Many industries are weighed down with negativity about sales cycles. Sales pros might suspect the nature of their industry makes it impossible to accelerate the cycle. They may believe they are hampered by prospects' processes or corporate culture ... or that they just “can’t make up their minds.”
You’ve identified a quality lead, connected with them and built trust through educational, customer-centric content, and explored solutions along with them. As your buyer goes through their buyer’s journey and you've followed the steps in the Empowered Sales Methodology, the next step is clear: advise them and close the sale. But how?
There is plenty of advice out there on how to close a sale. But negotiating is the step that comes first. As a salesperson, using any of these phrases while negotiating with a quality, qualified potential customer is a great way to make them look elsewhere for a solution.
Everyone knows the story of the old salesman: a world-weathered man who lugs a suitcase of samples from door-to-door in the July heat or the November slush or slogging through his rolodex late into the night, hustling to make ends meet. In the end, his hard work and charisma are rewarded in sales and grateful customers.
Decades ago, making unsolicited calls to generate new business leads was effective simply because there weren't many alternatives. But the era of the salesman has ended, and consequently, the effectiveness of marketing methods has also evolved. While sales still requires hard work, cold calling is as outdated as Don Draper and smoking in the office. The digital age has rendered the arduous and thankless practice of cold calling entirely obsolete.
When I get started on a strategy for a client at Trending Up, the most important question I ask is "what are your goals?". Obviously, the biggest goal for a home builder (or any industry business, for that matter) is to increase profits. It's my job to put together an executable marketing strategy that will get them there. However, part of our sales process here at Trending Up is to help the client identify exact pain points they're experiencing - so by the time they sign with us and we have our first strategy meeting, they answer my question much differently.
“They weren’t a better team, but they played a better game.”
After the Packers’ bitter loss to the Falcons during yesterday’s division championship game, this was the sentiment that (begrudgingly) floated to the forefront of my thoughts. The Falcons weren’t an arguably better team, but yesterday, they absolutely played the game of football more successfully.
Identify, connect, explore, advise. We use a variation on Hubspot’s inbound sales method, but the main points are the same: by educational and consultative in your sales process. The idea (and, in practice, the reality) is that prospects have already done a majority of their research about you and your products before they are ready to talk to a salesperson. As a result, salespeople must adapt to today's buyers.
Marketing brochures: general, colorful, printed pages containing basic information about your business, products, and services, usually including a phone number or website address, but overall not targeted, not measurable, and by most accounts, not that useful for gaining customers. If this is how you can describe most of your marketing materials - including your website, email blasts, social media, advertisements, and downloadable content - stop what you’re producing. Marketing should be building sales enablement tools, not brochures.
It can be very difficult to convince customers to open up their wallets and make that first purchase on your website, or even to request an initial consultation with a salesperson. So, once you have them there and ready to buy, take advantage of the moment with an online marketing strategy aimed at up-selling or cross-selling.
The best, and sometimes worst, part of these digitized times is that an abundance of information is a few clicks, taps or swipes away. The upside is that, if you are a stealthy enough, you can triumph in any trivia game. The downside is that consumers are inundated with a staggering stream of information on a daily basis. The average urban American is exposed to an outrageous 5,000 advertisements each day through television, radio, websites, billboards and various social media portals, according to NYTimes.com.
Happy Star Wars Day, everyone! Yep, it's a real thing, and yep, we're celebrating here at Jül. Not only did we host a themed webinar today on the force of inbound smarketing, I'm also bringing you the best of the best advice from Star Wars - in GIF format. Normally, people think that marketing for B2B companies has to be kind of boring, straight-laced, and rigid. Not so, fans! In fact, that was our first episode today - Episode IV: Know Your Target. Here's a recap of the important smarketing lessons we touched on today.
