OK, you’ve heard of open rates and click through rates and now, I’m suggesting that it’s time to consider reply rates.

What is your current reply rate?

What percentage of emails that you send out (in your role as a sales exec) generate a response? More importantly, how can you increase your reply rate?

You generally want to send out 20-50 prospecting emails a day, but sending them is not the important part. The important part is getting the readers to reply. If you can start a conversation with a prospect, even just over email, your chance to close the deal skyrockets.

So, if getting a reply is the goal, it’s absolutely worth taking an extra two minutes to customize your introductory emails. Getting someone to reply to your cold email is challenging. Here are five tips that will help.

1. Initiate a conversation based on something they do or just did.

Take a minute and look up the prospect online. Did their company do something recently? Did the prospect? Did their quarter just end? Did their local sports team just win? Find something relevant to them.

If you are responding to inbound behavior or a request, be as specific as possible about what triggered your email. Put this trigger in the subject line so they know you are writing about them.

2. Be timely.

The shelf life of any activity is getting shorter and shorter, and the value of being timely is higher and higher. If you can reach out within a minute after a prospect does something, that’s great. Within an hour—good. Within a day—OK. Within a week? That’s borderline. If your response time is longer than that, find something else to write about.

3. Give them value.

You made a first impression with the trigger event. Now build on that by giving them something of value. Share a great article, website, video, or cartoon.

In 99% of the cases, what you share should not be about your company. Your marketing department should be churning out collateral and white papers, but those reek of self-interest. In order to establish credibility, you have to offer something that doesn’t help you in any way. It’s all about them—your prospect. Go find something that would genuinely help them be more successful, and offer that.

4. Invite prospects into a conversation by asking a question.

Having offered your prospects something valuable, you can then ask them to engage.

The more specific and straightforward your question is the better. You want to make it easy to reply, and you want to make sure they clearly see the benefit of replying.

Ideally, your question links the resource you offered with the services you provide or are selling. But be careful: don’t be too obvious. If I sent out the consultant comic above, I might ask, “Have you had any success with bringing in outside consultants? We’re growing quickly over here and looking for resources or best practices to scale quickly.”

5. Follow up with recipients.

If you can track when the recipient reads or forwards your email, it is worth sending a follow-up email within 24 hours. Even without this insight, you should make it a practice to revisit your prospect list at least four times by email. The good news is that by continuing to offer something of value to the start of your messages, you’ll begin to be seen as a generous and trusted resource instead of just another salesperson.

It’s tempting to meet your daily goals by blasting through as many emails as you can. That’s short sighted. It burns good leads, and it burns you out. Think instead about how you can start a timely conversation and how you can provide something valuable. You’ll find yourself having more genuine conversations and, by extension, closing more deals.

A business purposed App exists to either
(a) sell something to a potential Customer or
(b) provide information or an experience that leads to an opt-in

IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE.

If the App does not help mobile device owners accomplish at least one of those two things, then the App provides very little benefit to the business and the device owner will likely ignore or delete the App after having the opportunity to share their thoughts about your brand and their experience with your App with the world on the same page where your prospects would be downloading the same App. The world has changed and, like it or not, social media plays a role in the new world order of marketing. The big difference between failing on a website and failing with an App is that your success or failure will be in plain view and nearly impossible to hide should something go wrong.

That’s basically all there is to it.
Buy, join, or delete.

There are no other options.

With that in mind, here are three things to consider:

a) Is your App optimized for converting prospects into paying Customers?

b) Do you already distribute an industry newsletter or other periodical that your prospects value?

c) If you answered yes to both (a) and (b) above, are you looking for more qualified traffic?

Most of our prospects ask us for help with conversions, traffic and process optimization. Here are a few things to get you started in the right direction:

a) Avoid the temptation to create the perfect App. There simply is no such thing. In business, especially small and medium sized businesses, the only thing that counts is leveraging the media to generate more sales. It really is that simple. Sure you can educate your target audience but the purpose of the ‘education’ is to increase the probability that the prospect buys from you. Thus, you may find it helpful to focus on building a screen that converts prospects into Customers on autopilot. Our Clients test such screen designs all the time looking to outperform their controls and improve conversions within their Apps.

b) Every business has some special knowledge (well… almost every business). If you consider that most prospects are not ready to buy from you when you first meet them. They need some time to get to know you better, time to digest the information that they received, time to compare offers, time to decide that they are now ready to actually make a decision. When a person discovers your App, do your best to capture their contact details to be able to follow up with them in the future with information that is relevant to the problem that they are trying to solve. If the average consumer needs to see an ad seven times before acting on it, then think about distributing something like a newsletter to your prospects with tips, ideas, strategies etc that help them move forward in their decision to do business with you by demonstrating your expertise, your Customer service principles and the reason why they should be doing business with you. Have you got a newsletter already? Are you building a list of prospects and Customers? If not, setting up an auto-responder would be a very good first step in the right direction. Always remember to use criteria elicitation and tap into benefit’s based selling methods like WIIFM to get the most out of your efforts.

c) Traffic… the holy grail of an App owner (also known as downloads after the initial conversion occurs). We love to help our Clients generate traffic BUT ONLY if they have reasonable conversions and the desire to build a list. Think about it for a moment, there are really only 2 important processes that you absolutely have to get right when you use Apps in your business and those are conversions and traffic. Hey, it’s not rocket science.. it’s basic maths. You need to track those downloads, keep good clean statistics and test what works best for your business every chance you get then rinse and repeat.

If you’re buying a car, do you check Facebook or MySpace? Or do you read up on Kelley Blue Book values and Comparis reports and scour the company website for every spec, from horsepower to miles per gallon? What about music — do you check Top 40 radio charts or scope out what your Facebook friends are actually listening to on Spotify before making a purchasing decision?

Social media has infiltrated the purchasing funnel, helping consumers make informed decisions, from what to have for lunch to where to go on vacation. Depending on the decision, sometimes you turn to your social graph, and sometimes you turn to Google. So, as a brand marketer, you need to know what online channels you should be targeting in order to reach the ideal audience for your product.

But regardless of what kind of consumer you’re trying to reach or what you’re selling, your SEO better be top notch — search is still the most important influencer on the web.

The infographic below, featuring data from M Booth and Beyond, analyzes the differences between high and low sharers and various purchasing decisions, helping brands to understand how to target consumers more effectively.

What kind of consumer are you? Let us know in the comments below.

Business executives and sales managers frequently complain about the classic 80/20 performance of their sales teams, where approximately 80 percent of sales are produced by approximately 20 percent of salespeople. Of course, the ratio is not always 80/20. Sometimes it is 75/25, 70/30, 60/40, or even 90/10. However, the situation the ratio describes is always the same: the vast majority of salespeople produce a fraction of what top performers on the very same sales teams produce.
What are the reasons behind these performance disparities? What is it about top sales performers that enables them to achieve superior results? Can anyone achieve top performance in sales?

Certainly there are some sales skills that anyone can learn. For example, it’s easy to teach how to ask reflective questions.

Reflective questions begin with who, what, when, where, why and how. If you ask reflective questions instead of questions that can be answered with yes or no, prospects usually share more information with you. This increases your chances of uncovering “pain points” that can eventually lead to sales.

“Pain-point” is widely used business jargon, and a word that many investors like to use. They may ask you “so what is the pain-point you are trying to solve with this idea?” If you can identify a pain-point which many people (globally even) can relate to, but no-one has resolved previously, you are probably on to something big. So, in other words, you can find opportunities in the market by solving, what a sizable group of people would describe as a “pain”. For example, since the battery in your laptop dies fast and people tend to find this a “pain”, many companies are currently working on alternative ways to charge PCs and keep batteries running longer. These companies are effectively trying to resolve a well-known pain-point.

You can learn how to ask reflective questions by participating in a simple role play. In this role play, you’ll play the salesperson and I’ll play the prospect. Every time you ask me a yes or no question, I’ll answer “no.” Getting stonewalled with a bunch of “no” answers will break you of the yes/no questioning habit pretty quickly!

Other sales skills are tougher to learn. A good example is teaching salespeople how to ask questions and follow the thread; in the answers. To explain this concept, let’s use another role play. In this role play you’ll ask me reflective questions. I’ll respond with answers that contain some “pain points”. If you recognize the pain points and drill down into them deeply enough (by asking additional questions), you’ll eventually be able to “sell” me.

Do you know what my experience has been with this role play? Some salespeople learn how to “follow the thread” easily. Others struggle, but they eventually learn how to do it. However, some just never get it, no matter how hard they try!

Why can some people learn this critical skill, but others can’t?

I struggled with this question for 14 years. I used to believe that anyone could succeed at anything if they wanted it badly enough and were willing to work hard enough. However, my experience with the “follow the thread” role play made me start to question that belief. As I continued reading and researching over the years, I eventually uncovered two pieces of information that really opened my eyes.

KEY DISCOVERY #1

In their book, “Now, Discover Your Strengths”, Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton report that great managers and average managers have different expectations for their employees. According to Buckingham and Clifton, average managers assume that “each person can learn to be competent in almost anything”, while great managers assume that “each person&’s talents are enduring and unique”.

Most sales books and training programs seem to take the average manager point of view. In other words, they seem to assume that anyone can learn how to sell. Their unspoken promise is that all you have to do is invest enough time, effort and money to learn the skills they teach. If you put in the time and effort, you will learn the skills and eventually succeed in sales.

Unfortunately, there are countless examples of sales books and training courses not producing the desired improvement in sales performance. Think about some salespeople you know personally. How many of them are struggling to make their quotas? Why are they struggling?

Is it the state of the economy? (If other salespeople are making their numbers, blaming the economy won’t earn them much sympathy.)
Is it because they don’t work hard enough?
Is it because they don’t have enough product knowledge?
Do they need to work harder on their selling skills?
Do they need more coaching from their manager?
What if the “great manager” point of view is correct? What if everyone cannot become proficient in sales? What if success in sales requires a unique set of talents?

KEY DISCOVERY #2
Herb Greenberg, Harold Weinstein and Patrick Sweeney report this very conclusion in their book, “How to Hire and Develop Your Next Top Performer”. After correlating hundreds of thousands of assessments that were performed over several decades with actual sales performance measurements, they reached these startling conclusions:

55% of the people earning their living in sales should be doing something else.
Another 20% to 25% have what it takes to sell, but they should be selling something else

Wow! Those are some sobering statistics! They indicate that more than half of all salespeople are never going to make it in sales. Another quarter have some chance of accomplishing sales success, but only if they find the right job selling the right kind of product or service.

How can you identify whether salespeople have the talents required to succeed in your company’s sales positions?

One reason why companies suffer from 80/20 performance is because their processes for hiring, training and managing salespeople rely almost entirely upon subjective information. After all, what are resumes? They are an individual’s subjective portrayal of their capabilities and experiences. What occurs during an interview? Interviewees attempt to package their responses to questions in a manner that will make the best impression. Meanwhile, interviewers are forming personal opinions about candidates’ qualifications for the position.

I’m not suggesting that subjective information is useless. Subjective information is a valid and valuable component of any “people decision”. However, if decisions based solely upon subjective information produce an undesirable result 80 percent of the time, doesn’t it make sense to consider making a change?

One way to introduce objective information into sales hiring and coaching processes is through use of specialized sales assessment tests. I’m not referring to personality or behavioral tests like Myers-Briggs or DISC. Those types of tools are useful for learning how to communicate more effectively with someone, and may provide some insights into an individual’s motivations. However, they are not effective for predicting whether or not someone will succeed in sales.

The specialized sales assessment tests that I’m referring to identify how quickly an individual learns and how good they are at “reasoning”.

Reasoning – especially verbal reasoning – is a critical component of the talent for asking questions and “following the thread” in the answers. Plus, the most useful sales assessment tests identify an individual’s strength or weakness in a variety of other important sales-related attributes. These include the following:

Sales Drive: Does the individual enjoy presenting, persuading, negotiating, and motivating others? How much do they enjoy these activities?
Emotional Toughness: How rapidly does the individual rebound from rejection? Do they learn from their experiences and move on quickly? Or, do they suffer a sustained reduction in productivity?
Reasoning Ability: Does the individual ask good questions? Can they dissect answers and pick out the pieces that will help advance the conversation toward a desired end result?
Service Drive: How friendly and agreeable is the individual? How interested are they in building relationships and helping others?
Assertiveness: How self-assured is the individual? How effective are they at convincing others to take action?
Attitude: How positive is the individual’s attitude? Do they perceive a glass to be half-empty or half-full?
Communication Skills: How precisely does the individual communicate, both verbally and in writing? Are their communications clear and effective?
Competitiveness: How competitive is the individual? How does their competitiveness manifest itself?
Energy: How energetic is the individual? Are they always “on the go”, or do they need to be prodded into action?
Independence: How readily does the individual accept direction from others?
Learning Rate: How rapidly does the individual learn new information? What styles of learning are most productive for them?
Tolerance for Administration: How willing is the individual to perform administrative activities? How much attention do they pay to details?

The assessment test scores for the preceding characteristics can also be used to predict how effectively a salesperson or sales candidate will perform the following critical job functions:
Are they a Hunter or a Farmer? Do they prefer to pursue new business, or do they prefer to manage existing customer relationships? Or, are they capable of performing both functions effectively?
Are they Internally or Externally motivated? Internally motivated salespeople are capable of directing their own activities. Externally motivated salespeople require frequent direction and support from their manager in order to be consistently effective.
How effectively will they Prospect? How aggressively (and consistently) will they pursue new opportunities?
How willing are they to comply with Administrative Requirements? This may include updating records in your company’s customer relationship management (CRM) system and providing timely and accurate forecasts and opportunity pipeline updates.
Will they be a good Team Member? Will they work cooperatively with their fellow sales team members, as well as other departments?
How can specialized sales assessment tests help existing salespeople who are struggling?

They can help in two specific ways. First, they can determine which salespeople should be in sales. If an individual doesn’t have the talents required for success in your company’s sales job, there may be other roles in your organization where their talents and interests can be applied to mutual benefit. If there aren’t any such positions available, the kindest thing you can do is to let them go.

How can firing someone be kind? Because it is NO fun to struggle in a job that is a poor fit. If you share the assessment test results with these individuals, they can gain insights into their strongest talents and interests. The sooner they can migrate into roles that are compatible with their talents and interests, the sooner they will reap the benefits of improved productivity, motivation, and job satisfaction.

The second way these assessment tests can help struggling salespeople is by identifying their unique training needs. If you identify each salesperson’s individual training needs, and you supply targeted training to address these needs, you can dramatically improve their performance. Here’s an example:

Two fictitious salespeople, Beth and Bill, work for the same company. Beth is weak in Sales Drive, which makes her reluctant to ask for orders. Bill is weak in Emotional Toughness, which makes him sensitive to rejection and limits his prospecting effectiveness. If Beth and Bill go through the same sales skills training course, how much improvement in sales performance should they expect to see?

The answer is little or none. Why? Because Beth and Bill have completely different training needs that will not be addressed by basic sales skills training.

Beth would benefit most from attending an assertiveness training class. She also needs coaching to help her recognize that failing to ask for orders denies her customers valuable solutions to costly business problems.

Bill needs to learn to not take rejection personally. He might also benefit from attending a class that teaches positive thinking and other motivational techniques.

Unfortunately, unless these two salespeople are made aware of their unique training needs, and provided with targeted training to address them, there isn’t much reason to expect their performance to improve.

Conclusion

Many companies struggle with “80/20″ performance disparities in their sales organizations. These disparities usually result from an over-reliance on subjective information when making salesperson hiring and coaching decisions. The proposed solution is to add objective information gathered via specialized sales assessment tests to the “people decision” process. This one change can help companies increase the proportion of top performers on their sales teams and improve the performance of existing sales team members.

Sometimes one of our new staffers come up to me full of concern and emotion. The topic is often first mover advantage versus competitive threats. I have a simply philosophy that usually puts them at ease and allows us to focus on what is important once again. I’d like to share it with you and it goes like this:

where there is competition… there is money to be made
where there is no competition, one has to wonder why…

I love competition!
If they have been around in this niche for at least a few years and they are surviving then, this is music to my ears. It means that the market needs this product or service and that there are people out there willing to open their wallets.

As a service provider, we want a share of that wallet in exchange for services delivered that help our Client achieve their objective(s). If there were no competition, business would be a lot more like solitaire than something like golf or the high-jump. We just love placing the bar a bit higher, don’t you?

If you are curious, we just raised the bar again in the tablet publishing space. Now our Clients get far more flexibility, dozens of extra value adding features and a solid, customizable Reader App that Apple just loves all for one low price. See for yourself, never before has tablet publishing been so easy.

We are often asked about the definition of Marketing vs Sales.

I don’t know how the confusion started and you can look up the definitions in any dictionary if you are so inclined…  our preferred definition goes like this:

Good Marketing Is Like
Getting The Needle To Jump Out Of The Haystack
Sales Is The Fine Art Of Sewing

I am going to dedicate this article to phrases, quotes and sayings that I come across during business discussions, coaching sessions and educational experiences as a living reference for things people say and write that are so incredibly effective… I could not improve on them if I wanted to.

The first one was uttered by an incredibly good salesperson who refused to pitch anything until he knew what the person he was communicating with wanted. This salesman used a brilliant, easy-going method to uncover his Customer’s desires, objectives, wants, needs etc. and then orient the pitch around helping the person (his Customer) achieve his goals. Among others, his trademark follow up was:

“What would you definitely buy from me today if only I were smart enough to offer it to you?”

If you are ever on the receiving end of this question, have your wallet ready because the psychology of the query is more powerful than most people realize. This is a killer line and there really is no escape from it once it has been thrown into the court.

Going in a completely different direction, here is a quote that is simply remarkable.

“In times of change, learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists“

Each week we meet with senior executives with professor doctor titles running multinational corporations. Most are convinced that they did everything by the book and can not understand what is going wrong – why is their business not performing as expected?  Their concerns almost always deal with situations that were not described in reference books or textbooks in years past. While education is important, a continuous cycle of learning is even more important.  Today’s business managers need to equip themselves for an age where the only certain thing is uncertainty in a climate of constant change. You need to be a learning machine accepting that what you learned yesterday might not help you tomorrow. The quote above was written in the 1950s!

Hey there,

Why is it that most people in business think that they are going to sell what they have by delivering a list of features along with a few reasons why someone should buy their product?

The truth is that there is a much deeper psychological process behind making a decision to buy something than most business people realize.

When selling to Consumers, the pitch must appeal to a buyer’s emotions or the sale is simply not going to take place. When selling B2B, keep in mind that the buyer is still a human being with needs and a strong desire to succeed – a benefits oriented approach has been proven to be more successful than any other technique we tested during the past 20 years.

If you’re ready to sell something, we are ready to help you create a winning pitch.

The first step is a bit of homework so grab a pencil and some paper and get ready to answer a few questions:

• Write down a list of your competitors and their websites
• Write down what they’re doing, what they’re offering etc.
• List their product’s benefits

Ahh, now we come to the core purpose of this article…

Do you know the difference between features, advantages and benefits?

A feature is what a product has. In essence, the core components of your product or service; sometimes referred to as the bells and whistles or buttons, knobs, levers, switches, format, platform etc.

An advantage is what the product does or how it performs against a competitive product. A vacuum for example, is a product that might have the advantage that it doesn’t need bags. Another advantage would be that it can clean the floor in a room without you being present. In a services business one advantage would be the number of years of experience you bring to the table or your level of certification. Some common advantages include words like fast, easy, simple, cheap and good.

A benefit is what a given feature means to your prospect in terms of emotion and passion. A true benefit goes really deep and says something about how it makes you feel – a really great benefit gets a consumer excited because it means something special to the buyer.

Here’s a good B2C example. One of our Clients sells a facial cream online and she called it something like, microderm abrasion emulsion – essentially it is a cream that helps reduce wrinkles.

On her website she listed several features such as ‘it reduces wrinkles’, ‘it comes in an easy to use home care kit’, ‘it is pH balanced’ etc etc etc.

When she came to me to help increase sales, conversions and traffic… I asked her to:
Take a piece of paper and create three columns.
List as many features as you can in the first column.
In the second column, list what you believe are the top benefits.
She wrote down ‘because it reduces wrinkles, it makes you look younger’ and ‘because it comes in a home care kit, it is easy to use at home’ and the third one was ‘because it is pH balanced, it’s gentle on your skin’.

As politely as possible I let her know that those are really advantages not benefits so we continued the exercise and I asked her to list in the third column what she felt the ultimate end result for her Customer was going to be – in other words, ‘the ultimate benefit’.

Here is what she wrote:
‘If it makes you look younger: then it means you’ll be more attractive, you’ll get that promotion at work, you’ll feel more confident, nobody will know your true age, you’ll fall in love all over again and you’ll be able to attract that person you’ve had your eye on.’

‘Since it’s easy to use at home: you won’t suffer embarrassment by going to a doctor’s office, you don’t have to waste time, it’s like a face lift in a jar in the comfort and privacy of your own home.’

‘Since it’s gentle on your skin: there are no risks, no pain, no healing periods like surgery or those harsh chemical peels people usually buy.’

We had arrived…
These were descriptions of how Customers would feel before, during and after they used the product. They were a few of the true benefits this product offers its Customers.

In a very short time she was able to list several of the true benefits her product offers to her Customers. She took this piece of paper and changed her website to reflect the benefits. She also adapted every piece of marketing material including all advertising (online and offline), all landing pages, sales letters and Customer communications and within two months her sales doubled. One month later sales doubled again. Then she adapted the packaging to reflect the new text and sales doubled again. Sure we did some work on conversions and six months later, she was not able to buy as much traffic as she wanted – not even from Google ,Yahoo and MSN combined… Folks, this stuff really works!  I’ll let you guess if I am referring to the creme or the marketing process here.

Remember, real benefits go deep. They live within the emotional and passionate sweet spot of the person wanting or using your product. In order to increase your sales you will need to tap into that sweet spot and then use the real benefits in everything you produce to help sell the product.

Begin by figuring out what your prospect’s current emotions are regarding the things that your product addresses. Understand which of those emotions are the strongest, most compelling, most “dominant” in his or her life. Then identify the benefits your product offers that will most effectively enhance your prospect’s strongest positive emotions and/or resolve his strongest negative ones.

People buy for emotional reasons far more often than for merely rational ones. If you want people to act on your copy and buy your product, first determine how your prospect is likely feeling right now . Then, use your benefits as bridges to activate the emotions that will compel him/her to buy!

Now, let’s venture into the world of B2B with a comment or two and some real life examples. First my comments; B2B has specific demands that don’t apply to the B2C world. Most of the time these demands orient themselves around the concept of ROI. A few of the thoughts running through the heads of many buyers include: How will my business benefit if we were to buy your product or use your services or implement your widget? If you can orient your sales message around the benefits that your product offers to your target market then you have a much higher probability of closing a deal over your competition – and you will probably be able to reduce your sales cycle at the same time. Here is one of the best B2B examples I have ever read:

“Amazon S3 is based on the idea that quality Internet-based storage should be taken for granted. It helps free developers from worrying about how they will store their data, whether it will be safe and secure, or whether they will have enough storage available. It frees them from the upfront costs of setting up their own storage solution as well as the ongoing costs of maintaining and scaling their storage servers. The functionality of Amazon S3 is simple and robust: Store any amount of data inexpensively and securely, while ensuring that the data will always be available when you need it. Amazon S3 enables developers to focus on innovating with data, rather than figuring out how to store it.”

Notice that they are not listing bells and whistles here… this text is crafted specifically to get the business buyer emotionally involved. They decided to use the concept of freedom to achieve their objective. If you were a developer, wouldn’t it be nice to be ‘free of worry’ regarding at least one mission critical component of your site that has the potential to shut down your online business if your product suddenly becomes an instant hit?

As I encounter more brilliant examples like this, I will add them to this article. If you have a submission that you’d like us to review or even add as an example of how to do it, be sure to let us know by filling out our contact us form.

Marketing is: The science of finding prospects and turning them into profitable Customers for your business. Let’s have a look at the 3 core elements in this statement:
- Science:
When I use the word ‘science’ here, I am referring to the methods and approaches that have been carefully tested and refined over time that deliver successful results. In marketing, doing things right incorporates metrics to measure results, testing to understand what works best and ROI accountability to know what elements and methods deliver a better return over time.

Here at BoxOnline we have been testing and retesting hundreds of approaches since our launch in 1999. We have followed the scientific method to eliminate all sorts of approaches that do not work well. We have also identified a few amazingly good approaches that seem to deliver exactly what our Client’s want time and time again. These sort of methods are what we refer to as proven methods. Today, we only offer proven methods to our Clients.

- Finding Prospects:
We often start by building a profile of your prospect(s) so that when your sales message reaches one, it connects with them and they find your offer irresistible. If we did not do this, the sales message would likely fall on deaf ears.

- Turning them into profitable Customers:
Our objective is to persuade prospects to act in a measurable way. We want to be able to measure our performance and know how well a given approach is working and what the difference is after a change has been made to a campaign.

Our marketing formula is based on something that has been dubbed the Business Friendship Model.

Consider how people make friends. The actual process is:
1) Get someone’s attention
2) Connect with them based on a common theme
3) Emotionally commit to do something with each other in the future
4) Act on the commitment by getting together again or doing something thoughtful for them such as buying a gift.

Often a business owner wants his business to appear larger and mightier than it actually is and thus they try to create an image of being a large corporate firm. We rarely support this sort of thinking because our experience has shown that when you try to behave like a big company, you de-personalize your relationship with prospects. In our research, small businesses grew faster when they were fueled by relationships rather than by expensive image campaigns.

So, what does a business typically do when they want to build a relationship with a new prospect?
1) Run Ads to get their attention
2) Relate to the prospect in the Ad
3) Get prospect to respond and commit emotionally
4) Get prospects to act

Well, Consumers don’t necessarily want to follow this process because they have needs of their own and based on our experience here is what prospects actually want:
1) that you, (the business) pay attention to them
2) that you, want to connect with them
3) that you, want to make a commitment to help them
4) that you, want to act on that commitment and are ready to deliver a desirable result to them

Does this make sense to you? If you are able to think like a prospect, it should. If it doesn’t, let us know… We’d love to hear your opinion – especially if you have a product to sell.

Fundamental to the success of any small to medium sized company’s marketing campaign and their marketing plan is understanding the concept of the sales funnel.

Yes, whether you like it or not, marketing your services is key to your success and just like any other professional service such as business consulting, legal services or even psychological counseling, your services oriented company is a business that needs to follow the fundamental rules of marketing in order to succeed.

The cornerstone of any successful marketing method begins with an understanding that not every person you or your firm comes in contact with, is ready to become a Client. In fact, many prospects will never become Clients.

In other words, your marketing efforts will generate leads and these leads go into the top of the sales funnel but only a small percentage will drop out of that funnel as Clients. If the percentage of conversions is greater than 50% then you simply need to market to a broader audience – the shape of your sales funnel in this case will appear more similar to a pipe than a funnel indicating that conversions are unusually high.

Many firms tend to concentrate (generally to the exclusion of all else) most of their marketing efforts on improving the conversion rate or closing rate which amounts to the percentage of prospects that they have converted to Clients.

This helps to explain the fascination with networking, luncheons, presentations, meetings, seminars etc. The idea being: “If we spend more time trying to build relationships we will close more new deals.”

So called “thought leaders” tend to foster this approach and sadly it’s very misleading as a marketing concept. Please allow me to illustrate. Charles Green, author of the book “Trust Based Selling” has written an excellent article titled: “Why Your Sales Process Matters Less Than The Psychology Of Selling.” The article is well written with numerical analysis of an entire sales pipeline start to finish. Unfortunately it misses the whole point of what a sales funnel is supposed to do.

An ideal sales funnel is designed to generate the maximum amount of QUALIFIED prospects possible from within a given marketing universe. It is from that pool of qualified prospects that we might apply the concept of relationship building so that prospects are converted into new Clients over time.

Here is the point of today’s article.

Regardless of how skilled you are at relationship building, you simply will not close any deals if you don’t have anyone to sell to. Here’s the good part, the more people you have access to, the more new Clients you will likely acquire (even if your relationship building skills need work).

Here’s a simple example.

Suppose you are a sales superstar “relationship” builder and you have 10 qualified leads to work with. Over the course of a year, you wine them, dine them, schmooze them, golf with them and literally do anything they want using the company’s marketing budget as your weapon of choice.

Let’s say that at the end of a year, you were able to sign up 60% of them and thus 6 new Clients were acquired for the firm. If the main success metric your firm used were conversions from prospect to Client, you would be considered a “sales genius”. In reality, the average sales professional closes around 14% of qualified prospects in today’s competitive world.

What if I on the other hand, through my integrated marketing efforts have created a pool of 100 reasonably qualified prospects. I’m just an average person so I close 14% of these prospects over a twelve month period. This is not a bad ratio it is simply average.

Pop quiz: If all deals are of equal size, who made more money?

I will have 14 new Clients and you will have 6.
You are almost 330% better at closing (read “building relationships”) than I am.

Please reread the above until you understand it.

Even though your interpersonal skills are 3x better than mine, I have made more than twice the amount of money you made during the same twelve month period.

The lesson here is if you are able to cost effectively convert prospects into Clients, you need to open the flood gates and fill your sales funnel with qualified leads. Good examples of tactics that provide you with tons of leads are going to be the subject of upcoming articles. In the meantime, if someone were to give you 100 highly qualified leads, what would you do with them to improve your relationship building skills and make more money next year?

I don’t know how you answered the above question, but I’ll take those leads any day over solely relying on my relationship building skills and I think most of you out there would agree.

More highly qualified leads equals more money no matter what business you’re in.

That is called results.

No disrespect to “thought leaders,” but I’d rather be a results leader wouldn’t you?