Who else has a business but hates selling? Yup you’re not alone majority of people start a business from a place of passion or to live a more meaningful life, but when we don’t see sales or aren’t gaining leads. We’re in a tough spot, do we walk away from our vision or learn more skills? The most common issue when we aren’t gaining sales or leads is usually because of our selling technique or lack of one that is letting us down. It can be hard to hear, and a little frustrating when I know you’re probably already learnt so much already… like how to create engaging and likeable branded content to gain traffic and posting consistently. But really that is a slice of the pie, we need the whole pie to create a well oil systems. In todays episode we’ll be discussing how a sales systems can help you grow sales, save time and see how your content efforts are worth it in the end.
Audio Time Stamp | 01:17
What’s a Sales System?
I’ve have come to realise that a sales system is required in any size business so whether your a one-woman business or a small close knit team, plus it doesn’t matter if you offer one to one services or hand-made product this is something you should implement! So what is a sales system? Well you may be more familiar with the term funnel, a sales funnel. Really what it includes is getting your people to be aware so you can then build a relationship with said person. We usually have to go through stages before we buy something, firstly we have to be aware that your business exists this is your marketing. Building traffic to your site, and maybe you are doing really well at this phases, and you’re seeing a steady rise in visitors to your site. But then they leave without a trace and there is no way of you to get hold of them and start build a relationship, if this is something you can relate to this may mean you have a dead end in your sales system. And essentially letting the people you work so hard to gain attention from fall through fingers.
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The risk free invitation…
So how do you get them to the next stage in your sales system? Well this involves getting them to sign up to your email list. This is where you gain leads whether their leads for a product or service these are people who are interested. To keep tabs on who these people are you have to offer them something, like a risk free invite. This will include creating an enticing lead magnets, some of these could be webinars, checklists or a challenge. What’s great about a lead magnet is if it evergreen you’ll only have to make it once and it’s done. A key tip here is to make sure your lead magnet is close relevant to your product or service. Because you only want the people to join your list that are likely to interesting in the product or service you’re going to be selling.
Depending on the lead magnet you picked there are some benefits to specific ones. So a checklist is quick and easy for someone to download and use, however is it the most valuable? Probably not this doesn’t mean it can’t help people. I just might not be as enticing for your visitor on your site to give up their email address for. I’ll only give up my email address for something really good! So challenge are usually involving a sequence of emails for your new email list subscriber to follow and complete and should hopefully but the end of the challenge how many days it run for they should see some kind of results or outcome. Challenges are a great way to get your people into a habit of checking and opening your emails! But sometime people can loose momentum and not will to provide an email address to gain a sack of emails. So bare this in mind the last one is webinar. I’m currently in the mist of making a webinar. So personally for me I think a webinar is one of the best ways to gain a email address. A webinar also mean you hold someone attention for up to 45 minutes to over an hour! They get to see who you are, and become more familiar with your face and voice. Plus you can value pack your webinars, automate the whole system so you don’t need to go live every week. Webinars can also get you a head start of the nurture phase which is where you are warming up your person with a problem and providing a solution this solution is usually related to your product and or service.
So depending on time, resources and what you product or service is it your turn to decided what lead magnet is the best for you. There is one that I’ve mentioned and this is also quiz’s, Quiz’s can be a great opt- in for your people. However when I’ve done a quiz I’m sometime reluctant to give my email address at the end. But hey, that just me I think of using on my site a quiz in conjunction with my webinar opt-in so that I have a quick opt-in and a slow one. You may have to test and trail some of your lead magnets to see what works best.
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The nurture sequence
So once they ticked off the checklist, completed the challenge or watched you webinar. You need to slow nurture them with either a sequence of emails, or could do this with ads. This is the moment where you really shine a big heavy light on the problems and issues they are facing. And in each email you start to ease there problems or complete resolve them with solutions and these will related to back to your product or service. If your using email to nurture you people, I’m thinking of using 3 I don’t want to clog up my peoples inbox.
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The big sell email!
But you’re not done yet the final stage in your sales system, this is where things may different depending if you’re a product or service based business. Either way it’s time to sell! You’ve got the to sign up they’ve completed your lead magnet, they’ve opened you nurture sequence they now know you pretty well by know. They also have experience your solutions ease problems, so know they know that if you’ve helped them and did it for free, that your product or service will be even better. So after your nurture sequence your sending sales pitch email. A link to sales page a big image of your product etc. If you a service based business like me I include my highest tier service that i product I create a unique sales page for that service and this is where I invite them to a discovery call this one more step because they would actually buy at this point but a discovery call let me know that they are very interested and just because I have sales funnel doesn’t mean i should let any tom dick or sally sign up and I need to make sure they are ready and we are a good team. But if you a product based business you probably won’t need to to talk to them on a discovery call so your people may just go straight to your purchase page and make a sale!
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Start your sales system today!
Let’s wrap up so by know you can see how a sales funnel leads your visitors on journey with your brand. At each stage there will be people lost, but without it you’ll have a sales system with a heck of a lot of dead ends with no chance of gaining a sale. So by far worth building the system, the best thing about it is once it created you just have to maintain the marketing and traffic the rest can be automated with emails etc. So you don’t need to be manually sending out email one by one that would get confusing because people that will sign up will all be at different stage on their sales journey with you. So to reiterate the stages, one traffic that where you get people to come to your site and know you exists usually done through social media. Second stage is the gaining leads, that your opt-in or invitation get them to sign up to your email list. The second stage is nurture sequence build a relationship with you person through direct email and solving their problems. Then lastly the sale. You might have just thought, hey what happens if they don’t buy at that stage well I usually offer a less expensive service not my cheapest. If they still aren’t interested then they go back through a different set of nurture sequence emails and then I try and sell again.
So if you’re currently focused on the traffic generation that is great but make sure you also have a sales system to be taking them through so you hard work in content creation and marketing isn’t going to waste! If you feel awkward selling go listen to episode 25 on the brand made podcast how to sell your product or service without feeling sleazy.