Forget Your ABCs (Always Be Closing)
The title of this article refers to a cliché from the old school of selling. “Always Be Closing” was actually made famous in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). As a sales strategy, it worked very well at one point in time. But, those times have come and gone.
Today’s buyer is much more sophisticated than they were in those days. It’s very difficult, probably impossible and certainly unethical, to manipulate a buyer into buying as the characters did in the aforementioned movie.
Today’s buyer, regardless of what you sell, has the ability to do far more research.
As a matter of fact, depending on which source you look at, anywhere between eighty-five and ninety-plus percent of the decision-making process is done by the buyer while they are conducting their pre-purchase research on the web.
Some studies indicate that the buyers are virtually sold, on one product versus another, before contact with a salesperson is established.
So, instead of focusing on closing, I believe that the new phrase should be Always Be Prospecting. When you are prospecting perpetually, you are adhering to my first rule of sales success. To be successful, you must get in touch and stay in touch with all demographically desirable prospects.
Obviously, that cannot be done utilizing old-school tactics.
Most studies show that, in order to utilize traditional cold-calling as your prospecting strategy, you must be prepared to invest an inordinate amount of energy, resources, time and money in order to get a face-to-face or a phone appointment with a qualified prospect.
The more effective approach is to automate your outreach program and respond to inbound leads. Creating an inbound lead-generation system is a lot easier than one would imagine and, ironically, the least expensive and most effective approach to building your business or practice.
Inbound leads know what you sell, they are interested in the results that you produce/promise and, more often than not, they have an appropriate budget or access to the funds needed to finalize a transaction with you.
The process of automating this is rather simple. You can use any one of a number of cold-emailing services to invite people to a landing page.
Your landing page should have an educational component to it (no pitches allowed). Your landing page should also present an offer such as a whitepaper, webinar reservation, et cetera. Then, your system must capture the names of those prospects and follow through with closed-loop marketing.
Take a look at how many people receive a message from you and/or your team, monthly. Once you know that number, compare that to the number of demographically qualified opportunities in your market. More often than not, the difference is startling.
But, most importantly… Your fortune lies in your follow-up.
If you have any questions about how to turnkey a fully automated, inbound lead-generation system, feel free to contact me via email to [email protected] or click this link to Schedule a Call with me at our mutual convenience.
