Business Coaching

Sales Funnel - Identifying Markets & Possible Customers

One of the key concepts in developing any business is identifying the market and providing reasons for prospective customers to move down the sales funnel from "Never heard of" to "I am buying".

When I start an assignment with a new client, true to the principles of my Eight Pillars of Business Prosperity, I want to know where they are now and how they measure their current performance. Some of this is internally focused but of equal or even more interest is how they measure their progress from moving from the total local market to the customers who place orders.

I wrote about how to measure and monitor sales leads some months ago but now I want to take a more marketing based approach and look at the full sales funnel.

 

Definitions can be adapted to suit your particular circumstances but it is probably easiest to look at the sales funnel working upwards.

The customer is the person or business who receives your product or service and pays you the money although it is important to recognise that there can be a difference between the person making the buying decision, the person choosing the product and the person paying. (Think of children presents or wedding presents.)

A prospect in the sales funnel is someone who is qualified to buy (has the want and the money to pay) and has expressed an interest but has not yet made the decision to purchase. This could be someone who you have seen and sent a proposal.

A suspect in the sales funnel is someone who has expressed an interest in your product or service but hasn't been qualified in terms of want or money.

The target market are the group of prospective customers you have identified as potential purchasers for your business and who you aim your marketing at. These may be different type of market because you have designed specific marketing messages but in total, this is the market that you have taken positive steps to reach.

At the top of the sales funnel is your market universe. This is everybody else who could possibly buy your products but hasn't been selected for targeted action.

An Example of the Sales Funnel

I will explain how I look at my own business.

Customers or clients is easy. I send formal proposals or engagement letters which have to be signed and returned. Until they do this, even with a verbal commitment I think of them as a prospect.

A prospect is somebody who has expressed an interest in my services, we have met or had a long talk on the telephone and I have sent them a proposal.

A suspect is somebody who has expressed an interest and either I am yet to meet them or they rang up for information about business coaching or marketing coaching and they've gone away to think about it.

I know I posted an article a few days ago about "How To Stop Think It Overs" but sales appointments or initial consultations are expensive for me in terms of opportunity cost and I don't try to close them on a meeting unless I feel that they "feel the pain" and are ready to take action.

A suspect will also include anybody on my email list - from what I can see some read every email, some read some of them and some either can't be tracked or don't read my emails. Shame, they are missing some great content but you can lead a horse to water...

My target market splits three fold:

1. Small business owners and entrepreneurs in the West Midlands
2. Small business owners and entrepreneurs in the UK
3. Small business owners and entrepreneurs in the world.

You will have noticed that the only words that have change are the locations - from the West Midlands to the UK to the world but my marketing methods and offerings change.

The West Midlands businesses are reached through local search engine optimisation of my website and blog but also through local networking, alliance partners, direct mail and occasionally telemarketing and I am promoting my business coaching and marketing coaching on a face-to-face basis, group basis or by telephone.

The UK businesses are reached through search engine optimisation and activity in forums and Ecademy and I am promoting telephone based business coaching and marketing coaching, perhaps with the occasional meeting.

For the world businesses, I don't offer coaching but I do recommend business development solutions I have tried and liked through affiliate links and these are attracted through search engine optimisation of long tail keywords.

The universe is anybody who could be interested in buying business advice but who is not currently searching on the Internet. It could have been you yesterday before you typed in a search that found my blog.

I was ready and waiting but you weren't. I hope you find what you are looking for on my blog. It is packed with information so why not jump up a category and join my email list up on the top left of the page.

The precise definitions of the categories with the sales funnel are not as important as you having a marketing strategy for each category.

Implications of the Sales Funnel

I have discussed the issues of selecting a niche and whether you should be a specialist or a generalist.

This will clearly affect the shape of your sales funnel and your conversion rates as prospective customers work down the funnel.

If you are a specialist your universe may be quite small and selective although it doesn't have to be.

If you are a private medical consultant you may have a very tight specialism but anybody could need your services if the problems occur. However if you are a business coach specialising in premium 5 star hotels, your universe is limited.

To compensate for a smaller funnel at the top, you will have conversion rates that the rest of us can only dream about. People with the problem you solve will only have a limited number of options and you could be the only one.

In contrast a generalist has a wide universe. People from 160 countries have landed on my blog in the last six months, virtually all of them making some kind of business related search but only a tiny fraction have become clients with more buying a recommended product or service.

It is not the number at the top of the sales funnel that matter but the number who reach the bottom and how much they spend.

Action Steps for your Sales Funnel

1. Set your definitions of what each term means in your business.
    
   
2. Decide your communication strategy for each stage in the funnel.
    
   
3. Monitor your conversion rates.
    
   
4. Improve your process, either to pull more people from the universe into your target market, offer extra products that may appeal to your target market and improve your conversion tactics. The aim is to turn the universe into target customers, the target customers into suspects who then become prospects and finally become prospects.
   

Your future customers are out there but they do need to be attracted towards your business.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs.

Power Parthenon Beats The Diving Board

Recently I was reviewing the Jay Abraham inspired articles I had written and I was astonished to see that I hadn't written about the Power Parthenon of geometric business growth.

I have covered the strategy of preeminence, funnel vision, greatest headlines and adapted the three ways to grow a business model, but all my mentions of the Power Parthenon were in passing when I was talking about something else or someone else.

According to Jay Abraham, too many businesses work on the principle of Diving Board Marketing where they get the majority of their business from just one source.

 

So in this case I have used the example of a business depending on the Internet for attracting leads but it could be a direct sales force, it could direct mail, telemarketing, referrals or many others.

And when times are good, this model can provide a stable business unless something happens. So for the Internet example, it could be that Google changes the algorithm and the website falls from the cherished number one position for the main keywords to position sixteen and traffic falls by 95% immediately. It could be that the main sales person is poached by your main competitor after a double your money offer.

Or it can be that your own initiatives cause your business to behave unpredictably and as I explained in the beer game, sudden change can produce a series of difficulties, particularly when times are uncertain anyway.

What happens when sales are slow. It is so tempting that you have special promotions to make your sales numbers for the quarter, would you?

"Buy now and save 10% of the price."

Your regular customers take advantage, just as you would want and buy but next month they don't need to buy again. You have introduced a shock to your system and you create supply problems and excess costs.

Whatever the cause, the business is fundamentally unstable and vulnerable to shocks.

But when you build a Power Parthenon by adding multiple lead generation sources, the business becomes much stronger and you start Jay's concept of geometric business growth by adding another 20% from direct mail, 30% from telemarketing...

 

Each pillar of lead generation techniques makes the business stronger and while I have only included five pillars to make it easy to draw, you can have many more.

Jay Conrad Levinson of Guerrilla Marketing has identified 200 Guerrilla Marketing Weapons that you can use and improve. Not all of them will be suitable but many of them could be used to bring you extra business.

The Power Parthenon doesn't stop at this first level.

Remember the idea of Jay Abraham's Three Ways To Grow A Business Model:

1. More customers, who
   
2. Spend more, and
   
3. Buy more often
   

Each of the pillars can be used for difference purposes and in different ways.

I have just added extra legs for each of the three ways to grow but you may have multiple methods to achieve these objectives only limited by your time, money, energy and imagination.

Resources To Help Implement The Power Parthenon

The Power Parthenon is one of the ideas covered in Jay Abraham's great audio program from Nightingale Conant - Mastermind Marketing System - follow the link to hear sample snippets.

Scott Hallman and the Small Business Growth Club provide a systematised basis to win more customers and sell more, more often.

The Guerrilla Marketing Association (30 day free trial) includes six hours of audios of Jay Conrad Levinson explaining all 200 Guerrilla Marketing Weapons and the Guerrilla Marketing Toolkit is an excellent way to implement the Guerrilla Marketing concepts. Ideas are great, action produces the money.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Marketing In A Recession

I will be writing a series of blogs about ways that you need to up your game when trading in a recession over the next month or so.

This will effectively be designed as an entry point for the articles designed to help you to build a stronger business in these tough times, both to point your attention at new articles and also to highlight existing articles that now have a renewed relevance and importance.

These ideas can stop you "getting in to trouble" in the expected recession or help you to recover although, depending on the severity of the issues you may need specialist Business Turnaround advice.

I am starting with a couple of articles that will have a strong visual element in them to help increase the impact.

The first is from the ideas of Jay Abraham will contrast the ideas of using multiple lead generation sources to attract new customers and clients rather than relying on a few.

Power Parthenon Beats The Diving Board

The second builds strongly on Jay Abraham's ideas and concepts for finding hidden profits in a business by turning attention away from the attraction of new customers towards strengthening the relationship and the lifetime value of a customer. But it is John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing who developed the analogy of Hourglass Marketing.

Hourglass Marketing: Building Your Back End

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs       

Predictably Irrational - Bronze beats Silver Medal

Sounds crazy doesn't it but research by Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational says:
The silver medalist is disappointed because the natural comparison is with the winner of the gold medal.

The bronze medalist is delighted because the natural comparison is with the fourth placed and the people further behind and feels delighted to have won a medal.

There is an excellent 45 minute interview with Dan Ariely on the Rich Schefren blog the which can be downloaded.

It gives plenty of examples about how this can be used for the marketers advantage.

I have talked about this one before but if you offer a lower priced item and a higher priced item, more people will choose the lower priced product.

Add a third even more expensive product and suddenly, the value comparison is raised and more people start selecting the middle item.

It really is a great interview and it's free to download without any sign-up.

You can also lean more from Dan Ariely's website and even volunteer to take part in future experiments and as an incentive receive the inside track on the results. I have signed up and this looks to be another book I will be buying.

As always with effective marketing to the emotions and the unconscious minds and any form of mind control, it can be used for good to help people make the right decision for them (remember Jay Abraham's saying that "people are silently begging to be led") or manipulated into purchasing self-serving offers from the marketer.

As Mark Joyner decided when he re-released his book Mind Control Marketing, the best way to protect yourself is to know about these techniques so that you can be aware of when they may be carrying an inappropriate weight of influence.

Here are some of Dan Ariely's videos which help explain the concepts of Predictably Irrational.

Video 1 - Introduction - experiments in pain

Video 2 - Truth about relativity

 

Fascinating and I will be adding the extra videos but I must press on.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Personality Test - What Sports Car Are You?

I thought I'd have a bit of fun today with a personality test.

I do tend to be a little sceptical of these personality tests, accepting the ones that came out with the right results but ignoring those which say I'm crazy, mean, nasty or dangerous (just joking - none have gone that far). 

So yes you guessed it. I like the results on this one.

This test wants to find out what car you are, so for those of you who thought i was just an old banger, here's the proof that you are wrong.

I'm a Ferrari 360 Modena!

You've got it all. Power, passion, precision, and style. You're sensuous, exotic, and temperamental. Sure, you're expensive and high-maintenance, but you're worth it.

"Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Sleek, racy, exotic - it's all so true.

So go on, take the test. It only takes a few minutes.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for the customer focused entrepreneur

Stop "Think It Overs" In Your Sales Presentations

Marcus Cauchi of Sandler Sales Institute® in London explains that you must stop accepting "think it overs" from your prospective customers if you intend to close the deal.

No More "Think It Overs"

Get Tough - Get an Answer

Professional selling can be cruel.

Prospects are frequently better conditioned than the salespeople who call on them, and consequently they can destroy a salesperson in a phone call or during a chance meeting. On a day-to-day basis, even a good salesperson hears "no" more often than any word.

Can you think of a worse profession for people who thrive on acceptance?

It's OK to Fail

The word "no" comes with the territory in sales. So does failure.

Unfortunately, traditional sales trainers teach you that it's never OK to fail, or that you should stop when you hear the word "no."

But top sales performers know better.

They learn from their failures. And if they can't hear a "yes," they'd rather get a "no." They want to avoid anything in between. And that requires them to remain tough mentally and emotionally.

The 4 Possible Outcomes

Four things can happen to you in a selling situation. 

You can get;

• a "yes,"
   
• a "no,"
   
• a "no" with a lesson,
   
• or an "I want to think it over."

A "yes" always feels great. It pumps you up and motivates you to find another prospect.

A "no" doesn't feel great, but at least you know where you stand.

A "no" with a lesson isn't so bad. You know where you stand, and when you get off the phone, or back to your car, you may be able to turn a negative into something learned.

Avoid those TIOs

You want to avoid the "I want to think it over" answer because there's nothing worse in sales.

What does it mean?

When you go back to your car and begin to critique yourself, what do you say? "What happened in that sales call? Where do I stand? Could I have closed the sale with a little more perseverance? Should I have done this, or that?"

Self Deception - the Killer of Careers

The sad thing is that most salespeople are satisfied to hear an "I want to think it over." It gives them a false sense of security. After all, will a sales manager fire a guy who says he's got 84 proposals on the street? He will eventually, if those proposals don't materialise into sales.

Always go for a "yes" or a "no."

Marcus Cauchi
Sandler Sales Institute® London
Sales Training London
All rights reserved, (C) Sandler Training (SM) and Marcus Cauchi 2008

Thanks Marcus.

This is an example of the counter-intuitive style of the Sandler Sales system but isn't it so true?

"I want to think it over" is such an easy excuse to give and it keeps the lead in the sales pipeline statistics but how much time do you think your prospect is going to give to your proposal when faced with their usual day-to-day activities?

What happens?

You follow up again in a few days and you are told that your prospect is still "think it over." It's the same answer after a week and then another week. One month later when you call, the prospect has just signed with your biggest competitor.

I will be featuring many more articles from Marcus but if you want to learn more about the Sandler system I recommend the Nightingale Conant audio program "Close The Deal".

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs