Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Let’s look at closing the sale

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Closing the sale, sales closers, closers

Image: Linkedin sales solutions.

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.

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

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get visitors, marketing, post pandemic

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

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thought experiment, business progress

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.

Sorry to disturb you

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email marketing, email open rates, marketing conversion

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

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Follow the follower, marketing copy cats

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.

Make switching to you easy and attract new clients like a magnet

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marketing switch providers, switching vendors

Image: Austin Distel.

I’m going to share a powerful marketing tip with you today. It’s something the vast majority of your competitors either won’t be doing correctly… or won’t be doing at all.

It starts with this fundamental truth.

People, including your prospective clients, almost universally HATE the hassle associated with switching providers.

Think about it.

I’m willing to guess that you and I probably have at least one current provider, who isn’t ideal. Their charges may have increased, with no meaningful increase in the value we get from them. Maybe they’re slow to respond when we contact them. Perhaps they’re not as interested in dealing with our problems, as they used to be. And we’re pretty darn sure that there are better providers out there.

So, why do we stay with an under performing provider?

We stay, for the same reason your prospective clients have stayed with their current provider.

It’s simply this.

Switching providers is risky

People are hardwired to intentionally avoid risk. So, because switching to a new provider feels risky, we tend to avoid it.

Yes, YOU know there’s no risk whatsoever in switching to you from their current provider. You know that you’ll look after them better than they could dream of, because you’re capable, reliable, trustworthy and honest.

But THEY don’t know that!

What they do know, is that their previous provider let them down. Sometimes badly. It’s no wonder that having endured months, maybe years of a poor quality service, they’re now really cautious.

What’s the answer?

Make switching stress free and easy

The proven solution to this problem, is to make it as easy as possible for them to switch to you. This requires a two pronged approach.

1. Showcase your trust assets.
Make it as easy as possible for prospective clients to see for themselves, why they should trust you. You do this using what I call your trust assets; things that help establish you as a safe, low-risk option for them.

Your trust assets might include providing them with a track record of your success and achievements (here’s an example from my own list that may help you). You can also highlight the promises and guarantees you offer. And also share some testimonials from extremely happy clients, as well as any relevant awards you have. If you’ve been in your current line of business for a long time, don’t keep it a secret… include that, too.

2. Make switching to you as simple as possible.
This is extremely important. Even after trust has been established, the stress and challenges involved in switching providers can be enough to put people off.

Some providers use a version of the lock in effect / vendor lock in, where they deliberately make moving from them as hard as they can, for their clients. This is a huge problem in some industries, but less of a problem in others.

Regardless, you need to make the switch to you as frictionless, uncomplicated and stress-free as possible.

The best providers have client transition people in place, who manage the whole process. They stay in close contact with the new client to answer questions, overcome issues with the former provider and offer all the help they can. I very strongly advise you to do the same.

Show them how easy it is to switch to you

Once you’ve addressed those two parts of the switching process, it’s really important to let your prospective clients know. It needs to feature very prominently in your marketing, especially if you’re in an industry that’s known for making it hard to switch. It needs to be a key point in your conversations with prospective clients, and with introducers (people who recommend your services to their contacts and clients).

Equipped with visible trust assets and an equally visible strategy to make switching to you an absolute breeze, you become a much more attractive choice for prospective clients.

You become the natural choice. The easy choice. And for many, you become the only choice.