Marketing tips Marketing help

Let’s look at closing the sale

Closing the sale, sales closers, closers

When I started out in sales and marketing, it was all about closing the sale.

In fact, good salespeople were often referred to as good closers.

Decades later, I still see sales recruiters asking for candidates who have a proven record of closing.

Here’s why we need to be extremely careful before adopting the closing mindset, or any of the countless closing tricks and techniques.

Closing for business?

The challenge with the closing mindset, is that it positions the prospective customer as little more than a barrier. A hurdle between you and the sale. An obstacle to be overcome. Little wonder so many closing techniques are based on psychological tricks.

The use of long, uncomfortable silences at key points in the sales process, for example, is used to put pressure on the prospective client. So is refusing to accept a “no” from them, by asking what they need additional clarity on, each time they clearly just want out.

In a nutshell, the focus is on outmanoeuvring your opponent. It’s them against you. A confrontation.

Here’s a very different approach, along with why I strongly recommend you use it.

Opening relationships

I built my reputation in sales by adopting the polar opposite approach. Instead of focusing on closing, I focused on opening.

Opening relationships, to be exact.

I found (and still find) the idea of closing to be self-defeating. I discovered that you can achieve a great deal more, by opening relationships with people. This means taking time to listen to them. And then learning about their challenges and what they want / need. If our marketing is targeted correctly, we’re automatically only speaking with people who are our ideal profile of client.

When handled correctly, and preceded with effective marketing, this means there’s no need to close anything (or close on anyone).

The whole process becomes a naturally-flowing conversation, where we seek to help people overcome a challenge, with the products or services we provide.
It’s a beautiful, fulfilling way to do business.

It also means refusing to sell anything to anyone, if we believe it’s not what they need.

Too passive?

This approach may sound passive, but consider your friends. Consider the people you like. The people you trust. The people you love to have around you. Are they aggressive towards you? Confrontational? No! That’s because we prefer those who respect us and are open and honest with us.

We like people who are open and honest.

We buy from people who are open and honest.

We trust people who are open and honest.

We recommend people who are open and honest.

In short, the more open we are, the more opportunities we’re open to. And yes, the more sales we make, the more deals we make and the more referrals we get.

Image: Linkedin sales solutions.

Your clients just raised the bar. Here’s what you need to know

Written by Jim Connolly

Image: Brooke Cagle.

Over the past 18-months, just about everyone has experienced online shopping or accessed online services. These include all the people who value customer service. And all the people who wouldn’t previously have trusted or valued an online commercial experience.

Whether your business offers products or services, this is a huge change an a very short time. A huge change, which is radically raised the bar on what it will now take, to motivate people to visit you in person.

With your current and future customers / clients now aware of the simplicity, ease, speed and quality of transacting online, they need a lot more motivation to visit you in person.

Why should a customer waste 45 minutes driving to (and the same time driving from) a store, endure the stress of traffic, the hassle of parking and possibly pay more, when that product can be delivered to them effortlessly at a time that suits them?
Why should that client waste 45 minutes driving to (and the same time driving from) a meeting, with all the above hassle, when they can work with a service provider comfortably and securely, online… and save 90 minutes?

No, not every business will be directly effected, but every business will be effected. And some vendors and service providers will be hit harder than others. The thing is, business has changed and the change is becoming more obvious, the more we see economies reopening from the pandemic. It’s also effecting a lot more industries than most of us could have imagined a year and a half ago.

An important question to ponder now, if you’re committed to doing business offline when you ‘could’ switch to online, is this: What compelling reason can I provide, to motivate people to come and visit me?

Business owners unable to offer a very compelling answer to that question, will find fewer and fewer people willing to make a special trip just to visit them.

Thankfully, coffee shops may have your answer

One place I strongly recommend you look for an answer, is coffee shops.

Yes, I know your business isn’t anything like a coffee shop.

But it doesn’t matter!

Coffee shops successfully solved this problem decades ago and pretty much every business can benefit from what they did. You’ll be pleased to know I wrote about it here: Has your business passed the coffee shop test?

That’s a useful place to start.

Grow your business bigger, faster, with this thought experiment

Written by Jim Connolly

Photo by Jesse Martini.

Here’s a powerful little thought experiment I often use, to help people massively increase the growth of their businesses. I thought you may find it useful, so here it is.

I’d like you to use your imagination for a few minutes and consider the following.

Picture a business, which offers a unique blend of services, rather than the same range of services as it’s competitors.
Picture a business, which dedicates time every week to the improvement of at least one key area of their operation.
Picture a business, which has a dedicated customer retention program, so it seldom loses a client or customer.
Picture a business, which goes the extra mile as standard.
Picture a business, which uses professional, highly effective marketing strategies, so it attracts the best clients or customers.

Here’s the kicker: Now, imagine what would happen if that business moved into your area, targeting your clients and your future clients.

Don’t wait for them to arrive. Do it first

Before something like that happens to you, I have a suggestion. Do it first! Take action on every item on that list and watch your business grow like never before.

Most business owners wait until their business is under a sudden, unexpected threat, before they seriously improve their game. As a direct result, their business achieves a tiny fraction of its true potential. All because they waited for something negative to happen, before they took action. That’s the price you pay for being reactive rather than proactive.

For example.

Sometimes a smart, highly motivated agile competitor comes to town and takes a chunk of their market share.
Other times, a business owner will lose a major client and see their revenues suddenly drop dramatically.

In either case, the business owner is forced to improve as a reaction to a problem. They no longer control the situation. They no longer have control of the time line. They’re forced into defensive mode. It’s about surviving, when proactive action would have seen them thriving instead.

In short: Don’t wait for a threat to arrive. And one surely will, because that’s what always happens. Instead, do it first. Be the threat. Choose to become the proactive, uniquely valuable, constantly improving, professional threat to your marketplace.

This is a smart way to operate in business at any time. But right now, with the global economy in such a precarious position, it’s the only way to move forward and plan ahead with realistic confidence.

If you want something done, DON’T ask a busy person

Written by Jim Connolly

want something done, ask busy person, need something done, busy people

Think for a moment about the following advice. If you want something done, ask a busy person. Like a lot of frequently shared quotes, that’s terrible advice. Provably, terrible advice in fact.

People of the internet. Let’s clear this nonsense up once and for all!

Okay, that’s never going to happen. So how about we dig a little deeper and examine why that quote makes no sense whatsoever.

Here’s the thing: The least efficient person, the least capable person, the least productive person, and the busiest person… is often the same person.

Really?

Yep!

Busy doesn’t equate to proficient or productive. It simply means active. And that includes a lot of active people who really wouldn’t want to help you or your business.

Allow me to explain why!

Don’t ask a busy person

Consider the busy people who put a massive amount of energy into doing the wrong things extremely well. And the busy people enthusiastically doing the right things extremely poorly. And let’s remember those busy people, who never seem to learn from their mistakes and continuously have to redo everything correctly, these people are really busy too.

Now consider… err… me.

I’m sitting here busily writing this post, whilst waiting for lunch at the coffee shop. It doesn’t mean the post will be any good, let’s face it, it’s pretty average up to this point, (*but I’m hoping to have a strong ending, so hang in there). It simply means I’m busy. And it gives no proof whatsoever that if you wanted something done, I’d be the best person for you to choose.

Clearly, a much wiser approach is required.

If you want something done

How about if you want something done, ask a competent person. Someone who knows what to do and also has the time and willingness to do it. An informed, motivated person is likely to be more useful than someone whose key attribute is that they’re always busy.

It’s not a snazzy quote.

It’s not a catchy quote, either.

It’s certainly never going to become a bumper sticker.

But when you need something done, it works a lot better, a lot more often, than simply asking a busy person.

* I had hoped for a much stronger ending, but lunch arrived.

Sorry to disturb you

Written by Jim Connolly

Image: Nick Morrison.

I received a marketing email earlier, which contained a dangerous error. This error will have dramatically reduced its open rate. Here’s what happened, so you can avoid it from happening to you.

It started with the following 4 words: “Sorry to disturb you”.

There’s a lot of information packed into those 4 words. Enough for the vast majority of those who received it, to form an opinion on the sender.

The sender knew what they were doing was wrong, which is why they opened with an apology.
The sender also knew that their email was a disturbance. An unrequested interruption from someone I’ve never heard of.
Knowing all this, they still decided to send it anyway.

Like others who received that email, I stopped reading after the opening sentence. After all, a stranger had interrupted us, without our consent, to tell us that what we were about to read is just spam. It’s an instant delete.

What if the email had been valuable?

That email may have contained a useful message. It might have offered an outstanding deal. It could have provided details of a wonderful opportunity. But their email let them down. So no one will know. The list they used. The copy they used and the tone of their opening line destroyed their email campaign.

Oblivious to this, the sender will be wondering why they received no positive response. Especially if they genuinely had something valuable to share. They’ll perhaps be pondering whether they need to lower their prices, or if email marketing is a waste of time, or if their great offer isn’t actually great.

If we consider this to be merely an example of ineffective email marketing, we totally miss the point!

It’s way, way bigger than that.

This example provides us with a powerful insight of how easy it is, for a business owner to offer an amazing product or service, only for ineffective marketing to let them down. It’s the difference between being inundated with enquiries from eager prospective clients, or being greeted by crickets.

Exposed: The most expensive mistake in marketing

Written by Jim Connolly

Image: Charles Deluvio.

The road ahead is closed. Soon, a line of traffic gathers…

One driver does a U-turn, and confidently heads off at speed in the opposite direction, before turning down an adjacent street. Seeing how assured this driver looks, other drivers follow him, then other drivers follow them. The initial driver has no idea where they’re going. And now they’re all lost, wasting their time and running out of fuel!

Here’s why I’m telling you this. Following the marketing tactics of your competitors has the exact same effect.

The most expensive mistake in marketing

You’ve no idea if the marketing your competitors use is working or if they’re running out of time and money. Following them is a very risky bet. And the odds are massively against you.

Allow me to explain.

Here’s just one extremely common example of how the odds are stacked against you. It comes from the world of advertising.

Advertising providers give ads away to companies, knowing that when a company’s competitors see their advertisement, they’re also likely to advertise. These ads are simply bait, to hook others in your industry.

Google and Facebook offer free advertising coupons all the time, knowing as soon as you use them, they win. They’ve done the numbers. They know a hefty subset of competitors will assume, the ads MUST work, if (whoever) is advertising there.

And yes, this follow-the-follower approach applies to every area of marketing, not just advertising.

If you’re not attracting enough new clients or making enough sales, stop following the followers. In short, quit dabbling. With so much uncertainty about the future, your prospective customers are thinking longer and thinking harder about spending their budgets than ever before. They require a lot more motivating than they used to. As I mentioned yesterday, they’re not going to make a decision unless your marketing fully reassures them.

In today’s economy, your marketing needs to be meaningfully different. And it can’t be meaningfully different if it’s just like your competitors.