Aaron Hoos

In every entrepreneur’s head is a well-oiled, highly profitable sales-machine of a business. But in real life, it’s a tricky, weed-filled garden of shifting priorities and juggled problems. (#mixedmetaphoralert)

In this blog post, I want to write about 3 common problems that entrepreneurs face in their sales funnels and how to fix them. These aren’t ALL the problems you’ll face, nor could it ever be a comprehensive list of all the solutions you have. But it’s a good place to start if you want to get your business reality a little closer to the picture in your mind.

SALES FUNNEL ADVERSITY #1: NOT ENOUGH LEADS

Leads are good because some of them eventually turn into customers, with a little relationship nurturing. But you won’t have any sales if you don’t start with the leads. If you don’t have enough leads, try doing the following:

• Look at your value proposition. What problem do you solve? Perhaps it’s not big enough of a problem or maybe it’s not a problem that enough people have or maybe you’re not stating the problem in a way that is resonating with people.
• Look at the people you’ve been trying to market to. Are they feeling the pain of the problem you solve? Do they even realize that they HAVE a problem at all? (Use this helpful blog post to identify your target market an figure out what is important to them.
• If you’re confident that the above two issues are resolved (you solve a clear, compelling problem and you have a tightly defined target market) then try increasing your marketing efforts. Maybe you just haven’t reached the place where your target market is spending their time. Experiment with articles, guest blogs, press releases, social media — find out where people connect with you the most. Then focus your efforts in that space. And if 1 hour a day of marketing isn’t getting enough leads, bump it up to 2 or 3 hours of marketing. It might simply be a numbers game.

SALES FUNNEL ADVERSITY #2: TOO MANY OBJECTIONS

Every salesperson and entrepreneur has encountered objections from their prospects — reasons why the prospect cannot buy right now. Savvy salespeople work with objections while inexperienced salespeople are defeated by them. If you encounter objections, remember that “yes” and “no” don’t always mean “yes” and “no”, and adopt the mindset that objections are awesome.

SALES FUNNEL ADVERSITY #3: NOT ENOUGH PROFIT

Cash flow is good. (Actually, it’s absolutely mandatory for a successful business). But cash flow will only ensure business survival if there is a bit of profit at the end of the day.

Where a lot of entrepreneurs fall down is in adequately pricing their product or service. They want to generate cash flow so they price their offering at a very attractive price… but it’s not enough to pay the bills. Learn more about the concept of price and pricing, discover the best price for your product or service, and price your products so you don’t compete with low-cost providers.

Of course pricing is just one part of the profitability issue. Reducing expenses and increasing sales are also key. But if you have a right-priced offering, you just need to get more customers.

Marketing is all about telling stories and a case study is a type of story about a customer who had a problem until they bought your solution. Case studies are very effective ways to market your business because the prospective buyers in your sales funnel see themselves in these stories and it helps to convince them to buy from you.
Here are 5 ways to use case studies in your marketing:

1. Case studies as separate, formal documents

If you have a great story about a customer who had a problem until they bought your product or service, you can write up your case study into a separate document – a nicely-designed one-page PDF is perfect! – and add it to your marketing collateral. Make them available on your website for download and send them to prospective buyers from time to time.

2. Case studies as informal stories

These are easy and fun to write and you should make it a point to write this kind of case study for every customer you have. Just create a one-paragraph story about the customer’s previous problem and the benefits they received when they bought from you. It’s very similar to the more formal version (above) but these stories can be used more broadly – in blogs, in emails, in conversations, in your sales letters, in your brochures, in your ebooks, etc. Keep these case studies in a file so you can pull from them whenever you need to.

3. Testimonials

Testimonials are a type of case study… from the customer’s perspective. When you work with a customer, ask them for a testimonial and post it on your website. (Check out testimonials from my clients). Use these testimonials everywhere!

4. Fictional case studies

The idea of using fictional case studies might upset some readers but they are a very common technique in marketing and sales copy writing. The famous sales copy headline “They laughed when I sat down at the piano but when I started to play!” is a case study… it’s just a fictional one. These types of case studies should be truthful, even if they are fictional. (That is, they shouldn’t be that different from the real benefits experienced by real customers). Be careful when using these case studies… they are acceptable as highly valuable marketing and sales copy techniques but they shouldn’t be presented as real case studies.

5. Case studies of NON-customers

Here’s a great way to use case studies: You can write case studies but they don’t have to be about your customers. Typically, these case studies are negative case studies, highlighting situations where the person or business didn’t follow through with a solution and suffered the consequences. These are frequently used in business books where the author wants to compare a positive case study and a negative case study. In a financial book I’m reading right now, the author highlights Bre-X as a company that did not use proper accounting methods. It’s a negative case study. Note: Don’t identify specific prospects who didn’t buy from you!

Case study tips

• Categorize your case studies by problem and also by industry so that you can find them quickly and send them to the right targeted prospects.
• Not all of your case studies need to have your customer’s name in them. Sometimes a customer doesn’t want their name in a case study. However, you can say something like “A customer who is a leader in the automotive sector…” or “A customer who is a multinational insurance company…”. Some of your case studies SHOULD have a customer name, though, just to add credibility. Your most formal case studies and your testimonials should use the customer’s name, especially if they are well-known.
• Your case studies will be the most valuable to you when your prospects see themselves in the case study. Therefore, make sure the problems are realistic and the benefits are achievable. One case study with amazing results will be less valuable to you than three or four case studies with realistic results.

Imagine tracing a line along the path that someone takes in becoming your client. You might think of it as your sales funnel but let’s just simplify it into a single line that is easy to trace.

It starts with them having never heard of you before…

It follows them along a path as they learn about who you are and what you do…

It reaches a point where the prospect decides to become your client…

And then the line continues for as long as your client/professional relationship continues.

There is one big decision point in the relationship (noted by the star) when they decide to become your client for the first time.

But there are many more decision points along the way. These are moments in your developing relationship in which the prospect chooses to continue listening to you.

(As financial or real estate professionals, we don’t always know when these moments are, but they might be times in the relationship when the prospect meets us for the first time or visits our website or picks up the phone to call us or even hears from a competitor). I’ve drawn them below as red dots…

What we’ve drawn so far is the preferred path – only for the scenario when the prospect continues listening to the professional through the burgeoning relationship and then agrees to become a client.

But we both know that every prospect DOESN’T say “yes”. Some prospects say “Yes” but don’t mean “Yes, let’s work together right now”. In fact, there are many times when prospects choose to leave this path and go in a different direction – maybe they decide to find another professional to sell them insurance or maybe they decide to list their home themselves.

This can be frustrating for a financial or real estate professional to hear – you work so hard and want to help everyone but some prospects don’t have a reciprocal enthusiasm for you. It’s easy to despair when you call up a prospect who you THOUGHT was going to become a client only to hear them tell you that they decided to work with someone else or do it themselves.

But don’t despair. All is not lost. When you hear about your prospects diverging from the preferred path, take note of when they leave and why. Ask if there was something you could have done differently that might have convinced them to stay. (Note: You’re not necessarily offering to do whatever it is they say, but you know for next time.)
If you hear a lot of people giving the same reasons for leaving, you know it might be time to revisit how you sell your services.

Don’t just assume that it was because of a price issue or that a competitor swooped in on the right day when your prospect was in a good mood. There are other reasons that might drive someone away:

• Perhaps there isn’t enough alignment between what you say in person and what is expressed on your website.
• Perhaps they have doubts about your level of expertise.
• Perhaps you haven’t yet described (in a way they understand) all of the value that you can provide them.
• Perhaps you haven’t hit on the pickaxe factor.
• Perhaps they are going through your sales funnel at a different speed than you think they are (so the messages they are hearing do not match what they are ready to hear).

When someone diverges from the preferred path of becoming a client, find out why and grow from what you learn. You’ll end up with a sales funnel that gets increasingly effective… and ultimately you’ll end up with a stronger business.

In your business, it can be hard to sell something to a prospect that is reluctant to buy. It feels like you are trying to move an immovable object!

On the other hand, if the prospect wants to own your product or service, almost nothing will stand in their way of buying it from you.

Wouldn’t it be great if more of your prospects WANTED to buy your product or service from you?

It’s possible to increase sales from motivated prospects with this one simple trick (which you can use in face-to-face selling, over the phone selling, or marketing and web copy)…

Convince your prospect that they already own your product

Okay, that might sound silly but it works. Here’s what I mean: Get the prospect thinking about what life would be like when they own your product or service. Get specific. Get tangible. Get real.

If possible, get your prospect using the product or service first — before they buy — so they can see just how invaluable it is. Get them involved with the product or service and interacting with it. Make it part of their life. Most important, get them imagining how they would use your product or service.

The best salespeople who use this technique are car salespeople and real estate agents. In both cases, they have the prospect driving the car or walking around the house and while they are doing that, they are getting the prospect thinking about using the car/house in their life. For example: “The car has a big trunk. What would you put into it?” or “This house has a big yard. How would you use it?” or “The car is small and is great for parking. Where do you park your car?” or “This is a great living room. What color would you paint it?”

Notice how these simple questions don’t just have the prospect thinking about the product itself; instead, they’re thinking about what they would do if they owned the product because they are being asked questions as if they practically owned the product right now.

Your products and services need to be sold, too. And you can sell more of them by helping your prospects see themselves using your products and services.

Insurance brokers can spend so much time thinking about insurance that they fail to see the world through their prospects’ eyes. Hey, I’m not judging… I’ve been in your shoes selling life insurance and equipment insurance!

Here are 6 myths that insurance brokers believe…

Myth 1: People care about insurance.

Sorry. People don’t care about insurance. It’s a necessary evil. They care about whether they’ll have enough money to pay the bills and they care about whether they’ll make it out of work on time to get to Jonny’s soccer practice.
They need insurance. They know they do. But they don’t know why and they definitely don’t care about it. It’s a hassle. So in your marketing, make it seem like the easiest, fastest thing they have ever done in their lives.

Myth 2: People understand the acronyms.

Insurance broker: “You’re going to get GRD with this XLM policy. Later, you’ll enjoy a ton of FST”.

Customer: “Sure. Show me where to sign.”

It’s so easy for us to speak in acronyms and other industry slang because we’re thinking about it in those terms all day long. But Mr. and Mrs. Just-Off-The-Street don’t have a hot clue what you are talking about and they’re probably too embarrassed to ask.

In your marketing and in your face-to-face communication, be insanely easy to understand. In fact, why not go find an 8-year-old kid and try to explain your insurance to them. When you find the right words, then you’ll be equipped to talk to your clients.

(By the way: I just made up the acronyms in the above scenario so don’t try to figure out what they are.)

(Another by the way: Obviously don’t talk to your clients like they are 8 years old. But the simple terms and concepts and metaphors you used with an 8-year-old can help guide you as you create a grown-up version of your explanation).

Myth 3: People want to take care of their loved ones after they’re gone.

That’s if you sell life insurance. There’s a similar myth if you sell car insurance – Myth: People want to protect their vehicle investment. There’s a similar myth if you sell house insurance – Myth: People want to replace their belongings in case of fire or theft.

Not true. That’s not the reason why people buy insurance. Yes, it’s a logical reason why people think about buying insurance but it’s not THE reason. It’s not what motivates them to get into their car and to drive to your office.
The truth is, there are two competing factors here: On the one hand, they don’t want to think about their death or a car collision or their house burning down. So that keeps them from thinking about insurance. But on the other hand, they worry about the “ifs” of life. (“What happens if I die?” or “What happens if my house burns down?”) and that motivates them to get into their car to drive to your office.

Myth 4: Deductibles matter.

Deductibles don’t matter to clients. How many clients have you had in your office who sit there and look at the deductibles and choose the lowest deductible? Maybe a few. Compare that to how many people sit in the office and look at the lowest premium. Probably way more.

Clients see insurance as a hassle. As an ongoing expense for something they’ll never use.

I’m not saying that you should downplay the deductibles or not mention them at all. Yikes! That would be bad. However, I am saying that you need to review how your clients make decisions and make sure that your marketing and sales presentations are resonating with what’s important to them.

Myth 5: Clients completely understand insurance when they sign for it.

Your clients have a lot going on. When they walk into your office, insurance is only one of a dozen things on their mind. Their kids are sick. Their boss is breathing down their neck. Their spouse forgot to get milk at the store so there won’t be cereal for breakfast. Their favorite TV show is on tonight. Their in-laws are visiting on Sunday. So when you show a client their policy and they nod approvingly to everything you say, it’s not because they understand what you’ve told them. And they’re not about to go home and read the fine print.

As a broker, you need to find the balance between explaining your insurance products adequately and giving your clients enough breathing room that you don’t bore them to death. It’s not easy. Fortunately, here’s something interesting you can do: Why not give them a print book or an ebook about some of the things that they need to know about their policies. (Or, get their email and send them an e-course with ultra-short lessons about their policies). If you write it in the right way, and follow-up, they just might become better educated.

Myth 6: The client is coming back at policy-renewal time.

Okay, this one might not apply to everyone – it depends on the type of insurance you sell and your jurisdiction. So in some cases, you sign up a client and just renew them year after year until the Mayan prophecy comes true and the world ends. But for some insurance brokers, that renewal is a HUGE opportunity that is all-too-often overlooked. All too often, insurance brokers make a sale and then ignore their client for year (unless the client misses a premium payment of course! Instead, that initial visit should be an opportunity start a relationship – a relationship that should include printed information, email, and telephone conversations. You’re not hassling your client, you’re helping them.

Case in point: In the eight years I’ve lived in Winnipeg, I’ve been to 4 or 5 insurance brokers for my car insurance – just the broker’s office that’s the most convenient to me at the time. And the company that sold me house insurance has never followed up with me to discover that I also need car insurance, life insurance, and business insurance. Hmmm.