With the move of so many to virtual over the past 10 months, interesting things have happened:
- Everyone has the ability to hang out a shingle and proclaim their expertise while, in reality, few are experts at what they’re selling. As a result, many people have been burned and may take longer to proceed along the know-like-trust road to investing.
- Traditional “funnels” and tripwires and other marketing strategies aren’t as effective as they once were.
- The rules have changed, and few people, especially small business owners, have evolved at the same pace. “Back in the day”, I was able to break $100,000 in revenue before Facebook and with a list of 82 people. That’s not going to happen today unless…
Making Offers & Selling in Today’s World
You, your program/product/service and your company need to meet a prospective client’s personal sales threshold in three different areas — and note that the prospective client may not even be consciously aware that these three different thresholds exist, it may simply be an inkling or a “hit” that tells them not to buy or not to buy yet.
1. They must truly believe that your program, product or service isn’t hype or BS and is actually going to help them achieve something they want.
2. They must believe in you. That you are a good person who is there not only before the sale, but also after for anything they need.
3. They must believe in your company/business. That you have a good reputation and will stand behind your programs, products and services.
Sounds simple, but it’s not. This is taking the know-like-trust factor and multiplying it by three in an age where it’s harder to trust.
Let’s assume Jane is thinking of investing in a program with you. She loves your emails, feels like you connected on the phone and likes the pre-work you sent over.
All good so far.
Except that you’re promoting a social media program and she sees that you’re not active on social media or have a page full of negativity.
Trust plummets and Jane goes elsewhere.
Or…
Julie is considering investing in a program with you. She’s reading your emails which, admittedly, aren’t as consistent as they used to be although they are going out.
She follows you on social media and loves the stuff you share there. She hops over to your blog and sees that you haven’t published anything for months.
She wants to join, but has a niggling that she’s not quite sure of.
You send an email follow-up, then nothing aside from occasional emails, often with promotional overtones.
The issue here is that there’s no regular nurturing, no actual personal follow-up.
As mentioned earlier, investments can take longer than before for people to sign up. Not always, but sometimes.
And when those times happen, you want to have a follow-up plan in place.
With all the options available to Julie, including doing nothing, you want to ensure you have a strong, and consistent, follow-up plan in place.
Sample items you can include in your follow-up plan:
- holiday cards
- New Year cards
- birthday cards
- Congratulations cards
- Thinking of you articles/pieces
- “Did you know” pieces
- handwritten notes for any reason/no reason
- print newsletter (way to use same material for multiple follow-up plans/prospects)
- share wins and client success stories
The issue is that adjusting to this “world” and selling in it isn’t “as” easy as in previous years, yet for those of us who do it and focus on our prospective audience’s experience, the rewards are there, waiting to be claimed.