So many small business owners are focusing on getting more leads into their business, instead of focusing on increasing their sales conversion rates on the leads that they have.
It’s a massive disconnect.
Small business owners spend more time, more money, more effort in their lead generation, and don’t channel the same into their sales methods, systems, procedures, processes, and skills.
In fact, I always ask two questions.
- What’s your marketing budget?
- What’s your sales budget?
And 99% of to the time, the answer to question 2, is a big fat ZERO.
What baffles me the most, is how many small business owners that I speak to have never had any form of sales training?! Little own, make it a regular occurrence on the calendar for upskilling.
Yet, they wonder why they’re not getting enough sales in their business!
When I was working as a business broker, it made so much sense to me as to why 90% of small businesses were unsellable.
The reason being, they’re leaving so much profit on the table, end to end.
It also made a lot of sense to me as to why 95% of businesses fail in the first 5 years of operation!
It’s not rocket science.
The reason that most businesses don’t succeed is because they’re putting their time, effort, and money into the wrong areas of their business.
So, if you are focusing solely on marketing and you’re not focusing on sales, how do you get more sales?
Unfortunately, the marketing world have conned you into believing that you need to spend so much time and money on Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, SEO, Google Ads campaigns, networking groups, and you need to spend big with long term lock in contracts that have zero accountability on results.
The reality is, that transactional way of doing business is not working, and I know it does not work.
The reason that it does not work is because the return on investment is so low. The average statistic for direct sales or direct marketing is a 3% return. 100 leads generated for a whopping three sales.
What a waste of time and money.
Yet, every small business owner goes into business for three reasons.
They go into business because they want more time, more money, and more freedom.
But if you are allocating your resources into the wrong areas, you’ll never have any of those.
When it comes to traditional lead generation, the old goal was to get people into funnels, and then pester people to buy.
Sadly because of this, people have disengaged completely from the spamming.
They are getting information overload. Constantly being harassed, and hassled, because sellers only see them as a walking ATM machine.
And if you are doing that too in your business, I guarantee you, your business will not survive because you will never get long term client retention. Plus, you will never get repeat business and you will never get referral business.
Did you know, the average client retention, if you are doing your job right, is at least three years?
What that means is, if your average client is not staying with you for at least three years, then your systems, processes and communication is completely wrong!
Unfortunately, it costs you five times as much money to generate a new client as what it does to keep an existing client.
When moving away from that industrial age of selling, and moving into that new age selling, (which is all relationship based) all communication becomes collaboration based.
Many business owners look to collaborate with other business owners for the greater good of both their businesses, and their clients, but they’re missing the key element. And that key element is learning how to collaborate with your clients!
When you’re collaborating with your clients, you’re working for the greater good of your clients, so that you can give them the best results for them.
Not the best results for you.
In that transactional world of selling, and all sales trainers will tell you the same.
You have to increase your objection handling skills and increase our closing techniques and skills.
Wrong.
Yes, you need to know what objections are. Yes, you need to learn how to work through the objections, but it’s not about closing the sale, it’s about being of service.
When you operate from a detached place (not trying to get a sale) to collaborating with your end clients, that’s where the magic happens.
That one person, if they’re prepared to buy off you again, will be prepared to refer to you. They then become your raving marketing machine forever.
What many people don’t get, it that we all have a circle of influence of 150 people around us. When doing business with people, you are collaborating with all of them at the same time.
Remember, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. One of my favourite sayings, so when we are in business and we are working with our clients, they will stay with us much longer. The retention rate is obviously better.
The speed of which the transactions happen are so much faster, and a referral lead has a 400% higher closing, than any fresh lead.
So, let’s just break this down to the simple numbers so that you understand where I am coming from.
Transactional selling the direct world of marketing has a 3% return.
100 leads = 3 sales. 3% conversion rate.
The relationship selling world, if you have 10 people coming to you as a referral, I guarantee you that you would have at least eight conversations with them because they are seeking you out.
Out of those eight conversations that you have, if you really are bad at sales and only get four of them, then you have 50% conversion rate.
Transactional selling is like the Sovereign Hill days with our pan, and we’re just looking for a little bit of fool’s gold.
If we want more time, if we want more money, and if we want more freedom in our business, it makes sense to work smarter, not harder.
So that referral business gives you many more sales, at a much faster closing rate.
And here’s the kicker, it never is price orientated because they’re buying you as a person first, with absolute knowing you can deliver for them second.
That instantly eliminates your competitors, and price wars.
And here is the kicker, you can charge what you want, and your profits go up instantly.
Stop focusing on the next sale, start focusing on the GP.
Then, your business is worth something!
