“I haven’t got the time right now.”
“Send me a written proposal and I’ll think about it.”
“We already have a supplier.”
“We prefer working with a larger company.”
“Its too expensive.”
“We really don’t need your services.”
“I need to get approval from my boss.”

Has this ever happened to you? How do you respond?

Are these the real problems, or is something else going on?

Prospects raise objections like these when they still have questions about your company and the value of your services. If they tell you they’re looking for a larger firm, what they are really asking i,

“Can your firm do the job?”
“Do you have the resources to meet our needs?”
“Won’t a larger company with more personnel give us better service?”

When a prospect tells you your product or services cost too much, what they are really asking is,

“Are the benefits worth the money?”
“How do I know if it will work?”
“Will I get my money’s worth?”
“How much money will I save or make by using this service?” or
“Won’t I save money by not using your service?”

When a prospect tells you, “I already have a supplier,” what they are really asking is,

“How do I know I can trust you to provide the services?”
“How do I know you’ll do a better job than my existing supplier?”

Prospects raise objections because they have questions about your company’s credibility, the solution your product or service provides and its value. Every buyer has these concerns.

Once you’ve done work for a client, selling them your services the second and third time around is much easier. They trust you, understand the solution you provide and recognize its value.

To eliminate objections, first acknowledge that most prospects’ objections are based on three common underlying concerns.

Your credibility
Unless they’ve purchased your products or services before, prospects need to know that you can be trusted to deliver.

The solution you provide
Prospects want to know whether your products or services fit the problem they are trying to solve. They want to know what your services are and how well they’ve worked for previous customers.

The value of your products and services
Whether they’re spending a few dollars or a few million, buyers want to understand the benefit of what they are buying. The biggest barrier to sales is a lack of understanding of the value of your products and services.

The best way to avoid having objections become last minute deal-breakers is to take the following three steps to identify and address them in the course of your marketing.

Understand Objections
Use questions to get prospects talking about each of their concerns. If you charge high prices for your services, ask them what their concerns are about price. With the right questions, you’ll find out where to take the discussion or how to refine your marketing strategy.

Validate Objections
Openly acknowledge common concerns in your marketing materials and presentations. For example, if you are a small firm competing against larger companies, don’t try to sweep this obvious fact under the carpet. Bring it up and turn it into a selling point.

Educate Prospects
Once you have a clear idea of your prospects’ distinct priorities, you can explain the benefits of using your high-priced service or how the smaller size of your firm is actually to their advantage.

When to Address Objections
The best time to address objections is in your marketing materials. You can use your brochure, your web site and other materials to validate prospects’ objections, understand their concerns and educate them. Assuming your prospects read your materials, you can use this approach to eliminate objections before you even have the first conversation with a prospect.

Of course, not all prospects will read everything you provide and some will have lingering concerns despite your best efforts. Until the sale takes place, you should assume that your  prospects will have questions that need to be addressed. What can you do about these persistent objections?

Use your marketing conversations to get prospects to clarify their concerns so you can address each one. For example, don’t wait until the last minute to find out that the person you’ve been talking to needs to consult their boss. Early on in your marketing effort, ask them who needs to be part of the purchasing decision so you can include them from the start.

Prior to asking for the sale, get your prospect to identify:

When the right time would be to use your services.

What information they want to see in a written proposal.

What they like and dislike about their existing supplier.

What their financial or other objectives are.

How your smaller / larger/ local / global company could better meet their needs.

What benefits would justify the costs.

Your marketing objective is to make it as easy as possible for your prospects to become clients. Unanswered questions and concerns get in the way and result in lost sales. Eliminate these up front in your marketing and you’ll find many more prospects signing up to be clients.

More Ideas to Apply
1. Write down your business and marketing goals and post them prominently in your office.

2.  Identify which objections and obstacles are out of your control and then make a list of those you can remove. For example, your prospect’s perception of your credibility and the value of your services can be changed by your marketing.

3.  Ask questions to identify objections and obstacles.

4.  Instead of struggling to overcome objections to close the sale, use your marketing materials and conversations to eliminate them throughout the marketing and sales process.

5.  Acknowledge your prospect’s concerns right up front in your marketing materials and sales calls as a first step to eliminating them.

Wouldn’t you like to be able to do that with your marketing — sell clients for life without a single sales pitch?

I was in high school, attending a mandatory assembly about safe driving. We students were mostly polite, but mostly inattentive until we saw the speaker toss a raw egg to a volunteer on the stage. By the time we heard the “splat” and saw the egg dripping from the volunteer’s hand, the speaker had our attention.

“That egg is you in a car crash without a seat belt,” the speaker said. “Its simple physics; when a fragile object in motion stops suddenly, the energy has to go somewhere.”

“Now, let’s see what happens when we protect the egg,” he said, placing another raw egg in an empty cardboard egg carton. The speaker flung the carton half way back into the auditorium, where a student caught it. On instructions from the speaker, the student opened the carton, removed the unbroken egg and held it aloft.

We were sold. That simple but dramatic demonstration has stayed with me all these years and I buckle my seat belt every time I get in any car.

The speaker may have been throwing, but he wasn’t pitching. As the egg story shows, there’s more than one-way to sell.

Good selling isn’t about high pressure and fast talk.

It’s about presenting ideas in ways that grab their attention, eliminate their objections and demonstrate value. It’s about providing information that enables buyers to make informed decisions. A canned sales pitch is rarely the best way to do that. In other words, you can win without pitching.

First, start thinking like your clients. Market to your prospects from their perspective, and you’ll never forget that:

1. No one likes to be sold, but nearly everyone likes to buy.

2. People do things for their own reasons, not yours.

3. People buy from you because they know you, like you and trust you.

4. People make buying decisions based on emotions, not facts.

Don’t Make These Sales Mistakes

Typically when sales people sense a prospect’s interest they rush to close the sale. They bring out their big guns and launch all the reasons the prospect should buy. More often than not, they end up shooting down the sale.

Last week I got a call from an Internet marketer who I’ll call Rex Relentless. Rex offered me a commission to promote his services. He wanted me to promote his business in my newsletter, on my Blog and, to top it off, add a flashing banner to my site.

I get dozens of requests like this each week and I wasn’t interested. When I balked, Rex shifted into sales overdrive. He wouldn’t stop talking about how great his product is. He kept pointing me to more and more pages of supporting data and testimonials.

Did he think I would agree to promote him just to shut him up and make him go away? I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I finally had to interrupt him to end the call.

After that, I never wanted to hear from Rex again, much less work with him. If you’ve ever run into a similar salesperson you know how obnoxious they can be. And I’m sure you don’t want to emulate them with your small business marketing.

What’s the alternative?

Rex asked for the sale again and again and in doing so, killed it! The irony is that he does have a great product that I might have been willing to promote. But he was so focused on getting the sale that he gave no thought to what I would want out of the deal. He never asked me a single question about my business, my sales, or my own clients.

You may not be as relentless a salesperson as Rex, but in most cases asking for the sale at all is a mistake. It’s the fastest way to kill the sale and lose a potentially lucrative client.

That’s right; if you have to ask for the sale, that’s a clear indication that you haven’t sold your prospect. You need to do a better job of eliminating the obstacles to the sale so they ask you instead of the other way around.

By now you’re asking yourself, “Is Charlie off his rocker? If I can’t ask for the sale, how do I close more sales?”

I’m going to show you how.

The simple steps I’m going to show you work equally well for those of you who don’t rush the sale but don’t know what to say to close. In fact, many entrepreneurs and small business owners are so uncomfortable with pitching and that they barely sell at all. When a prospect asks them what they can do or how much it’s going to cost, these people freeze. They don’t know what to say to get to the sale.

Both types need a strategy that will work to help the prospect become a client.

The Simple Truth About Selling

The simple truth about selling — and the secret to selling more — is that your prospects are better at closing the sale than you are, if you lead them to it.

The concerns and ambitions of your prospect trump any rationale you could provide for making a purchase. Instead of you trying to sell them on the benefits or your product – when you get them to explain the benefits they are looking for they sell themselves. All you need to do is guide the conversation to get them tell you what you want to hear, why your product or service is the perfect match for their needs.

How does work?

By turning the sales call into a consultation with your prospect about their needs, wants and goals, and presenting your products and services as the solution to their business problems.  When you do this your prospects see you as helping them get what they want instead of just someone trying to get their money.

Once you understand this strategy and put it into practice, you’ll close many more sales. This approach turned my career and my business around and changed my life. It can do the same for you. You can increase sales with less effort and less expense.

How To Create Winning Sales Conversations

Before you ever meet with a prospect, prepare a list of questions, questions you can use to control the flow and subject of the conversation, and bringing it to conclusion you want.

Use the 7 steps below to get your prospects’ attention, increase the perceived value of your offer and get more prospects to buy.

1. Set up

You’re ready to get a conversation going with your prospect and eager to learn about how you can help them. But before you get started with the sales conversation you want to have, they divert it and ask you what your products or services cost and why they should buy.

They start asking YOU questions. What do you do to get the conversation back on the track you want to follow?

Acknowledge their question and tell them you’d be happy to answer it but first you need to know a little bit more about their company or what they are looking for. Then use your questions to regain control and refocus the conversation. In doing so you’ll avoid letting them turn you into a “pitch and prove it” salesperson.

2. Use questions to guide the conversation.

Focus your questions on your prospects’ problems, concerns, and aspirations. (See the Action Steps below for a guide to planning these questions.)

You want to learn what your prospects goals are. If you’re selling advertising, use your questions to get them to tell you about their business, how things have been going, what’s working and not working and what they want to achieve.

Ask questions to find out how much they want to make next month or this year and how much an average client is worth to them.

3. Get the details.

Get all the details so you can calculate how many more clients they’d need to attract with your advertising to more than break even.

4. Tell prospects what they’ve told you.

That’s right. Show them you were listening and summarize their problems, concerns, goals and the bottom line results they want to achieve. And ask them if you got it right.

At this point they should be saying yes, yes, and yes to all your affirmation questions.

5. Present your solution.

Tell them what you can do to help them, but not how. Keep it simple — don’t lose the momentum of the conversation by getting into details about your processes or techniques.

Think of how most people buy cars; they don’t want to know about the fuel injection system or the double overhead cam, they just want to know how powerful it is or, these days, what kind of mileage it gets.

6. Ask them if your solution is what they’re looking for.

Before you ever mention price, check to make sure you’ve just prescribed the right solution. If not, go back and explain a solution that matches what they told you they want.

If you’ve got it right, your prospects will tell you so and you’re almost at the close.

If you mention price too soon, before your prospect is sold on the value of your services, they’ll get sticker shock and think you are charging too much. Remember that the value of your services is relative to the prospect’s perception of the value you provide.

To avoid getting objections, make doubly sure prospects have told you the value of your services before you mention price.

7. Call to action; reveal the price and close the sale.

If you’ve done a good job with your questions, the prospect will know why they want your products or services, what your unique differentiators are, the value you provide and how important it is for them to make a decision today. They’ll recognize the value you provide and they will practically close the sale for you.

Remember the 70/20/10 Rule

The consultative approach to selling I described above isn’t new. Some of you are using it now. Some of you think you are using it now, but in my experience, 96% of small business owners, marketers and salespeople make the same mistake in selling; they ask prospects a question or two and then they turn on their pitch.

On the basis of very little information about their prospect, they switch back into the old selling attitude of “convince or die!”

This is backwards. Instead of spending a small percentage of the conversation talking about the prospects’ concerns and problems and using the bulk of your time pitching and asking for the sale, do the opposite.

Remember The Simple Truth About Selling! Prospects will always sell themselves better than you will. Use the formula below to check the way you’re spending your time in sales conversations and marketing efforts:

The 70/20/10 Formula

• Prospect’s problems, goals and aspirations; 70% of your time

• Your solution; 20% of your time

• Your call to action; 10% of your time

Action Steps

Make a comprehensive list of questions to use in your sales conversations. You’ll need questions in each of the following areas, and may need additional questions tailored questions to your or your prospects’ industries:
1. Conversation Starters
“How’s business?”

2. Diagnostic Questions: Uncover Prospects’ Concerns
“What’s your biggest marketing challenge?”
“What are you doing to market your business?”
“What’s working and what’s not?”

3. Questions About Goals: What Prospects Want to Achieve
“What are your revenue goals for this year?”
“How many new clients do you want to attract?”

4. Value Questions: Get Prospects to Tell You What Your Services or Products Would Be Worth to Them
“What’s the annual worth of an average client?”
“How many clients do you currently have?”

5. Urgency Questions
“How important is it to you to attract new clients this year?”

6. Where They Are Looking for Help Questions
“How can I help you?”

Then use your list to guide your sales conversations, avoid selling andyou’ll close more sales.

2 More Essential Selling Rules
1. Never try to sell your prospect on your product or service. Instead help them sell themselves.
2. Never let your prospect turn you into a sales person. See rule #1.

The rules of selling have changed in the past decade. Where you used to be able to call on a client and pitch your services – things have changed. No one wants to hear your pitch or hear you talk about yourself and your company. Your buyers, especially in this economy are focused on themselves, their needs, their goals and are looking for help.

When you replace the pitch and pray approach with a client-centered conversation using the questions you’ve listed above, your prospect becomes the sales person and provide their own sales pitch – one they are much more likely to buy than any you could provide.

The result – you’ll close more sales.

[Content protected for Insiders Club Premium members only]

You can speed up the sales cycle, win big contracts and actually see your profits grow this year. But it’s going to require fresh sales strategies. Worn out, manipulative sales techniques are not going to cut it.

What’s the secret to selling in this economy? How can you crack the door and make the sale to get the big or mid-sized corporate accounts your businees depends on?

On this CD, Charlie interviews Jill Konrath, the author of Selling To Big Companies. Jill faced the same challenges you’re facing today early in her career, working at Xerox. Over the last two decades she’s fine tuned a successful sales system that has won her awards as a top performing corporate sales executive.

Her impressive client list includes IBM, GE, Microsoft, 3M, Hilton, AAA, CoxTarget Media, General Mills, Medtronic, UnitedHealthcare, Bombardier, Business Journals, RSM McGladrey, Imation, eFunds, Acresso, UniFirst, OpenPeak and many more.

Listen to Charlie’s interview with Jill and learn her proven system for selling to big companies in a tough economy. In just a few minutes you’ll discover how to sell to clients so you can make this year your best ever no matter what sized companies you market to.

To attract more prospects and clients, you need what Taj Mahal calls “good bait” in his song the Fishin Blues. One of the biggest mistakes you can make, as a small business owner, is forgetting to use good bait in the form of your offers. Whether you use direct mail, a web site or media advertising to market your business, the success of your small business marketing depends on whether you provide prospects with compelling offers.

Your marketing offers motivate prospects and clients to visit your web site, read your marketing materials, contact you and buy your services and products. Without the right offer you won’t attract big fish or as many fish as you’d like.

What bait are you using to motivate your target market to:
- Visit your web site?
- Sign up for your free newsletter?
- Buy your products and services?
- How many new prospects per week are your offers attracting?

Which Offers Work Best?
Your offer needs to be something that your target market wants. You wouldn’t use a worm to catch a whale or a safety pin to catch a tuna. Offer your target market something they can’t refuse. Everybody likes to get something for free, whether it’s an article, guide, ebook, report, consultation, a demonstration, offer of membership or added services.

If your offer helps your target market solve a common problem, it will attract more prospects and clients.

Whether or not it is free your offer needs to provide value. Prospects will judge the quality of your products and services based on your offer. If you give away a subscription to a newsletter, follow up with useful content and substantive ideas your prospects can use. Give them something that is so good they will want more.

Attracting Prospects
My target market is service professionals and business owners. I offer a 15 page free marketing guide to prompt people to give me their contact information so I can market to them in the future. My target market, want to attract more clients, want ideas to help them.

A 15 page small business marketing guide is something that tens of thousands of people have found to be irresistible. Each week this simple offer pulls in hundreds of new prospects.

You too can come up with an offer to prompt more prospects to contact you. If you’re a lawyer you could offer a report on the “The 10 Biggest Legal Mistakes Homeowners Make”. If you’re a massage therapist you could offer a guide to “5 Ways to Avoid Damaging Back Pain.” If you provide an online service, you could offer a free or almost free one-month trial.

Clarify Value
People buy your products and services based on their perception of value. Whether you are charging five dollars or five thousand, your prospects need to be convinced that the benefits you provide will outweigh the cost. Too often service professionals and business owners rush to quote a price, trying to make the sale before clarifying the value to buyers.

To stimulate sales place your offer in the context of your target market’s concerns. Once you’ve clarified how your product or service meets their concerns the value of your offer will be apparent.

Use Problem Solving Offers
People don’t buy your products or services because you’ve been in the business for decades, or because your ebooks are well written or designed to please the eye. People buy your products and services because they solve a problem.

Use Additional Incentives Carefully
In their rush to sell their products and services some small business owners offer huge discounts or bundle free services. Discounting and bundling can work but make sure you’re not undermining prospects’ perception of the value of your products and services or your profits.

Key Elements of Your Offer
Creating a compelling offer is an art and involves
blending the following items together to create a sentence or two which will move people to take action, whether it is contacting you or making an immediate purchase.

Include the following items to create an offer that helps sell:

Name – What you are selling
Benefit – The problem it solves
Credibility – Why they should buy from you
Value – How useful it will be to them
Guarantee – Your promise to them
Motivation to act – A reason to take advantage of your offer today.

If you want to catch big fish, you need good bait. To increase your catch, improve your offers and you’ll be reeling in many more new prospects and clients.

Instead of having your phone ringing of the hook with requests, you feel like your firm is the best kept secret in your industry.

Sound familiar?

Bob called from Alabama with just this problem. His company manufactures creative, attractive and safe playgrounds. Lately, sales have been flat, at best, and despite having an outstanding product, his company isn’t generating as many sales as he’d like. Bob wanted to know how to start more conversations so he can jump start sales

The first step to starting a conversation with someone is to get his or her attention. In school, you raised your hand and eventually the teacher called on you, of course, that is what the teacher was paid to do. When you’re marketing your products or services, you can’t just raise your hand and expect prospects to call on you.

Running an ad or having a web site that describes your products or services is the equivalent of raising your hand. It may have worked in the classroom, but it doesn’t work in the marketplace.

When you focus your small business marketing on yourself, your firm or your products, it rarely works to get attention or start a conversation. To engage prospects and get them to contact you, you need to focus on their needs and wants.

Bob explained that he had three different markets: day care centers, municipal parks departments and architects and each has different concerns. Parks departments concern is durability and the safety of the materials used, day care centers is the creative design.

As Bob clearly understands, each target market has their own unique set of interests. These interests should be the focus his marketing effort, not the company name, credentials or product production techniques. Bob could be using these insights to create a marketing message or set of marketing messages to get the attention of prospects.

Through your experience you have a good idea of your prospects’ and your clients’ concerns and interests. Take a minute to jot down the top three concerns of each of your target markets. Use this information to engage prospects in conversation.

If a stranger walked into your office, what’s the first thing you’d do? You’d say something like, “How can I help you?” Not surprisingly, the same technique works wonders when you combine it with your knowledge of prospects concerns.

Instead of touting your credentials or describing your products, lead with a question to start a conversation. Bob could ask, “Want to learn more about improving the safety and durability of your playgrounds?”

Or a small business marketing coach might ask, “Want to learn more about attracting a steady stream of clients?” Or the line that suckers me every time as an audiophile is, “Want to learn how to make your stereo sound like a live perf0rmance?”

When we’re one on one, face-to-face, starting a conversation comes naturally to most of us. Beginning with a handful of questions, you can quickly learn what someone wants and how you can help them.

Focus on your prospects’ concerns with a question or two and you’ll get their attention. Offer them something they want and they’ll contact you.

One of the biggest mistakes people make in marketing their business is to over emphasize closing the sale. What you want to do is open the door to new prospects, start a conversation and help them get what they want. Focus on starting more conversations with your small business marketing and you’ll end up closing many more sales

Do you ever feel this way?

Are you tired of being turned down?

Are you frustrated by your limited success selling on the phone?

Making any of the mistakes below takes the fun out of your job and can kill your sales.

1. Using Push Versus Pull Marketing
Most of us don’t like pushy people who talk about themselves all the time. Think about your marketing. Are you constantly pushing information out about yourself, your products and services? This may be pushing prospects away when what you want to do is pull them in.

Focus your small business marketing on prospects’ concerns and offer them something they want. You’ll help them, convert them to clients and increase your revenue.

2. Not Generating Enough Qualified Leads
Marketing is about starting conversations with prospects so you can learn what they need and help them understand the solution you provide. To bring in more business, help more people understand what you do and prompt prospects to contact you.

Does your marketing help you generate enough leads and start a conversation with prospects?

With the right small business marketing message, advertising copy and online and offline strategy you can generate a steady stream of qualified leads.

3. Responding To Inquiries With an Email or a Letter
Nine times out of ten, when you send a prospect a written response to a query, it won’t result in a sale. Pick up the phone and you can use their questions to start a conversation. With just a couple of additional questions you can learn what their objectives are and then you can sell them the solution.

4. Quoting Price Too Soon
When prospects call, one of the first questions they ask is about pricing. Tell them right away and you risk ending the conversation and losing the sale. Dollar figures by themselves are meaningless.

When a prospect asks what you charge, don’t tell them until you’ve had a chance to learn what they want. Then put the price in the context of the value and quality solutions you provide.

5. Wasting Time With People Who Aren’t Buyers
Not matter how good your system is for qualifying leads, you’ll end up on the phone with people who can’t afford your services or won’t benefit from your products. Conversations like these can take up way too much of your time.

Use your qualifying questions and their responses to determine within the first 3 minutes of a conversation whether or not the person you’re talking with is a promising prospect. If not, thank them for their inquiry and move on to your next call.

6. Doing Too Much Talking
You know your services and products inside out; you could talk for hours, if not days, about your processes, product features or benefits. Don’t. You’ll lose your prospects attention, especially if you’re marketing over the phone.

Whenever you call a prospect or they call you, use the call to learn what they want and need. Ask questions Let them do the talking so that you get the information you need.

7. Not Clarifying Value From the Client’s Perspective
You have a crystal clear idea of the benefits of your products and services; you want prospects to understand these benefits from their point of view.

To help prospects understand the value you provide, get them to define what they are looking for and what it’s worth to them.

8. Not Getting To “Yes”
Your primary objective is to get the prospect to say, “yes” when you ask them whether they want to place their order or sign up for your services. Set up a pattern of “yes” answers and you’ll increase the chances they will say “yes” when you ask them to buy.

Review their objectives and ask them if that is what they are looking for. Review the solution you provide and ask them if that is what they are looking for.

9. Neglecting To Ask For The Sale.
If you want people to buy your products and services, you need to ask for the sale. This sounds obvious, but the tendency is to wait for the prospect to say they are ready to buy.

Why do we do this?

Until you gain confidence in your phone selling technique, you’re afraid of getting turned down when you ask for the sale. It’s common to compensate by talking endlessly about the features and benefits of your products and services.

If you’re working with qualified leads, many of the people you are talking with want to buy your products and services. Help them clarify the value and then help them make the purchase.

10. Forgetting To Follow Up On Sales
When you make a sale. it may seem like the end of your marketing effort. Think of your first sale. not as closing a sale. but opening the door to a long-term relationship and you’ll increase future sales

When a prospect becomes a client or customer, they’ve provided tangible evidence of their trust in you and your products and services. Follow up with a phone call to find out how the product or service is working and there is a good chance you’ll uncover a need for more of your products and services.

You don’t have to hate marketing on the phone. Learn what to say and how to structure the conversation and you’ll have more fun and make more sales.

Is he right? Is one follow-up a week or two after the first contact, and then an occasional contact during the next few months the best way to generate a sale?

No! No way, no how! I’ll explain how a successful follow-up strategy works, but first let’s look at why a smart salesperson would say something so unequivocally wrong.

Too many salespeople think of follow-up as a contact with a prospect in order to make the sale. And how many times does a prospect want to hear from you asking for the sale?

The answer is never, not even once, so contacting them repeatedly to try to sell them is not only annoying, but could kill the sale. So what do you do?

Remember that although prospects don’t like to have someone try to sell them, they like to buy. People love to buy the things they want, whether it’s a new car or the design services they need to grow their business.

The second thing to keep in mind is that your prospects will see you the way you see yourself. If you perceive repeated follow-up as annoying, your prospects will, too. What’s the best way, then, to follow-up a lead and generate a sale?

The way to generate more sales is to stop focusing on selling and focus on what your prospects and clients want.

Prospects want:

• To be assured that you understand their concerns.

• To get to know you and trust you before they’ll buy from you.

• To understand how you can help them.

• The value of your products and services relative to the results they provide.

• Proof that your products and services do what you say they do.

Give them the information they want; create opportunities for them to get to know and trust you; show them that you understand their concerns; prove to them the value you provide and the results they can expect, and they’ll ask to buy from you.

Follow up!

• What are your sales conversion rates?
• What percentage of leads do you convert into sales?
• Are you satisfied with that number?

If not, then you need to improve your follow-up strategy.

Eighty percent of sales are lost due to lack of follow-up.

I hope your company isn’t contributing to this sad statistic, but the fact of the matter is that most companies don’t give their prospects the information they want and need in order to buy. You could increase your sales by a factor of five simply by improving your follow-up.

Here’s how:

1. When a prospect asks for information, give it to them instantly.

2. Follow-up an initial contact by feeding prospects a steady diet of helpful ideas and tips that they can use right away. You’re demonstrating your expertise and the value of your products and services. Give them a reason to buy today.

3. Follow-up frequently, as often as every day during the first week or at a minimum 3 times within the first 10 days. Remember; you’re not trying to sell them, you’re giving them the information that makes you and your products the logical choice.

4. If you are running a time-limited offer on a product or service, remind your prospects. Most people will wait until the last day and want to hear from you. Send them one last friendly reminder and see your sales soar.

Are you afraid that if you follow-up too frequently, you’ll scare prospects away? Always provide a way for them to remove themselves from the conversation (virtual or other) you’ve started with them.

If your follow-up isn’t working, you’re not giving your prospects the information they want. Don’t worry about giving them too much information. If they’re not interested, they weren’t going to buy from you in the first place.

Your prospects are hungry for ideas and information. They want to get to know you in the hope that you can help them. Use your follow-up emails, calls, mailings, audio and videos, to engage your prospects, build a relationship and give then what they want. Do this and your sales will soar.

How effective are yours? Do your proposals help in closing sales — or are they killing sales?

If someone asks you for a quote on a project, you know they’re a qualified lead. They’re interested, and you want to do everything you can to close the deal. You talk to them, maybe meet face to face, and then you put in the time to describe how you’d do the project and what it would cost, and you send it off.

Then what happens? Are you closing 60 to 90% of these sales? If not, do you know why not?

If you’re not closing sales as often as you’d like, it could be that the old standard format you’re using for your proposal isn’t effective and ready to be replaced with one that does a better job of closing the sale for you.

Recently my wife and I decided to replace our 20 year old, noisy furnace and long-dead air filtration system. We wanted to update to a more efficient furnace, given current fuel prices, and to get one that actually filtered the air, given our numerous allergies.

We asked the company that has been servicing our HVAC system for a quote. They came to the house, looked over the system, and sent us a proposal describing the details of the furnace installation and the cost.

The only problem was that the proposal, clearly their standard form, didn’t describe the high efficiency furnace and state-of-the-art air filter we were interested in.

When we looked up the model numbers specified in the proposal, it was clear that the HVAC contractor had included a low efficiency furnace and low-end air filter at a high-end price.

What’d we do after reading this proposal? We started looking for another firm to work with that would sell us what we wanted.

There are dozens of obstacles that can kill a sale, and a misleading or badly done proposal is one of them.

Now I know what you’re thinking, our HVAC contractor might have made a mistake or was trying to pull the wool over our eyes. And either way you could be right, but after reviewing other proposals including ones sent out by my clients I noticed the following structural problem with them all.

Almost every business proposal leads with a description of the project. Is this what your proposals do?

While this is a standard approach and is probably what you were taught to do, it’s the wrong one! Writing a proposal this way won’t help you sell your products or services and can easily kill the sale. When your prospects get your proposal, they’ll quickly scan it to see what they’re getting, then their eye will look for the price and they’ll cringe.

How can you avoid scaring away sales with your proposals?

Begin With A Description of the Problem and Client’s Concerns

If you want to sell the solution you provide, start by describing the problem you solve. Remember that the value of your solution is determined by the scope of the problem.

If you wanted some additional heat in a bathroom you’d get a small portable $49 heater. If you needed to heat your 4,500 sq foot home, you could easily spend over $6,000 and consider it a good deal.

To repeat; the scope of the problem determines the value of the solution. If you want your prospect to understand the value you provide, lead with a detailed description of the problem and their concerns.

How important is it to you to close more sales? How much more money could you be making if 50% more prospects became clients? What’s the biggest obstacle to making it happen?

Most small business owners and marketers use outdated small business marketing tools, including proposals they’ve standardized over the years. These can create obstacles and kill sales.

For example: Here’s what a HVAC contractor might start their proposal with:
———————————–
Dear Mr. Cook,

Thank you for interest in engaging Mike Mulligan’s services to update your HVAC system.

Objectives
Based on our conversations and our inspection of your home:

• You want to remove your existing 20 year old furnace.
• You want a state-of-the-art furnace that will maximize fuel efficiency.
• You want to replace your existing non-functional electronic air cleaner.
• You want to minimize your exposure to air-borne allergens including dust, mould, pollen, and mould.
• You want your existing ductwork to be modified to work with the new furnace and air filtration system.
• You want the system thoroughly tested to ensure proper operation of all heating zones in your home.

Value
The value to you of meeting these objectives includes:

• You’ll have more even temperatures throughout your house in both summer and winter.
• You’ll lower your fuel costs by up to $200 per year.
• You’ll breath easier with 99.99% of all irritating allergens removed from your home.
• You’ll have a HVAC system that will work reliably for you for another 15-20 years.
• You’ll be more comfortable in your home.

Project Description
(This is where you’d describe the exact equipment used, the people and tasks involved and any scheduling issues.)
———————
Follow the project description with information about your terms and conditions, then state the price and guarantee.

There is one more key element most proposals are missing; a call to action.

Most proposals include some verbiage on “acceptance of proposal” with a line for the prospect to sign. Some include a note about the price being good for 45 days. 45 DAYS! What kind of motivation is that to sign? Not much!

Give your prospects a reason to take action immediately.

“We want your business and in order to show our appreciation will give you $500 off the project as described or one year of free service, if you call us in the before (2 days from receipt) to schedule your project. After 48 hours the existing price is good for 30 days.”

Want to close more sales? Write proposals that put the price in the context of the problems you solve and include a compelling call to action. With this simple structure, more prospects will understand the value of what you provide and more will become clients.

Before you pick up the phone to make a single cold-call, there are several things you should know. First, few people are naturally successful at cold calling.

Second, cold calling has a bad reputation. Most people find cold calls intrusive and obnoxious.

Third, conversion rates for cold calls are typically about 2%, compared to 20% for solid leads and 50% for referrals.

With three strikes against cold calling, shouldn’t you cross this marketing strategy off your list once and for all? No! The reason most cold calls fail is simply because they’re done wrong.

If you’re thinking of giving up on using the phone to generate leads, first ask yourself if it is cold calling that annoys people, or the way it’s done. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater — many businesses have been built on the basis of successful cold-calling campaigns.

One of my clients, Steve, confessed that he didn’t want to be bothered with most marketing activities. Give him a list of leads and a phone and in a couple of hours and he could find a warm prospect. Instead of alienating prospects, his cold calls resulted in more business.

Cold-calling worked for Steve because he was a master at it. You too can become a master of cold calling when you know how to prepare and how to make the calls using the strategy detailed below.

Why Do People Hate Most Cold Calls?

We’re all assaulted by hundreds of advertising messages each day. Many we choose to ignore, a select few catch our interest. The ones that annoy us the most are the ones we are forced to pay attention to without any choice. If you want to overcome this natural resistance you’ll need to find out how to make your cold-calls less intrusive.

Get Your Prospects’ Permission
One of the most effective ways to generate a lead on your website is to ask a prospect to give you his or her email address and then, with their permission, send them ideas and information they want. The same is true when you pick up the phone to call a prospect. Get a prospect’s permission, give them the information they want, and you can generate a warm lead and a sale.

The traditional approach to small business marketing and cold calling shoves a  ‘sell’ in the prospect’s face. Most people don’t respond well to this.

The more effective alternative is to get a prospect’s attention, ask permission, find out what they want and then give them what they asked for.

How To Generate Leads and Sales with Your Phone Calls

Before you make the call; prepare for success

1. Don’t blindly pick up the phone and except to get results. When at all possible, research your prospects’ needs. The more you know about what they want the more effective you’ll be on the phone. Depending on who you’re calling, you can:

- Research the individual company and person to identify problem areas where you could be of assistance. Send a letter or a series of postcards in advance of your call.

-  Use a response form on your web site or a postcard to prompt your prospects to tell you what they are looking for. On the form, ask the prospect to tell you what his biggest or most intractable problem is.

When a prospect completes an inquiry form on your web site, you’ve got the most important thing to a successful call; their permission for you to contact them again, to discuss how you can help them.

- Survey your existing clients to define the 3-5 reasons they find your products and services valuable.

2. Your first objective with a prospect isn’t to sell to them. Before a sale can take place you need to establish rapport and find out what they want and need. If you haven’t already done this with your marketing then you’ll need to take the first couple of calls to do this and then you can move towards a sale.

Making the call -  partner with your prospect

1. State your name and ask the prospect if they have a moment. (Get their permission to continue the conversation)

2. If they’re busy, schedule a time to call back. This way you’ve got their permission to have the next conversation.

3. Give them a reason to listen. Let them know you’ll be brief and tell them why you are calling. Tell them what your firm does in terms of the benefits you provide. For example, ‘We help hotels like yours increase bookings and generate more revenue per guest.’

4. Tell them you’d like to ask them a couple of questions and get their permission to proceed. Then find out what’s working and what’s not and what types of solutions they are looking for.

5. Summarize what they’ve told you about their needs and wants. Then ask them if you could solve the problems they just told you they wanted solved, whether it’d be worth schedule at time to talk further. Next, schedule a meeting or follow-up conversation.

Advertising, web sites, email, and sales letters are great ways to market your products and services, but picking up the phone and personally talking to a prospect can get immediate results when you apply fundamental marketing principles and techniques.

Do you offer to discount the price? That’s a slippery slope; how much of your profit can you bargain away?

Chris called me with this exact problem. He had been talking with a physician the night before about providing on-site physical therapy services when the physician objected to the price. It was at the end of long day, and Chris was at a loss as what to do to eliminate price as an obstacle to the sale.

Chris mapped out the financial benefits again. Despite his best efforts, the conversation went downhill. Even though he had an interested and qualified prospect, Chris walked out without making the sale.

Have you ever been in a similar situation? Want to know how to ensure your method of sales overcomes objections to your pricing?
The first thing to remember whenever a prospect objects to your price is that it’s not about the money!
It’s true; in 99 cases out of a 100, when a prospect objects to your pricing, the money is not the real issue.

Every small business owner, marketer and salesperson gets hit with objections to price. It costs them tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands dollars in lost sales each year.

Your prospects happily spend lots of money each year, even in a weak economy, on everything from cell phone service, to Internet services, and equipment to accounting services. Just to give you an idea of the amount, small businesses spend over $90 billion on IT products and services alone each year in the U.S.

This brings us to the second thing you need to know about about making a sale when a prospect objects to price. Your own business marketing may be creating this pricing trap. Most small business marketing does. No matter how good your services and products are, you’re going to keep losing sales unless you find out how to eliminate price as an obstacle.

When prospects tell you that your price is too high, they are really saying, “I don’t see the value of your products and services to my business.” Or, “The benefits relative to the cost aren’t clear.”

People object to price when they don’t have enough information about why they need your products and services and how those are going to help them. Price is only meaningful to prospects once they understand what they’ll be getting in return.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What are your sales goals?

• How many sales are you making per month?

• How much do you want to see these numbers grow?

• Will you reach these goals selling the same way you have been?

3 Steps to Eliminating Price As An Obstacle

1. Spell out in detail the value of your products or services in your marketing. Remember that most people aren’t buying the features; they’re buying the benefits.

For example, they aren’t buying sound insulation but a car that is whisper quiet. Physical therapy patients aren’t buying treatment protocols, they’re buying full mobility. An architect’s clients aren’t buying blueprints, they’re buying a lifestyle.

2. Avoid discussing price until prospects have had a chance to explain to you the benefits they want from the product or service. If a prospect wants to know the cost before you’ve asked them to define what they are looking for, redirect the conversation. Ask them what they want? Get them to tell you the benefits they are looking for.

3. Your prospects want to feel like they have a choice about how much they pay. Give them pricing options so that you control the options, instead of having them propose their own.

Once Chris understood how to frame and structure his sales conversations, he found that price was no longer an obstacle to sales. Instead, he was signing up more physicians for his services than he ever imagined. You can do the same.