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Win More Sales With This 5-Step Sales Process

 

Facilitating the buying process can be very straightforward and fairly uncomplicated.

Yet most professionals have no idea what it takes to guide a potential client through a decision making process. And it costs them a fortune in an unrealized income. This short tutorial will show you a simple five step process for getting more leads, setting up more sales appointments, and converting more prospects into ideal first time clients.

 

3 Big Problems With Closing More Sales…

 

Before we get to the solution let’s make sure that you understand the problem. Most entrepreneurs, service professionals and business owners are great technicians  – they’re good at what they do.  But because they have little (or none) training in the area of marketing and selling they end up going about winning more clients the wrong way.

 

Mistake #1: They Pitch The Wrong Thing!

They focus on getting a sale instead of getting a lead. It’s like walking up to a random person and immediately asking them if they want to have sex with you. Seriously. You wouldn’t do that, right?

 

 

Before you have a customer you must have a lead. Some leads will qualify to become a prospect. And some prospects will turn into clients. Depending on what you sell, someone can go from being a lead to becoming a client in a few minutes. Or it might take months. But you always need to focus on getting a lead first. (I’ll show you how in a moment.)

 

Mistake #2: They Quit Too Early!

Studies show that up to 50% of people NEVER FOLLOW UP after the initial contact. (That number varies based on a study, but it’s typically in the 40% to 50% range.) Nearly 90% of folks give up after just three to four connections. And 80% of sales are made between the fifth and 12th attempt.

 

 

Re-read those numbers. Let that sink in. To translate the numbers it essentially means that if you don’t stick with your leads more than five times you miss out on 80% of your sales. That’s money that could’ve been yours, but isn’t!

And of those who do some follow up, it typically consists of a few emails or phone-calls that go somewhat like this: “Hi, remember me? We met last week? Anyway, I just wanted to know if you’ve made a decision yet? No? Oh, OK, I’ll call again…”

Soon they discover their prospect got stuck in a “12-month meeting” (every time they call over the next 12 months the prospect is in a meeting.) Sound familiar?

 

Mistake #3: They Show Up And Throw Up!

In medicine prescribing treatment without first diagnosing a problem is called malpractice. Yet that’s exactly what most people do in sales situations: They spew all there is to know about them, their company and their product or service overwhelming the prospect and never once asking “hey, what do you really want?”

Then they leave the meeting hoping for a favorable decision “sometime” in the near future.

 

 

When the prospect doesn’t buy, most people never examine their approach. Instead, they blame the prospect and the situation. They say things like:

• “They didn’t really need what I was offering them.” (REALLY? So why did they set up the meeting with you in the first place?!)

• “They didn’t have the money.” (So how come they bought another solution for twice the price only a week later? Their billionaire uncle just died and left them a fortune?)

• “They need time to think about it and will make a decision soon.” (No they won’t! What they needed is a polite way of getting rid of you without telling you that you blew it!)

 

What’s Really Missing Here?

 

What’s missing is clear, consistent and easy to duplicate sales system. If the big word “system” scares you, or you think it’s only for big companies, consider this:

 

Sales System is simply a sequence of steps that predictably move potential clients along the decision-making path.

While the exact steps in your sales system will vary based on what you sell and who your buyers are, the 5-step model will definitely get you closer to winning more sales.

 

Here’s A 5-Step Sales System Guaranteed To Get More Leads And Close More Deals.

 

STEP ONE: Generate Leads

 

The number one reason most promotional efforts don’t get the desired results is trying to make a sale too soon. Advertising should be designed to generate leads – inquiries about your product or service from qualified prospects – not to get an order!

The idea here is simple. I’m not sure how you first found this article, but consider this example. Let’s say you found a link to it somewhere on social media. Perhaps the link said “Learn a 5-step method to close more sales” – you clicked on it. Now you’re reading this.

If you like the article, you might want to get my free 12-question Reverse Enrollment Blueprint that teaches you how to guide prospects to make a buying decision.

And if you like it, perhaps you’ll explore doing business with my by enrolling in one of our coaching programs. All because I initially got your attention with a free article.

Now consider a different scenario. You’re browsing social media and come across this message: “I can help you. Just buy stuff. It’s on sale today.” Would you click on that?

Probably not! Yet that’s how most people go about getting leads!

 

 

So to get leads you need two things: visibility and a “lead-magnet”. You need to get in front of your ideal audience, offer them something they want and make getting it easy and risk free.

There are hundreds (if not thousands) of ways to accomplish it. But the foundation remains the same: stop pitching and start teaching. When you pitch – people will “run and hide” from you. But when you teach, people will actually start coming to you.

You can get more visibility through speaking, publishing articles, referral systems, press releases, internet marketing, networking, print ads, direct mail and social media – just to name a few examples.

And your lead magnet? I could be an article (like the one you’re reading now), a special toolkit that helps your potential clients solve one of their big problems, a short video tutorial, a list of resources, a check-list how to do something.

You just want to make sure that folks give you their contact info in exchange for access to the goodies. That’s how you get folks into your sales system.

 

STEP TWO: Send Positioning Material

 

Depending on how you generated the lead in the first place you may need to deliver your “fulfillment package” – the information promised in your advertising efforts. But you don’t want to stop there.

Remember that it takes multiple connections before most of your prospective clients warm up to you. Only about 3% of your leads will be ready to become your clients. So if you don’t stay in touch with the remaining 97% you’ll be missing out on a lot of sales.

But following up is another system all together. One that most people just can’t figure out.

According to a study done by Microsoft 89% give up on following with a potential client by fourth attempt. But over 80% of sales are closed on the fifth or following attempt.

 

 

While you want to reserve the “test drive” of your services for the most serious prospects (see Step #3), your follow must illustrate your credibility and capability to establish yourself as an expert.

And it must be relevant to your prospect’s.

Your “lead magnets” and all follow up materials need to give prospects an insight into your expertise while providing information useful to them in solving their own problems and “whetting their appetite” leaving them hungry for more and eager to hear from you again.

This is a critical step but professionals often skip it altogether.

The great news is that it’s relatively easy to develop such marketing materials. I call them “legitimizers” because they remove many of the initial doubts and objections from the prospect’s mind before they even talk with you!

And I recommend that you never meet with a prospect unless he or she had a chance to review a special report or an article you wrote, listen to an audio-program you created, watch a video online, participate in a webinar you facilitated, or otherwise “experience you in a teaching mode” in some form.

This gives you a chance to demonstrate your understanding of their problems, prove that you have the know-how needed to provide an effective solution, and position you as the expert who will not waste their time.

 

STEP THREE: Pre-Qualify Prospects

 

Your promotional efforts are bound to create some responses from perpetual freebie seekers and habitual tire-kickers. Folks who either can’t or won’t make a buying decision.

Unless you have unlimited resources (namely money and time) to follow-up with people that will never make a purchase or create a referral – you want to eliminate the least ideal “prospects” right from the get-go.

 

To avoid wasting time on lookie-loos you need to determine if your prospects have the need, intent, ability and authority to purchase what you offer.

Adam Urbanski

The best way to separate lookie-loos from genuine prospects is to ask them to invest a small amount of effort or money (or both) before they can receive more information.

Here are a few ideas you can use:

• Invite prospects to a preview webinar (how much time your prospects are willing to invest to explore your solution is a good indicator of how serious they are about investing in it.)

• Invite prospects to a paid workshop or seminar (in-person or virtual). If they are not willing to invest any money to investigate solutions to their problems they are probably not serious about solving them.

• Offer a paid need assessment or best-practices analysis. In complex sales serious prospects will view this is a necessary step in moving forward.

• Conduct a paid initial consultation. Even if the consultation fee is guaranteed (refundable if the prospect is not satisfied) the need to put up some money up front is a great qualifier of prospect’s ability to make the decision and have the finances to move forward.

All of these steps, in one way or another, bring you closer to the next step.

 

STEP FOUR: Get an Appointment

 

When you are selling something that requires a significant investment you’ll need to move beyond emails, webinars and sales letters and actually secure a meeting with the prospect.

If you’ve done a good job in the first three steps – this will be easy. Your best prospects will actually look forward to meeting with you and exploring ways you can help them.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Before you agree to a meeting use ideas from Step #3 to ensure you’re not wasting your time on an unqualified lead. For example, at the Marketing Mentors we use a simple questionnaire form.

• Don’t be afraid to ask for the meeting. If you don’t, your competitors will. And they may end up with your money in their bank account.

• Make the meeting about solving prospect’s problems not selling your solutions (big distinction.)

• Make arranging the meeting as easy as possible. In our business, after a prospective client completes a questionnaire and meets our criteria, we use an automated appointment setting tool to make finding the time to meet quick and easy.

• Once the appointment is set don’t take it for granted. It’s not unusual for prospective clients to let other things take priority and cancel your meeting in the last minute. You can reduce the chances of it happening to you by having an effective reminder system in place. You should give your reminder process just as much attention as you paid to getting that appointment in the first place.

One final note: If you’re securing your own appointments by phone avoid the pitfall of giving away too much information up front. Remember your goal as this point is to get the prospect to meet with you.

Draw a clear distinction that it’s an “appointment setting” call and leave the discussion of other business to that appointment. Which brings us to the final step.

 

STEP FIVE: Face-to-Face Meeting

 

This is the “Holly Grail” so many people dream of attaining more often. Sadly, when they do, they completely screw up this opportunity to turn the prospect into a paid client.

Without much (or any) sales training most folks erroneously assume that this meeting is about telling everything there’s to know about themselves, their business and their offer.

 

People don’t need to understand what you do to make a buying decision. But they won’t move forward if they don’t feel understood.

Adam Urbanski

In reality, most people don’t want to know much about you and what you offer until they feel that you understand their situation and have something that can be useful to them.

And they probably did their homework on you in advance, so spare them the pain of having to talk about you and focus on them.

Many people are “allergic” to selling. They refuse to learn it. And believe that just being good at what they do, and showing how passionate they are about their work will be enough to close the deal.

In most cases – it won’t.

And learning how to sell more effectively is probably the easiest way to quickly double your revenue and profits.

 

 

I’ll leave the details of conducting an effective sales conversation for another post. But I’ll give you three quick tips:

1. Don’t jump to offer. Identify your prospects problems and reasons WHY they are meeting with you in the first place BEFORE you start presenting your solution.
    
2. Don’t over-explain. Instead of diving into every nitty-gritty detail of what your offer includes, focus on communicating and confidence you have that it will bring about the desired result. 
    
3. Don’t become a victim of status-quo. Your biggest competitor is not another vendor, but the prospect’s inertia. Make sure to eliminate their current situation as a viable alternative to your offer.

This is obviously a simplified model, but it identifies the five critical elements of the selling process.

There are countless variations and tactics you could employ in each step. But always keep in mind this: each of those elements has only one objective – to move prospect to the next step!

 

Get A Free 12-Questions Blueprint For Connected Conversations That Sell.

 

 

Now It’s Your Turn…

 

Leave me a comment and let me know:

• Which of the five steps do you find most challenging?
• What do you do that’s helping you to move prospects along the buying path more effectively and efficiently?

I always love to hear from you and look forward to reading your comments.