This version was presented at the National Constitution Center for Constant Contact in May of 2014. The secret to successful sales is followup, but what does that really mean? And how can a CRM help you? What is a CRM? Do you need one? If all you want is to take strangers and turn them into dollars, what is it that you need to make that happen?
12. You already know how this works
Content
Leads
Follow-up
Conversion
CASH
Start Collecting
Be Recommendable
Get Out There and Inspire
Leads
13. Sales -vs- Marketing
Marketing is the process of creating awareness and
interest with the goal of moving qualified prospects
into a sales cycle.
Sales is the process of converting prospects to
customers.
15. Sales makes me feel “icky”
The web has enabled
sales teams to spend the
vast majority of their
time dealing with
individuals who have
pre-qualified
themselves.
16. Social Media for Sales
Marketers Use Salesperson Use
use media such as a
slideshow to capture search
traffic for a specific topic
use video to evoke an
emotional response to the
brand
use LinkedIn to post
interesting status updates to
industry-relevant content
use it to overcome
objections and close the sale
use it to highlight the
product or service’s key
features and set up a sales
appointment
use it to meet new leads and
set up appointments.
17. The Key Is Conversion
Sorting
Creating
Desire
Engaging
Conversion
18. Automate and Incentivize
Automation tends to be difficult to implement – do it FOR
your sales team
Incentivize them to use your systems – have a value add for
them to put it in.
19. You already know how this works
• Connect Them
• Keep Providing Content
• Management
• Tracking
Follow-up
21. Keeping Tabs with CRMs
• Record your customer
relationship management
information to keep the
details straight
• Plenty of free and low
cost based applications
• Knowing when they make
a decision and what they
named their kids will bear
fruit
2
22. You already know how this works
Content
Leads
Follow-up
Conversion
CASH
•How Many Clicks?
•Easy vs. Difficult
•Reachability
•Close the Deal
Conversion
23. The Numbers Game
Like a retail store – it’s all about eyeballs
New Clients
1:25
Prospects
1:250
Leads
1:100
Impressio
ns
25. How Convertible are You?
What is
your
product or
service?
How many
steps for
me to
purchase?
Is it clear
how I begin
doing
business
with you?
Can I
fan, follow
or receive
updates
from you?
27. You already know how this works
Content
Leads
Follow-up
Conversion
CASHCASH
28. Now you have a tool…
Tech
Data Ops
What are
you going
to DO with
it?
29. Projections and Targets
It’s easier once you reach critical mass
$20,000
Goal = 10
Clients
250
Prospects
62,500 Leads
6.2 MM Impressions
30. Simple Things to Do Today
Audit your website for
conversion opportunities
Gather all contact information in
CSVs
Complete the metrics chart to set
sales goals
Choose a CRM
Determine one offline thing you
can do to drive people to your
website or social media sites.
30
32. Thank you!
Amy H. Larrimore
Managing Partner
@AmyAllStar
1-267-825-7311
amy@empirebuilders.com
www.empirebuilders.com
Some people want to work, others want to grow a business…
we empower those who choose to build an empire.
Editor's Notes
Quantity – do you have enough?Readiness – is it ready to go?Leadership – does someone “own” the Element?Economics – do the finances work?Cohesiveness – do all of the pieces hold together?
When you use technology properly, it generates volumes and volumes of actionable data. Now you can know if your hottest prospect is out of town this week – his facebook page shows vacation pictures with the kids. Now you can know what bugs a potential client – her twitter feed itemizes out who she prefers to do business with and why. Now you can know who may be able to make you an introduction to that important lead – Linkedin shows you who you know in common. Now the challenge becomes organizing this data in a systemized, actionable way. When that is done properly, data is the most valuable company asset today – same as someone’s rolodex was their most valuable professional asset yesterday.
Have you ever walked by a store on a busy street that had no sign, a terrible window display and you weren’t sure what it sold? It probably had dust piled up in the windowsills, peeling paint and seemed dark inside. There is usually no sign to indicate hours of operation and a trash can partially blocks the door swing. This is a good analogy for many business websites. You don’t have to spend a fortune to have a well organized, clean and clear website. In fact, most of the time businesses don’t have an issue with the design or the development of the website, it’s the organization and choice of the information on the site that is problematic.
Most organizations that generate revenue understand they need to constantly improve the sales process.To put it simply, marketing creates demand, sales fulfills demand. Without sales, there is no business. All of the marketing in the world cannot keep a business afloat if it is not closing sales.
Many companies will look at their social media activity and web traffic and wonder why sales aren’t increasing. Web traffic is only an indication of successful marketing, not successful sales. It’s not enough to simply have people follow you on Twitter.It is not enough to connect on Linkedin. Getting more traffic to your website is NOT enough. In order for a website to succeed, both as a marketing channel AND a sales channel, the opportunity for conversion must be present to move an individual from interest to purchase. Many small businesses are so focused on traffic that they don’t spend any time on conversion. Simply put – how effective are they at selling to the people who arrive on the website? Part of this consideration is – how easy is it to make a purchase?
Many people get upset by the mention of the word “sales.” It draws imagery of cold calling, or the sleazy used car salesman trying to get people to buy things they don’t want or need. However, when asked “if you knew that someone was looking for what you provide, would you feel bad, or “icky,” about solving their problem in exchange for payment” almost 100% of people would answer “no” and would gladly take payment to provide their services or products. The web has enabled sales teams to spend the vast majority of their time dealing with individuals who have pre-qualified themselves. Intrusive sales techniques are being phased out in favor of a more personalized approach, and an approach that takes advantage of inbound opportunities.
Social media sites and resources support a sales team differently than it does marketing teams. Whereas social media content is used in marketing to deliver relevant messages to generate interest, it is used in sales to help identify qualified leads and assist in closing sales. A marketer might use media such as a slideshow to capture search traffic for a specific topicA salesperson could use it to overcome objections and close the saleA marketer might use video to evoke an emotional response to the brandA salesperson might use it to highlight the product or service’s key features and set up a sales appointmentA marketer might use LinkedIn to post interesting status updates to industry-relevant contentA salesperson might use it to meet new leads and set up appointments.
ENGAGED people BUYGives you the runway for the right amount of “touches”This is called CONVERSIONProspect becomes a CustomerCONVERSION is how you measure the return on a marketing investment.ACME Company had the opportunity to participate in a local champagne festival, which they jumped at to boost their business in this segment. Let’s hear an account of the event from one of the attendees: “I recently attended the Champagne Festival – what a great event! They give you an engraved glass at the door and you get 72 types of sparkling wine to taste. Each drink was paired with a different kind of food from a different restaurant. All the vendors dazzled us with taste this, taste that, this is vintage G and that’s vintage K and just find our booth number in the program to remember our 30 syllable French name.Great, great, will do. Except we went to a piano bar afterward and lost our programs. And I promise you, 72 tastings later, I have no idea what bottle X was and what the booth number or the vintage. I vaguely remember the location of the restaurant that served the caviar soup – I think.”
Hairdresser: We’ll put an automatic scheduling system to make it easier for you clients to book with you. Now you’re taking input data and you’ll want to integrate that to a database of customer information on the back end. Export the data and input it into a sales systemLastly, automation tends to be difficult for sales people to implement on their own. They have to stay focused on bringing business. As a company owner, you can do this for them and give them a value add to use it. If it’s easier and more valuable to use the sales tool, they will use it. If it’s difficult and cumbersome to use, they will not use it.
Organize your contacts and let THEM keep info up to date - accessible anywhereRecommend great people and ask for recommendations from your clientsGet listed and noticed as an industry leaderGenerate leads, find partners, help out, find suppliers
Managing information is the struggle for most businesses. Client information is everywhere – or nowhere. It’s in the heads of the sales team, scribbled in margins of contracts, in her phone, in his email or hopefully findable on Google or LinkedIn when needed. The number one recommendation to make to a company that is struggling with sales is to implement a CRM. Implementing this technology provides the largest and quickest return because our human brains cannot process many three dimensional relational data points. By using a database to manage these connections, you can begin to see patterns and close deals you didn’t know were there.
Social media also helps to drive the necessary volume of traffic to the website in order to cull more people who want your product or service. A huge amount of selling is about reaching enough people to close. A good rule of thumb in person to person sales is: one in ten people will be interested (lead)one in twenty five become a prospect one in twenty five become a client Because social media is an extraordinarily inexpensive way to reach more people than ever before, part of its magic is to bring more people so that the sales team has better statistical chances. However, there is a lower level of engagement n social media than in person to person sales AND most companies haven’t optimized their website enough to have good conversion. So we will adjust those numbers a bit. one in 100 people will be interested (lead) to see your content and come by your website or your social media siteone in 250 leads become a prospect, meaning they will friend or fan you, call you or complete a form online (usually one promising an incentive)one in 25 become a client
Collecting the data is great. USING the data effectively is how you generate revenue. Once you have a CRM, you can then begin identifing the people in your pipeline and following up with them to close the sale.every time you send an email from your outlook or an invoice from your quickbooks, it syncs back to your CRM people database and begins building a complex and robust picture of each person. The next step is to start labeling them into the correct pipeline bucket. Last, you assign an action to the people in the warmer buckets like “Joe send a followup email, Bob make a meeting, Susie send the proposal” so you can create accountability around what actions are needed to move the pipeline forward.
We talked in the marketing section about creating metrics. Here is a good way to establish a dollar value to popularity metric for your social media campaigns. How much do you need to make in order to justify the $________________(A) time and resources of this social media push within your company? How much does your product or service cost (average): $________________(B)Divide A/B to determine how many sales you need: $________________(C)Multiply C by 25 to determine how many prospects you ________________(D) need (completing your online form or friend/fanning you on a social site).Multiply D by 250 to determine how many leads needed _________________(E) (traffic to your social or web sites from your google analytics report)Multiply E by 100 to determine how much exposure is __________________(F) needed. This is sometimes referred to as impressions. How many times did your content fly by someone and they didn’t click?Don’t be afraid of the numbers. These are crazy numbers if you have brochures to hand out, but it’s not insane that on $100 a month budget, your googleadwords campaign can get over 1MM views. You also need to consider that this is for the duration of the campaign – 6 months is an ideal time frame.