scott!) and many other “social media gurus” have made a name for themselves by saying the opposite. Here is a group of very successful business owners speaking the praises of “relationship marketing”. They’re building strong businesses, making money, and they’re doing the opposite of what I say. So what gives?

Relationship marketing is built on a faulty premise that I call “selling on accident”. Building relationships implies the cultivation of trust, which is the first primary element to any mutually beneficial selling situation. If you have solid relationships with a lot of people, some of them are inevitably going to buy from you. My last post was not meant to imply that no one  you have a relationship with is going to buy from you (obviously); that would just be ridiculous. My point was that the relationship is merely one component of a successful sales process. Depending on sales to come in after addressing only one component of the sales process and ignoring the others is what I call “selling on accident”.

If “selling on accident” is how you like to roll, I have no fight with that. We all have to make business decisions, and how you’re going to pursue sales is one of them. Just know that learning to sell doesn’t mean you have to use high pressure tactics. It doesn’t mean you need to become a sleaze bag and start spamming people or cold calling them at home during dinner. It simply means you become deliberate and skilled in your approach to taking your readers, customers and clients from point A to point B.

When it comes to my business, I don’t want to “sell on accident”. I want my approach to be as skilled and deliberate as possible. How bout you?

If you run a small business, you need to make sales, right? Without making sales, you go broke, and when you go broke, your business closes. That’s no good.

Unfortunately many of you are under the impression that having a relationship with someone means they’re going to buy from you, so I want to challenge this assumption today. Just because you know someone…and you sell something they need…doesn’t mean they’re going to buy from you.

The Myth of “Relationship Marketing”

“Relationship marketing” is not a new concept, but it’s picked up quite a bit of steam with the explosion of social media. Many of us are working hard to “build relationships”, to “connect” with other people and build our brand socially. Kudos. It pays to have  a strong network of people behind you. Just don’t assume that it will translate into sales automatically.

Did you know it’s entirely possible to have 20,000 subscribers to your blog and still make NO money whatsoever? I’ve seen it happen. Did you know you can have a huge email list that generates NO sales for you? It’s true. So if tons of subscribers and a huge email list are the assets everyone seeks out in this whole internet marketing world, what gives?

The fact is that blogs don’t generate sales. Email lists don’t generate sales. Twitter lists don’t generate sales. Relationships don’t generate sales either. Selling generates sales. Selling is the ONLY thing that generates sales.

If you want to generate lots of sales for your business, learn to sell. You can sell via a blog, Twitter or any other platform. These are all just communication tools. Communication tools can be used to build relationships, and they can also be used to sell, but selling and building relationships are NOT the same thing.

Don’t count on your friends

Don’t count on relationships or any other mechanism to do your selling for you. If you think about it, it’s a great way to cheapen your relationships…to think of them as a mechanism for generating sales. Nope. Don’t do it. Instead, learn how to construct sales offers that connect with people. If you want to make more sales, study the craft of selling! There are thousands of books out there. I do sales training daily with clients. The tactics and training are available.

Back in the day, I earned good money (probably more than you think) selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door. No list. No followers. No relationship at all. Knock, knock, knock. 90 minutes later I’d have a check for $1648.50. I’ve sold 1, 2, 3 and even 4 in a day. Imagine how much easier it is to sell when you DO have a relationship and trust built between you and your customers. But the relationships you have don’t excuse you from having to sell. Don’t forget…

Selling is what generates sales. Nothing else.

When I sold real estate, it was one of the only times in my career that I didn’t get paid in advance for what I was doing. As most people in real estate, I worked on contingency. In other words, if a client didn’t buy a house with me I was working for free. I have a problem with this business model, and I’ve learned since that many real estate professionals these days are…believe it or not…experimenting with different business models, including getting paid in advance. Kudos.

The questions and concerns…

I’ve long been an advocate for getting paid in advance, and often I get questions about this.

• Why do I charge for my consulting up front?
• Don’t most consultants work up front and then send an invoice? Is there a benefit (to the CLIENT) to charging your fee up front?
• Doesn’t charging up front cause me to lose business?
• And then obviously, most readers and clients seem to want to know how THEY can get paid in advance also.

I wanted to address this with you briefly since it’s such a common hang up with small business owners. Look…I know you’d love to get paid up front for what you do, but you might think this isn’t viable. If so, you’re wrong. In fact, you should start charging up front…starting now.

Let me answer these questions one at a time. My goal is to quickly shed some light on this issue, so you can benefit in your business ASAP:

Why do I charge for my consulting up front?

It’s easier for everybody involved. Candidly, that’s how it started. Did I get into business to be a bill collector? No. I am very good at a few things. I can offer you a HUGE amount of value in my area. Everything else I suck at. You know those clients that still owe you for stuff you did 6 months ago? That sucks, right? It’s no fun; that’s why I don’t do it.

I am not going to chase you down to collect what you owe me. I’m just not going to do it. It makes me feel like a schmuck. It makes you an ACTUAL schmuck for not paying me what we agreed upon, and it’s also not dollar-productive to chase down accounts receivable that should have already been received. Why do we sign up for this crap?

There’s an option. Get paid in advance.

Don’t most consultants work up front and then send an invoice? Is there a benefit (to the CLIENT) to charging your fee up front?

Most definitely…most consultants invoice. Let me be candid…I still invoice on occasion. If an existing client or personal friend specifically requests me to invoice them, I will…sometimes. There’s an existing relationship, and that’s what matters to me. I’m not a robot, and I try to be flexible, but I believe strongly in the VALUE of getting paid in advance. If we haven’t worked together before, there are no exceptions. I get paid in advance, and yes…I know this isn’t the norm.

In most industries, it’s true that clients often expect to not pay you until later. So what gives? If clients often expect otherwise, why do I think it’s better that they pay me up front? Because here’s the thing: if you’re not willing to pay up front, you’re probably not a good fit for consulting with me anyway. I suppose if I was working for $20 an hour it would be different. But my consulting clients get massive value; my coaching sessions will save you hundreds of hours of work and give you the tools and techniques you need to make significant strides in your business. In other words, I charge a lot, and my coaching isn’t right for everyone.

When we sit down to go to work on your business, there isn’t any room for doubt or worry or you still trying to decide in the back of your mind whether I’m worth your time and money or not. If that’s the stage you at, that’s totally cool. You’re not ready to hire me, and that’s fine. That’s why I write a blog and give away TONS of free content to help you. You’ll hire me if and when you’re ready, if and when you need what I sell. Until then, I’m more than happy to have you as a reader!

Paying up front is a great value for the client, because it keeps clients who shouldn’t be clients from becoming clients. Hmm. I wonder if I could have said that more clearly 🙂

Doesn’t charging up front cause me to lose business?

Yes, charging up front causes some people to not hire you. It causes these people to stay away:

• Clients who like you but aren’t quite ready to be working with you yet anyway.
• Clients who are just itching to give you a hard time.
• Clients who aren’t going to follow through with what you tell them anyway…and then complain about how your advice doesn’t help.
• Clients you have to chase down afterwards to get paid, turning you into a part time bill collector.

Anyone who works with people one-on-one has dealt with ALL of these issues and then some. Getting paid in advance clears all of this from your plate. Sometimes, losing some clients can be the most profitable thing for your business.

How can I get paid in advance also?

Want to know the trick to getting paid in advance? The trick is that there’s no trick. When a client is ready to get started, say “Great! I’ll make sure you get an invoice for this shortly. You can take care of it at your convenience, and then we’ll get started.” Simple, no?