Aaron Hoos

Running a business means managing a sales funnel. Sometimes you need to roll up your sleeves and do some serious work in your sales funnel to fix things that are broken or to optimize it for more profit. But other times, you just need to make minor tweaks to get a quick “pop” in you business.

Here are six quick ideas to get more money out of your sales funnel today

1. Draw out your sales funnel

You’ll gain such a clear understanding of how essential your sales funnel is to your business, plus I usually find that just drawing it out reveals some great opportunities.

2. Create just one clear call to action in your site

It’s easy and tempting to put in all kinds of calls to action — “Contact us” or “download this” or “subscribe here” — but if you have one offering, make it the front-and-center action that website visitors should take.

(Disclaimer: I’m not saying that you should take the other stuff off of your site. Just make one of those things the primary action).

3. Offer a dramatic one-day bonus

Create some short-term urgency by releasing a huge bonus product or service with the purchase of a a popular product or service you already have. Keep it short-term (a 24 hour period is good). See what kind of response you get. Find out if more people are being because they want the free bonus or because it’s a great deal.

4. Announce that you are about to raise your prices

Hey, we all need to raise our prices at some point and most business owners silently raise their prices and hope that there isn’t a lot of backlash. Work this to your advantage by announcing — via press releases and social media — that prices are going to rise on a specific date. (If you sell services, make sure you let people know that they can buy now at the lower rate but receive the service after the price increase).

5. Get back in touch with old buyers

Confession: I find it pretty easy and fun to go after new business so it’s really easy for me to finish a project and then not get back in touch with previous clients. I know I’m not alone here. Lots of entrepreneurs let old customers dry up. Spend some time today combing through your past few years of business and getting in touch with your top ten customers from there. Let them know that you have some availability or extra products and would love the chance to serve them again.

6. Double your lead-generation efforts today

The more leads we generate, the more prospects we end up with and the more customers we can convert those prospects into. But sometimes, lead generation becomes a big strategic endeavor when really just a few extra minutes or hours of effort can have a dramatic, positive impact. Don’t think long-term, just go out and try to double the amount of leads TODAY.

A couple of years ago, I received a bunch of junk mail in my mailbox and just about threw some of it out when a bold headline told me that I could save money by buying a new (more efficient) furnace. Until that point, I was happy with my furnace because it heated my house adequately. But when the letter showed up in the mail, I suddenly realized that I had a problem I didn’t even know about (inefficient heating). I ended up buying a new furnace because of that letter.

As a financial or real estate professional, you offer solutions to a variety of problems. Unfortunately, your prospective clients don’t always know that they have a problem until you point it out to them. The challenging part is to point out the problem in a way that highlights the pain… not necessarily the problem itself.

If I received a letter in the mail that told me I had an inefficient furnace, I would have discarded the letter along with all of my other mail. Furnace efficiency is the problem but I didn’t care about it and I would have no way of knowing whether or not I had an efficient furnace. But the letter didn’t focus on the problem, it focused on the pain. My wallet. It told me that an inefficient furnace was costing me money and I could spend less each month by buying a new furnace. The next step was to have a salesperson come by my house and help me calculate how much I would save. I was skeptical about this step but I have to admit, the numbers were very real and quite compelling… and that’s what convinced me to buy a new furnace.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU

First, know who your target market is. (“Everyone” is NOT your target market). Rather, your target market is a specific group of people. Use my 55 Target Market Questions to help you figure out who your target market is and what they are like. Once you know who they are, you can market to them more effectively. Note: It’s possible to have a few target markets. That’s okay… but you do need to define each one and fill out the 55 questions for each of those markets.

Second, know what problem you solve for your target market. I call it “the pickaxe factor” of your business. A few examples: Investment professionals provide the expertise to help someone build their wealth more than they could do on their own; Insurance professionals provide a way for people to preserve their wealth and minimize the impact of dramatic life events; Real estate professionals help people find the perfect home by navigating the overwhelming number of houses on the market and the complicated sale process.

Third, figure out where your target market experiences the pain of their problem. Do they notice it in their wallet? In their enjoyment of life? Do they lose sleep over it? Will their children suffer because of it? The possibilities are wide open (although for financial and real estate professionals, they tend to be focused on just a few similar factors… mostly wealth, peace of mind, opportunity, comfort-preservation… but there are others). If you have more than one target market, you need to figure out where each target market feels the pain.

Fourth, highlight that pain. In all of your marketing and communication with your target market, highlight the pain they feel in a compelling way.

[Image credit: AprilBell]

Whether selling through written word or speaking, people respond better to your sales presentation when you sell them on the benefits of your product or service.

There are lots of ways to communicate a benefit but the most persuasive sales benefit I’ve ever seen looked like this (and I’ve written it for a real estate investor but it applies to anyone)…

“Discover the 3 steps you need to take within 45 minutes of investing in a property to increase its value by 25% immediately”

Let’s deconstruct this benefit to see all of the parts:

• Strong, compelling action verb: Discover…
• Easy-to-implement action: …the 3 steps you need to take…
• Timeframe to perform the above action: …within 45 minutes of investing in a property…
• Measurable benefit: …to increase its value by 25%…
• Timeframe to realize the benefit: …immediately.

(For more reading on the topic, check out: 37 ways to improve your sales skills).

I’m writing a book. I’ve been working on it off and on for a while (more “off” than “on” if I were being honest with myself).

I need to actually get some traction on it. Rather than writing it piece by piece and then finally revealing it at the end, I might benefit from some feedback from you… so I’m going to start writing it publicly and sharing it as I go. So as often as humanly possible (hopefully every 2 weeks or so), I’m going to publish another chapter on my blog.

The book is called The Sales Funnel Bible and it’s about how businesses can grow by focusing on their sales funnel.

A brief history of the Sales Funnel Bible

In case you’re curious, my interest in sales funnels started back during my MBA. I wrote my dissertation on a business strategy tool I’d developed called the Business Diamond Framework — a tool businesses could use to develop strategy throughout their business and make sure it was aligned with their organizational hierarchy as well as their value chain. (Okay, the full description is way more complicated but you get the idea).

That dissertation sparked an interest in building a framework for businesses that would ultimately increase success. And although my Business Diamond Framework was useful for larger businesses and higher level strategy, I found the simple sales funnel to be the most immediately beneficial for the financial entrepreneurs and real estate entrepreneurs I work with every day. What’s more, sales funnels are pretty well known as a concept but not a tool, so I think there is a lot of opportunity for any business that is armed with some sales funnel knowledge to really grow.

If you want to read more about sales funnels, check out the following blog posts…

• What is a sales funnel?
• Why is a sales funnel funnel-shaped?
• How does a sales funnel work?
• Why use a sales funnel in your business?

And be sure to come back and visit my blog to read the The Sales Funnel Bible chapters as I write them!

In the financial and real estate industry, there are no free passes. Success only comes to those who sweat it out day after day, month after month, through the peaks and valleys inherent in our profession.

But there’s one aspect of your business that you don’t have to sweat out, yet so many professionals turn it into something way more complicated than it needs to be.

I’m talking about…

SELLING

When it comes to selling, so many financial and real estate professionals get really, really complicated. They make selling into a big deal.

They add lots of steps and overwhelm themselves with possibilities and contingencies… and then they confuse themselves further by latching onto a different (also complicated) sales process… and then a different one after that. Each week it’s a new selling process — a 5 step one and then a 3 step one and then an 18 step one and then a 10 step one (etc., etc.)

In my opinion, a complicated selling process has 4 negative consequences…

1. It makes it hard to excel when you’re too busy trying to remember which stage of which selling process you’re in.
2. It blinds you to buying cues or those hard-to-pigeon-hole leads who aren’t easily organized into a complex selling process.
3. It builds up the pain of rejection, turning every “no” into a deafening show-stopper.
4. It’s harder to track progress and measure success.

Stop making sales so complicated. Go back to the basics. It’s easier to remember and a basic selling process becomes a useful toolbelt instead of a bizarre Swiss Army Knife that you never use.

It’s like a bicycle. There’s something so efficient and beautifully functional about a simple bicycle. Sure, you can make it fancy with gears and handbrakes; you can string together several bicycles to create a tandem bicycle; you can add a motor to get a moped; you can add an extra wheel on the back to get a tricycle; you can add a bench seat on the back to get a rickshaw. You can add streamers and a basket and a bell and trailer and extra knobby tires. But all of that are just extras bolted on to the simple, efficient bicycle.

Likewise, the selling process can get a lot of fancy bells and whistles bolted onto it but we will become more successful at it when we ruthlessly strip it down and focus on the essentials.

HOW TO MAKE SELLING SIMPLE

Find a selling process that works for you. There are a TON of selling processes out there. The simpler the better, in my opinion.

I like something along the lines of:

1. Start the relationship. (Prospecting/Qualifying)
2. Grow the relationship. (Build rapport/Build value)
3. Present and ask for the order. (Sell/handle objections/follow-up)

That’s it. Nothing fancy. I don’t have an acronym for it or an easy-to-remember slogan. It’s just the selling process in its simplest form… as if we were glimpsing the selling process in its naturally occurring state.

Once you have this selling process, here’s what I advise:

• Don’t make it more complicated with more steps, sub-steps, twisty paths, flow-charts, and diversions. Stick to that selling process and rock it out. Rock it out by actually doing it.
• Become the world’s expert in that selling process. Study relentlessly. Build a selling binder. Add ideas and resources and tips. Read it all the time. (Easy to use and apply a 3-step process… harder in an 18 step process!!!)
• Invest in improving your skills in each of the three areas in this selling process.
• Look for a sales mentor in one of the three areas.
• Measure your success in each of the three areas.
• When you find new tools and ideas and resources, slot them into the existing selling process.
• Troubleshoot, fine-tune, tweak, modify, and optimize this process.
• Just go out there and do it. Stop trying to make the selling process more complicated.
• Most important: Relentlessly push through this process over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, every single day.

Financial and real estate professionals already have a lot of complicated parts in their business. But selling doesn’t have to be one of them. Stop looking for a more complicated “silver bullet”… find a simple process that works and excel at it.

[Image credit: timobalk]