If you’re looking for a way to grow your business by increasing quality and quantity of leads, you’re not alone.
The number 1 challenge for marketers in 2018 is how to get more leads.
This year isn’t special. You won’t be surprised to hear this is the leading challenge for most businesses year after year.
The reason it persists to be a problem, is a lack of direction and focus. There is a solution and it works for most companies!
The Salesman Growth Mentality
Do you have one or two salesmen you wish you could replicate?
If only you had 3 more salesmen like Mike, your superstar, you could hit your growth target of 40% this year. Right?
The trouble is…
- It’s hard to find, hire, and train salesmen like Mike
- Mike is a good salesman and commands a high commission
- Mike is in demand so his place in your company isn’t secure, putting you at risk
- Mike’s sales effectiveness has diminishing returns. He can only talk to so many customers in a day
Growing your business by scaling your sales team is the traditional method of growth. It can work, but frequently doesn’t and usually isn’t the most effective way to grow – especially in today’s marketing landscape.
Let’s dig into two ways you can grow your business without having to rely on more salesmen:
- Generate more leads through an automated sales funnel
- Make your sales team more effective (not more expansive) by giving them more qualified leads
The Education Speed Bump
In industries with a long sales cycle like residential solar, your sales team can spend up to 80% or more of their time on customer education.
How many times do you think your sales staff goes through the same pitch deck per week, answering the same questions?
The good thing about this is that they’ve got it down by now. They can emphasize the right points, make small adjustments depending on the desires of the prospect, and answer questions they’ve heard before flawlessly. This translates into a higher close rate.
The bad thing, however, is that your sales staff is repeating themselves over and over. They’re spending a lot of their time getting prospects up to speed with how your product or service works. Only after all that effort do they get to a level of understanding that will allow them to make a purchase decision.
Shift the Education Burden, Move to the Fast Lane
The solution to the sales speed bump is: educate your prospects before your salesman arrives.
Your salesmen should:
- Spend less time on education
- Spend more time on the aspects of the sale that require human interaction like ironing out the details and closing the deal
- Spend extra time perfecting your sales process – one of your company’s biggest assets
The question for you and your business is how do I effectively shift this burden of prospect education?
Answer: Create an education system that never sleeps, builds trust with prospects, and as a result makes your sales team more effective.
Create Your Classroom, Recruit Your Students
How you go about educating and building trust with potential customers is up to you. But be careful! There are many ways to do it and different approaches work for specific industries.
One thing we can all agree on is that our customers are doing more and more research online before they consider the solution you offer.
Some companies have great success with an online webinar, an interactive tool that allows your prospect to visualize your solution, videos, blog posts, etc. All of these methods have one thing in common: they are digital content that you own and control.
Having the right content offers many benefits:
- ROI – You only have to pay for it once (instead of paying Mike every time he gives a presentation)
- Trust – When done properly you can build trust with prospects automatically.
- Consistency – This is a medium that never sleeps. It can be accessed anytime by anyone.
- Perfection – You get to perfect it over time and ensure a quality output (you’re not susceptible to a tired or hungry salesman)
- Strength – It gets stronger over time and requires less input than most sales training programs
- Leverage – You can leverage your content in every other sales channel to make them more effective
The bottom line:
Owning the right content will generate more qualified leads for your business AND will shorten your sales cycle.
That means more clients, less money, and faster growth!
You probably have a specific example in mind from one of your competitors who is already utilizing digital content really well.
And you might be asking yourself why you didn’t do it before they did.
What’s stopping you?
- Analysis paralysis
- Time
- Skill
- Budget
Most companies I see, understand the opportunity of reaching and educating their prospects through an automated digital funnel. Most companies put some effort into it, but never gain the traction (or results) they hoped.
The conclusion is often: “this won’t work for me”
But that’s the wrong mindset. It WILL work for you if you do it right.
Doing it right means having focus, knowledge, and executing consistently.
In my next post I’ll cover the challenges of focus and how to overcome them. Then we will dig into conquering the knowledge and consistency road blocks so many businesses are facing.
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Leads Stat Source in intro:
https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics
Find a better source?
Not sure if we need to cite it…
