Aaron Hoos

While writing their marketing content, a request I commonly hear from financial and real estate professionals is to ramp up the “salesmanship” of their content so that they get more committed clients calling them on the telephone.

They want their marketing content to sell their services so that more people go “wow! I want to hire that person to help me find a home” or “wow! I want to hire that person to manage my investment portfolio“.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

It takes A LOT of marketing content (sometimes over a substantial period of time) to convince someone who hasn’t heard of you before to become your client. (It’s not impossible… but it probably won’t happen in a 500 word article).

Instead, your marketing needs to accomplish just one action… and it’s not “become my client“.

The action needs to be a painless next step that the curious would take (perhaps fill out an online form or pick up the phone and call you) rather than a big step that the committed would take.

See the difference?

People are afraid of commitment and don’t want to get locked in to a bad thing (like working with the wrong professional). So they’ll willingly do non-committal things, such as filling out an online form or picking up the phone to call… and THAT is when you sell to them.

They will eventually make a commitment to become your client but they need far more convincing than marketing content on its own can often perform.

HERE’S AN EXAMPLE

Take my business, for example. My marketing rarely asks people to become my client. Rather, it asks them to get in touch with me. That’s because my over-the-phone close rate is nearly 100% while my written conversion is much less. So my goal is to get people to call.

The concern that some of my prospective clients might have is: Won’t I get more crackpot callers? You might. (And it’s a reason that my close rate isn’t exactly 100%!). But you won’t get that many more because here’s what’s really going on…

When you use marketing content that tries to convert a cold lead into a client, that content has a lot of work to do and the client may come up with objections that the content can’t address. And, the content can’t capture your entire personality and pre-qualify clients. So you get lots of cold leads reading your content and deciding for themselves whether or not they should hire you… and many will not call because they don’t want to make that commitment based solely on the marketing content they’ve seen.

But when you use marketing content that only tries to move a cold lead into a warm prospect, that content has a lot less work to do and can therefore be far more effective… at pre-qualifying these people and at convincing them to take the smaller, easier step of picking up the phone (instead of making a commitment). And, YOU can then share your personality with your client (hint: that will be a huge selling feature for you) and you can handle their objections.

Result: Your marketing will qualify your clients (weeding out most of the crackpots) but it will also get more of the good prospective clients to pick up the phone.

By using this model of focusing your marketing on a painless, no-commitment action, you can get more people calling you and you can convert more of those prospects into clients.

We’ve also seen a similar shift in selling digital download products (like ebooks). It used to be that you could put up a sales page and have a buy now button at the bottom and get clients. And some people still do that (and it still does work sometimes but not as much as it once did). But today, the more effective squeeze page offers a link to something free and valuable (an ecourse or videos, for example… something non-committal!) and then the sales letter comes later. Thus, there’s the first non-committal step followed by the more targeted, harder-hitting commitment.

For more information about getting your leads and prospects to do less, learn how to identify the steps in your sales funnel stages. Or, if you’re still thinking about how you want to market your business, check out this first in a series of sales funnel 101 blog posts.

It all started because I was being blindsided by sales.

Before I started full-time freelance writing for financial and real estate businesses, I worked in financial sales. I’d get no sales for a while and then suddenly a flood of sales would come in. It was hard to predict the factors that led to my (occasional) success.

I wondered: What if I could actually predict my sales before I made them?

What if I could make a sale faster? And more effortless?

And, what if I could make these sales faster and more effortless over and over and over again with each new lead?

In this blog post, I’m going to show you the simple and surprising way to increase your sales. It’s simple because it only takes about 2 minutes before you make your sales presentation; and it’s surprising because it really is so easy (and almost obvious) to do.

THE 2 MINUTE SALES INCREASING EXERCISE

The best way I’ve found to increase sales is this: Just before I make a sales presentation, I try to guess the probability that I will actually be able to sell this product to this client.

Sounds weird, right? After all, what’s the advantage of guessing? And, why would you continue if you thought the probability of selling was low?

But it works. After just one month of estimating my probability of success before making the presentation, I found a huge increase in the number of sales I closed.

Here’s why it’s so effective:

1. At first, your guessing is just that — guessing. It’s almost arbitrary. But after a while, you start to become more accurate. You start to know when a sales presentation is going to end with a sale or without one. It’s like shooting a basketball from the foul line. You know the moment it leaves your fingers whether you’re going to sink the throw… you don’t actually have to wait for it to arc over into the hoop.
2. Soon, you start discover the underlying elements that make up the success of a sale. You discover that a sale is not an unquantifiable relationship but as a series of elements which, when put together, usually turn into a sale. These “success elements” help you to determine the probability that you will succeed. You’ll assign a percentage to these success elements so that you can estimate your probability of a closed sale before you even open your mouth to present.
3. Then, you begin to shape your sales efforts around optimizing those elements (either by better qualifying your leads more effectively or by making changes in your own marketing and selling efforts).

Result?

• You know ahead of time whether or not a sale is going to be successful.
• When a sale doesn’t seem to be the likely outcome of your sales presentation then you can change gears by changing the purpose of the presentation… from sales to additional fact-finding (for example).
• When a sale does seem to the likely outcome of your sales presentation, you can move forward confidently.
• Ultimately, the result is MORE SALES.

AN EXAMPLE OF PROBABILITY ESTIMATING IN MY OWN BUSINESS

When I first started estimating my success probability, I was just guessing. I listed 4 elements that I thought were important and I assigned them a 25% probability percentage each. I soon found that I was presenting to people and was expecting a 25%, 50%, or 75% likelihood of success (never the elusive 100%!).

I saw this and realized the futility of pitching to someone when I only had a 25% probability of success. So I immediately stopped presenting to them. That bumped up my closing rate dramatically because I was now only presenting to people who were either 50% or 75% likely to buy from me. (In other words, I started qualifying my leads much more effectively based on something quantifiable).

The next thing I observed is that even though I was presenting to people who were either 50% or 75% likely to buy from me, I only ever closed the deals on the 75%ers. Never the 50%ers…. However, upon further reflection, I realized that many of the 50% probability prospects could easily be turned into 75% probability prospects.

Here’s what I did next: I looked at my successes even further and found that there weren’t only 4 success elements. (That was just my initial unrefined foray into probability estimating).

After further research, I found that there were many more success elements. I eventually found 12 success elements that consistently proved out to be the biggest factors. Among them were:

• The amount of time between someone needing my services and me finding out about it and showing up to help them (the sooner the better).
• The quality of the client’s credit rating.
• Whether or not they initiated contact or I did.
• How specific they were in telling me their needs.
• (… and eight other elements).

Today, I only make sales presentations to prospects when the success elements are at least 60%.

And, as I review my successes, I see that I consistently only get clients who are at a 75% probability. (However, I continue presenting to the 60% people because it helps me to maintain a baseline for what my success elements are and it forces me to look at the 60%ers and see if there’s a way that I can increase their probability).

Disclaimer: Just in case it’s not clear; I don’t close every sale even when the probabilities are high. Many other factors (such as changes in the prospect’s life or personality conflict or my misreading of the probabilities) play a part in whether a sale is closed. These are only probabilities.

Enough about me…

HERE’S HOW TO ESTIMATE YOUR SALES SUCCESS

First, start guessing: The best thing you can do is just start guessing. Just guess about the outcome before every presentation. Write it down then go present. Your initial efforts will feel arbitrary and uninformed.

Then, after each presentation, review your written guess and ask yourself if your outcome was accurate or not.

Second, figure out what makes a successful sale: Think about all of the elements that go into successful sales. List as many as you can. A few examples might be:

• The length of time the prospect knew you
• The amount and type of interaction you had with the prospect
• Whether the prospect contacted you initially or whether you contacted them (i.e. cold call)
• The amount of money the prospect was willing to spend
• The types of objections the prospect had
• The speed in which you responded to questions and issues
• The alignment between your goals and your prospect’s goals
• etc.

The more you can list, the better.

List elements that you think could be success elements. List the elements that you know are true. List the elements that clients have told you were the reasons they hired you. List the objections that prospects have (because solving these are probably success elements). List the things you’ve said or done when you saw a change in a prospect’s face or demeanor and you knew that you had closed the sale. List the elements that your sales manager or agency says are important. Go ask a successful professional and list what they say, too.

Be aware that some of the items you list will seem to be completely in your control and some of them will be completely out of your control. List them all anyway.

Third, refine your list: Now look at your sales successes. Decide which elements were present in your successful sales and were not present in your unsuccessful sales. The success elements that were almost always present in your successful sales and almost never present in your unsuccessful ones should make the final cut.

But don’t forget to keep it reasonable. If you have 100 success elements, it might be a little much to deal with and this 2 minute exercise becomes an unwieldy 15 minute exercise. Cut it down if possible. Combine success elements if possible. Find the most important. I’m very happy with 12 success elements and I think I could comfortably handle up to 20 elements but I wouldn’t want to pay attention to many more than that.

Fourth, assign percentages: Now assign a percentage to those elements. For starters, just divide them equally so if you have 10 elements, assign each a 10% probability… but over time, you might refine this number because some elements will be worth more than others. I’ll talk more about this near the end of this post.

Fifth, build your sales funnel’s marketing and selling efforts around those success elements: Every time you build a relationship with a client, make sure those elements are all in place before you present. When they are in place, you are highly likely to close the sale. If they aren’t in place, decide whether or not they ever will be in place and work toward ensuring those elements are in place by spending more time with the prospects.

Sixth, keep guessing! Keep guessing. With every single sales presentation, guess the probability of your success based on the success elements you’ve listed. Write it down. Then check afterward.

REFINING YOUR ESTIMATION

• For successful sales of a high percentage, note where you were correct (which success elements were present and which ones weren’t). If you consistently find that a particular success element isn’t present then it is not as important as you initially thought.
• For successful sales of a low percentage, figure out why you closed the sale even though you didn’t think you would. Are there other success elements present that you have not accounted for?
• For unsuccessful sales of a high percentage, note which success elements were present and which ones weren’t. Revisit your probabilities if you consistently see a success element not present; chances are, it is having more of an impact on your selling efforts than you thought.
• For unsuccessful sales of a low percentage, revisit what you can do to improve the probabilities. Look at the success elements that you have some control over and consider how you could have improved them in this case. And even the success elements over which you have no control, figure out how you could have qualified the lead more effectively so that they wouldn’t come to you in the first place until more success elements are in place.

Now you have a useful tool that you can spend 2 minutes doing before every sales presentation to significantly increase your ability to turn prospects into clients!

When your target market encounters a problem or challenge in their life, the potential buyer’s mindset is focused on the problem itself.

As a salesperson, your job is to present a solution to that problem. Unfortunately, selling efforts fail even when prospects know they have a problem and they know you have a solution.

In this blog post, I’m going to talk about why sales efforts sometimes fail and how you can increase the likelihood of success when you sell.

And here’s the great part: This “sales method” (if you want to call it that) completely removes the resistance that salespeople can often feel when in a sales relationship.

WHY SALES EFFORTS SOMETIMES FAIL

When a potential buyer first comes in contact with you, they are entirely focused on the problem but you are entirely focused on the solution. You need to help them to see that you have a solution to their problem and you need to present the solution and then overcome objections that they may have. That’s a pretty standard summary of the typical sales relationship.

However, this problem-versus-solution approach is adversarial. You are trying to change their minds by coming at the situation from the opposite direction.

It’s very easy (and very common among salespeople) to view the relationship as a “you-versus-them” relationship where one of you wins and the other loses.

You are coming at the situation from “opposite directions” (they are problem-focused and you are solution-focused, and these two opposite viewpoints clash during the sales presentation). Since you and your prospect are coming to the relationship from opposite directions, you aren’t always able to effectively identify or address all of their concerns and questions. You each have different perspectives so you may not see the issues in the same way that your prospect sees them. This leads to haphazard identification of the issues and the unaddressed issues spring up as objections when you’re trying to close the sale.

Because you have an inherently adversarial relationship with the prospect, and because you only haphazardly cover the hot button issues, it’s clear why sales efforts sometimes fall short when trying to close.

HOW THE CHAIN OF AGREEMENT CAN HELP

Rather than thinking of the sale as “you convincing them that your solution can solve their problem“, forget the solution-focus. Instead, start earlier in the relationship to build smaller points of agreement. Build one point of agreement after another. Soon enough, a sale will happen naturally without the adversarial (and often dreaded) sales presentation.

Instead of thinking of every sale as a single moment where you try to convert them to change their problem-focused mindset and buy your solution (this is the adversarial approach), think of every relationship as a chain. Each link of the chain is a point that you both agree on.

At the beginning of your relationship with the prospect, there is just one link: You agree that they have a problem, need, or challenge. That’s the first link.

Then, instead of trying to sell to them, just build another link of agreement: Engage them to learn more about the problem and find a point of agreement. For example, maybe come to agreement that the problem is a challenging problem. That’s the second link.

Then, instead of trying to sell to them, just build yet another link of agreement: Engage them to learn more about the problem and find another point of agreement. For example, maybe come to an agreement that the problem isn’t going to go away on its own. That’s the third link.

Then, instead of trying to sell, build more agreement. A fourth link. A fifth link. A sixth link. And so on.

Since the prospect has a problem and you have a solution, the points of the agreement can (if you are intentional about the conversation) lead right through a sale.

When you keep building these links of agreement – one small step at a time – you will get to the point where your customer begs you for the solution you’re offering and they’ll eagerly buy it without objection. After all, the two of you have been agreeing the entire time and you know how to solve their problem!

And all you’ve done is create a ‘Chain of Agreement‘ between the two of you, building one link at a time.

HOW TO BUILD A CHAIN OF AGREEMENT WITH A POTENTIAL CLIENT

Start by looking for that first point of agreement. For my financial and real estate clients, it might be something like “this is a tough market to know how to invest” or “it’s not easy to see your retirement fund disappearing” or “it’s time to think about moving“. Just find that one small kernel of agreement. It doesn’t have to be big.

Once you’ve done that, keep talking to them. Keep listening to them. Keep asking questions. As you engage them, they will naturally raise the next issue or thought. Building off of the examples above, maybe it’s “there are many options to invest in but nothing that is a clear win” or “retirement doesn’t seem that far off” or “there are a lot of things to think about before we even think about moving“.

Notice how these are small. Really small. Probably smaller than you were thinking (and definitely smaller than most salespeople would normally address). That makes them easy to find agreement between the two of you.

If you don’t find immediate agreement on something, that is a red flag to you that you missed a link. Maybe the prospect is jumping ahead without realizing it (that happens a lot) or maybe the prospect is floundering around because they don’t know (that happens a lot) or maybe the prospect is worried that you are trying to sell them something and they’re putting up defenses (that happens a lot, too)… or maybe you discover that the solution isn’t right for them.

During your conversations, when you arrive at a link in the chain where you can’t find immediate agreement with the prospect, do one of two things: If you determine that the solution isn’t right for them, shake their hand and leave. Easy. If the solution still seems right for them but there isn’t immediate agreement, then the conversation has advanced too far. You need to back up to the last link of agreement, revisit it to make doubly sure that you both agree, and explore a smaller step that you both agree on.

BEST PRACTICES FOR THE CHAIN OF AGREEMENT

• Do your research. Know a little about your target market so you can anticipate some of the agreement-links in the conversation. Check out my blogpost 55 questions to answer when defining your sales funnel’s target market.
• Aim low. Find really small points to agree on. Don’t try to get too much agreement at once.
• Let the prospect guide you toward the next link and the next link and the next link.
• Be prepared! Have logical and emotional reasons to back up what you say.
• Write down each chain of agreement after you’ve been through it (whether or not you sold something). Identify the links as best as you can. See if you can spot common links and common link sequences between conversations with many people.
• Invest the time. At first, it will seem like this method takes longer. It doesn’t; it only seems like it takes forever because you’re not working toward an adversarial presentation.
• If this approach is too radical to adopt all at once, try incorporating this method simply in the “fact finding” part of your sales effort. You’ll still gain a lot of benefit without rocking your own boat too much.