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Don’t Prejudge a Prospect!

If you haven’t been following this blog and you don’t know me, my name is Dennis M. Wilson (“M” needed for distinction from the deceased Beach Boy). I want to tell you a lesson that was reinforced in me today. But before I do, I have to give you a bit of background.

I have been selling professionally since I was 10 years old. That’s right, 10! It all started with pet rocks. I got a rock polishing machine for Christmas one year, found a bunch of unused bottle caps, and bought some googly eyes. Instant Pet Rocks being sold by an unbelievably charming kid door to door!

I didn’t even consider prejudging at that age. When you’re young, you aren’t jaded.  I just went door to door to door, and made a small fortune — at least in a 10-year old’s eyes — selling Pet Rocks for $1 each.

Later, I moved onto delivering newspapers, and selling annual subscriptions, and new subscriptions. I got the free trip to Disneyland selling the Edmonton Journal newspaper!

I did this by using the puppy dog close.  Of course, I had no idea that was what I was doing back then, but it proved very effective. This was the line I used back then: “I just need 5 more subscribers and I get a free trip to Disneyland. If you would just help me out, I would be happy to send you a Postcard from Disneyland.”

Yep, I sent 5 postcards! I still hadn’t learned to prejudge. I had upped my game. (I think the subscriptions were about $30 whole dollars a year!)

I then ran my own Neon Sign company. It is here where I learned to prejudge. I was old enough to have heard enough ‘Nos’ and ‘Not interested.’  It was here where I learned to FIGHT THE URGE to prejudge. It was here the idea was born, long before the technology and internet existed to build a piece of software like Small Business Dream. (We used a product called PackRat, which was good at the time.)

Slowly I started to prejudge by the tone in their voice on the phone, or the fact they didn’t call me back.

I even played the old ‘It is Monday game’ — nobody wants to be followed up on Monday, they are all too busy. I was deep in my prejudging mode.

At this time I was selling Neon Signs anywhere from $299 to $10,000. It seems the prejudging gets to happen more and more often, the higher ticket item you sell.

The battle NEVER ends for a salesperson.

Now I sell $10,000 to $180,000 Software systems. I would love to say I have learned to NOT prejudge. I can tell you I have found a way to limit how much I do it. It is called Small Business Dream. It simply works by giving me a list of people to call based upon MY decided order by the last contact I had with them — open Small Business Dream, call, email, send a text, send a Facebook message, or whatever else it tells me to do, and don’t stop until the list is empty.

Systematize. It’s not 100% magic, but it keeps me on track a lot more than just hoping I will remember who to call and what was said and NOT make excuses they might not be interested so I won’t call. Just CALL or DO the action Small Business Dream says.

At least I have a weapon against my brain!

Is the battle over?

About 2 weeks ago, I got a phone call on a Sunday morning from somebody interested in our software, and they only were going to have a very small number of people in their company, and I totally PREJUDGED thinking they weren’t actually a prospect.  It was Sunday morning, so I think I was a little miffed at myself that I answered the phone on a Sunday morning.

I did all the wrong things in sales; I answered the phone in a slightly less than perfect mindset. I PREJUDGED this wasn’t a prospect and I had wasted my time. Fortunately, I use SMALL BUSINESS DREAM, so he was already in the system and he came up for a call-back on Monday.

With the help of Small Business Dream, I can battle against my BRAIN’S poor judgement, ended up calling him back and following up as I was supposed to ON MONDAY, even though I had completely prejudged him.

Well guess what? It turned out that we were to have another call the next day and I thought he was very likely going to purchase our $30,000 software platform from me! The key in sales is DON’T PREJUDGE. Even the best salespersons aren’t perfect.

I got the sale the very next day. However, I prejudged and could have lost the sale but thankfully I got lucky and I saved it, because I had proper sales automation in place to make sure I stayed in communication, even though I didn’t feel like it, and it was hard to pick up the phone to call because I had prejudged him.

Small Business Dream said I need to call him, and my stats for the day said I had only made 61 contacts so far that day. My goal was 100. I couldn’t handle the pressure of resisting the call, and everything just forced me to pick up the phone to make that last phone call and sent that last text message.

And I got the Sale.

DON’T PREJUDGE. Just let your sales process take hold and do the right things according to your sales automation follow-up software. And by not prejudging, you are going to sell more and make a ton more money.

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The Importance of Follow-up in Converting Leads to Sales

I just wanted to share some thoughts I had the other day about the importance of follow-up as I was going through Small Business Dream and doing all my follow up calls for my software company. I started to think about follow-up and how important it is. I had a customer come on board that has been on my drip follow-up for 12 years!

He bought every other kind of solution he could, while avoiding the main thing we sell. He had every excuse in the book to not be ready every time I called. That’s right. I called and called without any judgement; I just called if he came up on my call list in Small Business Dream. In addition, my email autoresponders kept dripping on him with high quality information about his software problems and how we could help.

I reached out probably twice a year because my Small Business Dream told me to and I talked to him by voice. Yep, you got it — BY VOICE! I helped him with his issues. I counselled him.

When he finally bought, he said, “Dennis, I wouldn’t even consider looking at anyone else because you’ve been there for 12 years giving me free information, helping me along my way and never getting the sale. Well, now you got the sale. If you’re that good before you got money, I can’t even imagine how great it’s going to be to work with you.”

Twelve years of follow-up got me a sale. It wasn’t hard, I simply let Small Business Dream remind me when to call or drip out pre-written helpful content. Eighty percent was purely educational while 20% was more about my software company and how we can help.

I started to wonder how many people follow-up for 12 years. How many people have a system that allows them to know, when they get a new customer, the first contact was made 12 years ago? This is the kind of thing Small Business Dream can do for anybody.

If you have everything working together seamlessly — email autoresponders, semi-automated follow-up through social media, phone call logs — you can become a follow-up pro and significantly increase your productivity.

I waited 12 years. But this was a $30,000 sale. Was it worth waiting 12 years? Hey, I would have loved if it only took 2, but on the other hand, 12 years later, there’s a $30,000 sale because Small Business Dream kept me on top of my follow-up and I didn’t pre-judge and I didn’t say, “Oh he’s never gonna buy, I’m going to stop following up.”

I doubt if I’d spent 1 hour of time per year following up by phone call for 12 years. I probably spent 4 hours in the first year, so a total of 15 hours of work? If a salesperson had made this sale for me, just how happy would they be… 12% commission on $30,000 = $3600. Divide that by 15 hours… $240/hour. Hmmmm. Not bad… Annualize that… $499,200/year. Nice!

I just followed the process until he either bought or said no. He always told me, you know maybe someday… we’re just not ready… maybe someday… we’re just not ready… we’re gonna try this… we’re gonna try that… I don’t think we’re ready… I don’t think we’re ready… He never said, no I’m not interested. I kept following up because my system reminded me. I did it without much thought, without any kind of hesitation or reservation. I don’t prejudge and made $30,000.

Anybody can do this with Small Business Dream. All it takes is following the system and trusting that it works.

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How Sales People Can Look Desperate and Some Tips to Avoid It

Sales people are constantly under pressure to perform within the company’s standard. Attrition rate in the sales department is fairly high — as much as 50% a year in some companies.

Most of the time, they would resort to desperate measures in a last ditch effort to reach the monthly or weekly quota. But as we know these futile attempts made no difference other than making them look desperate.

Surviving this job requires persistent effort and a high degree of salesmanship acquired from years of experience and training.

What Persistence is Not

One of the roadblocks to becoming a successful salesperson is the lack of understanding of the customers and the sales process. In order to succeed in a highly competitive market, a salesperson should know the difference between persistence and pushing too far.

Here are some telltale signs that a salesperson has already crossed the line:

1.     Salesperson does all the talking.

Sales people can become overly enthusiastic to the point where they start taking up most of the conversation. This usually puts customers on the defensive, especially if they don’t have any intention of buying the product. Some salespersons are not so conscious about it, but it’s actually off-putting to most customers.

2.     Salesperson offers ‘solutions’ prematurely.

Businesses provide solutions to their customers’  ‘pain points’. If it’s something that has real value to the customer, it won’t be too hard to make the sale.

However, giving ‘unsolicited advice’ by offering a ‘solution’ too soon can be misconstrued as pushing the sale.  Although not necessarily wrong, it would be much better if they would hear from the customers first before going any further.

3.     Salesperson gets too ‘salesy’.

Nobody likes a pushy salesperson and people’s natural reaction is to back away if a sales person tries to tell the prospect what is good for them, even if the prospect wants what the salesperson is selling.

Be honest about your product or service and never over-promise — and definitely never lie. A salesperson needs to lead the prospect to water, not try to drown them.

4.     Offer discounts too soon.

If not done correctly, offering discounts right off the bat can actually send a different message to the customers. It could  mean one of two things — it’s cheap quality, or it’s previously overpriced.

Either way, customers will have a negative impression about the offer, especially those who prefer quality and value over price savings.

5.     Criticize others.

Badmouthing other companies betrays a lack of confidence and could undermine the company’s reputation.  However, it doesn’t mean sales people couldn’t give their honest opinion about a certain product or service. They just have to put it in context and not use it to promote their own.

Lead Them in — Don’t Push!

The notion of smooth-talking salesman has long been gone. It’s no longer just about the personality or creating a good first impression.

We now live in an era where customers make buying decisions based on facts and not just on some 30-second TV, or YouTube commercial. Hence, we don’t expect customers to just pour in or take the bait right then and there.

We need to cultivate their minds and educate them about the benefits of using our products or services instead of shoving them down their throats.

Converting leads to buying customers doesn’t have to be that hard, if we only take time to nurture them. There are 3 ways you can accomplish this:

  • Know your customers better. Contacting each potential customer at random will only lead to frustration. You need a tool that allows you to keep in touch with all your contacts and be able to sort them out in the most efficient way. CRM applications like Small Business Dream can make this all possible with less effort.
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  • Follow-up your leads. Your initial contact with your customers can give away some clues about the things that they like or are interested in.  Have them fill up a quick survey and ask some basic information, or you can invite them to your mailing list for a weekly or monthly newsletter to learn more about the benefits of using your product or service.
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  • Be patient. Unless you’re very lucky, you won’t get the sale on the very first engagement. On average, it takes around 4 to 7 engagements before a deal is made. So be patient and wait for the right opportunity. You don’t want to annoy your prospect with your incessant calls or reminders about the offer. But if your leads are already ripe for the picking, by all means get to them and close the deal as soon as possible.

Being a salesperson doesn’t have to be too difficult with today’s latest innovation in sales and marketing. Small Business Dream simplifies the work for you, so you won’t have to sweat it out just to get things done.

Visit us at www.smallbizdream.com to learn more about our suite of tools which include sales funnel, survey engine, email autoresponders and more.

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Simple Ways to Integrate Permission Marketing Into Marketing Automation

 Marketing automation is at the core of almost every online business today, and should also be a key strategy in more traditional businesses as well.

As a cost-effective way to reach out potential customers, this strategy has proved time and again that anyone – with sufficient knowledge, tools, and skill sets – can have a fair chance to compete with other businesses worldwide.

However, even the most innovative online strategy has a downside. For years, marketing automation has become the subject of misuse among online marketers who pitched automation as a way of turning businesses into online ‘cash machines’ without ever spending time and effort with potential customers. It made marketing automation synonymous to spamming.

Faced with more stringent rules regarding customer engagement and increased customer awareness, online marketers are back to the drawing board on how they could use automation to deliver the same results back in its heyday, or even better.

Why a Change of Strategy is Necessary

When marketing automation was at its peak, many believed that as long as you were able to make tons of content and send a relentless barrage of emails to practically any person on earth that has an email address, sooner or later people would respond to your call and generate income for your business.

The idea comes from the analogy of shooting as many arrows as you can, hoping that one or two will eventually land on their target out of mere chance (known as the ‘spray and pray’ method). Although some businesses use this method effectively, it usually comes at a price.

For one thing, marketers who rely heavily on conventional marketing automation are putting their businesses at risk by sending unsolicited emails to people whose contact information were sourced from a third-party data supplier.

This method obviously won’t work, since most emails have already built defenses against spamming. CAN-SPAM Act will also make these marketers think twice about ever using this method again.

Aside from bordering unlawful marketing practices, it tends to yield diminishing returns over time as contacts starts falling off and fewer people become available to them. It usually guarantees a one-time success with little or no regard for ongoing customer relationship and repeat purchases.

Staying relevant with the customers is almost impossible to attain with conventional marketing automation. Usually, what happens is that companies will send every content that they have on a particular niche to people in their massive list of contacts, hoping to strike a chord with just one or two articles sent to them in rapid succession. It’s essentially a ‘hit-or-miss’ strategy.

As customer engagement comes close to non-existent, they would eventually lose their ship, and no amount of automation can save it from sinking to the bottom.

The question now is whether marketing automation can still be a viable option to speed up the process and boost sales despite its shortcomings in customer engagement.

A Step towards Permission Marketing

Permission marketing was coined by marketing expert Seth Godin to denote marketing strategies that rely on customer feedback, i.e., permission, to initiate ongoing customer relationship and interaction which allows them to receive updates and follow-ups on demand.

Unlike traditional outbound marketing, which he appropriately calls ‘interruption marketing’, permission marketing spares people the trouble of going through the ordeal of being constantly bombarded with marketing pitches. It gives them more freedom and control over the situation and encourages them to either share more about their interests and other key information about themselves, or turn into buying customers.

Others tend to view permission marketing as the antithesis of marketing automation because it’s more involved and requires frequent human interaction. The fact is, permission marketing needs a starting point, and that involves automation.

Sign-up forms via landing pages, which may also include opt-in to newsletters or social media posts, are just a few classic examples on how to initiate permission marketing.

Still others believe that permission marketing is a little too slow compared to marketing automation aside from the fact that it gives too much freedom to potential customers to take action whenever they want to. They aim for quick, albeit short-lived gains, instead of nurturing previous and current customers for long-term, sustainable income.

In the final analysis, those who relied on one-time customer engagements end up losing more money looking for new prospects while those who took their time watering and growing their customer base could increase revenue exponentially through updates, follow-ups, customer referrals, crossing-selling, up-selling, and repeat purchases.

The Smart Way to Automate

Marketing automation platforms can only do so well when it comes to tasks which could be reasonably accomplished through automation. Some aspects of marketing are best performed through human interaction which cannot be copied or supplanted by automated means.

Read: Digital and Physical Customer Engagement, and Why You Need Both

Keep these in mind when using marketing automation to attract and maintain customers for your business:

  • Open up multiple channels to collect customer information.

Inbound marketing has proven its effectiveness over outbound marketing by emphasizing customer awareness.

Opening up multiple channels of customer engagement maximizes your chances of getting in touch with them. This includes setting up a blog, website, landing page, and social media account, to name a few.

Your marketing automation platform can be seamlessly integrated to all these channels to collect, store, and analyze customer information for you after signing up to your mailing list or subscribe for a free newsletter. Marketing automation shines best at this stage of customer engagement.

  • Dissect your sales pipeline to see which approach works best in every stage. In case you haven’t noticed this part has been alluded to in the previous item.

The first stage, which involves data collection and storage, is best accomplished with marketing automation.

Following up, which is the next stage, involves a combination of both permission marketing and marketing automation.

When trying to learn more about your leads, you can revert back to automation to, once again, collect relevant information about them and analyze whether or not they could be qualified as potential customers. The marketing team would then assign the lead scores, start with the sales process, and close the deal.

  • Use email segmentation and the buyer persona to guide your marketing effort. These marketing strategies allow you to narrow down your target audience and zero them in with pinpoint accuracy. It takes time and effort creating relevant content based on different segments and customer behavior.

The easiest way to fail in any kind of marketing strategy is to use the same cut-and-dried content across all contacts and send them out at a robotic pace, one email after another.

You need to customize your content according to the different segments in your email list and provide an option for a follow-up or additional information about the topic.

When deciding for the most appropriate product or service for a certain group of customers, you can refer to your buyer persona as your guide.

  •  Choose a marketing automation platform that works for you. A good marketing automation platform often comes at a price.

However, most companies offer different versions of their product ranging from the most basic ones at no cost, to premium offerings with a complete suite of tools at about a hundred to two hundred dollars per month.

Marketing automation can still be as powerful as any marketing strategy if you can put other elements into the mix such as permission marketing to interact with your potential customers and collect your data about your target market.

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Creating a Detailed Buyer Persona to Guide Your Marketing Efforts

Businesses are always upgrading their strategies to increase ROI. The buyer persona epitomizes their constant efforts to stay relevant with their customers by creating an idealized customer to guide their marketing efforts.

The shift from generalized, stereotypical advertising to individualized customer engagement is one the most important milestones that changed the way companies and businesses market themselves to world.

 

Buyer Persona vs. Stereotype

Buyer persona is coined from the word ‘persona’, often associated with psychology and literature. When applied to business, it means an ideal customer with the most desirable traits suitable for marketing.

This ‘model customer’ serves as the basis for the company’s design, production, and marketing efforts from which they can generate income. Different industries can have several buyer personas, each having unique, individual characteristics that mirror their real-life equivalents.

A common misconception about the buyer persona is the old practice of stereotyping customers popular among traditional businesses. They would try to fit every customer into a category based on assumptions and generalizations.

The fundamental difference between a buyer persona and a stereotype is the understanding of the circumstances that revolve around the customer – his work, lifestyle, education, hobbies, expertise, expectations, buying habits, etc.

A stereotype barely scratches the surface and provides an incomplete picture of your target market, while a buyer persona goes deeper by creating a life-like representation of your ideal customers based on facts and research.

 

The Buyer Persona’s Role in Business

Marketing efforts gravitate on the customer’s ever-changing needs embodied by the buyer persona. Without a proper understanding of the customers, all efforts from production, marketing, and sales are irrelevant.

A well-researched buyer persona protects their investments by guiding them on what products or services – with their many variants and slight nuances – to provide their customers and how they can successfully market them across different channels.

 

Creating a Buyer Persona

The first step in creating an all-inclusive buyer persona is to collect every available information from customers through research, surveys and interviews .

Sources include demographic information of a particular area, CRM data, emails, social media, and Google Analytics. These data will serve as the building blocks of the ideal customer’s ‘DNA’.

Coming up with an accurate representation of the ideal costumer takes time. In some instances, it is necessary to create two or more personas if data points to more than just one type of customer.

 

What to Include

Business firms compile different information from various sources and creates a unified picture of their imaginary customer. The following information will help you throughout the process.

Demographic information
•   Age bracket
•   Gender
•   Country/Nationality
•   Language

Personal information
•    Educational attainment
•    Profession/Occupation
•    Civil Status
•    Income Level

Customer information
•   Buying History
•   Buying Motivation
•   Buying Preference
•   Average Spending

Specific Skills and Interests

Acquiring firsthand information can take time because it involves actual conversation with people and encouraging them to participate in surveys.

Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter is a treasure trove when it comes to personal information, skills, and interests about your customers. Some companies collect information about their fans and followers as part of their marketing strategy.

If your company doesn’t have a Facebook or Twitter account, consider social media marketing as a way of gathering relevant information about your target market.

You can also learn about their specific interests through your landing pages and opt-in subscriptions to your weekly or monthly newsletters. These data can be acquired more easily using ‘call to action’ (CTA) links or buttons within the page or email.

When it comes to customer records of previous and current customers, nothing comes close to CRM customer data because it allows businesses to stay up-to-date with its constant supply of data from day to day transactions.

 

Look for the Right CRM Service to Guide You

Small Business Dream offers a suite of tools which include customer acquisition, sales funnel, and sales and marketing automation for small business owners like you.

Learn more on how Small Business Dream can help you with your marketing efforts by visiting our website at www.smallbizdream.com.