Paul Lemberg

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5 Sales Tips to Immediately Improve Your B2B Sales Conversions

Most entrepreneurs seem to believe that the biggest factor in successful growth is lead generation. There may be some truth in this, but only some.

Before we I talk about how to improve sales conversation let’s look at some statistics:

  • The typical range of closing ratios for referral business is between 50-80%, but referrals are a very small factor in a sustainable high-growth business.
  • The range for warm call-in leads is between 30-70%, but warm leads are less than 5% of your qualified, addressable market.
  • The closing ratio for highly qualified cold leads ranges between 20-35%
  • And the average for semi-qualified cold leads ranges around 10%
  • And cold, cold leads? If you get 1%, you’re doing well.

You probably spend a lot of money and time generating leads for your product or service. And depending on your closing ratio, you may have to generate 2 to 10 leads to make a sale.

One way to dramatically improve your profits and revenues, without spending one more dime of marketing expense is to improve your closing ratio.

Here’s an example: Say it cost you $300 to get a lead, which for a high-dollar product sale isn’t bad at all. And say your service costs around $15,000. At a 20% closing ratio, you need 5 leads to make a sale, so you’re spending $1500 on leads plus 10% sales commissions – another $1,500. Total cost of customer acquisition: $3,000 or 20% of revenues. Depending on your gross margins, that’s not bad.

But now you get better at closing and increase your ratio from one out of five to one out of three, shaving $600 off your CCA. That’s a whopping 20% reduction in cost of sale, all of which drops right into your bank account.

Here are five simple tips you can implement quickly that cost you little or nothing which will have a huge impact on your sales.

Tip #1: NEVER “SEND THEM SOMETHING”

You may have had this experience. You make your pitch and the prospect says,

“Send me something.” Because that’s how you’ve been trained, you oblige. But when you follow up a week later the prospect says, “Oh, I have your material right here, but I haven’t had time to look at it yet. Can you call me in a week?”

You can see where this is going, can’t you? As soon as you “send something” you have totally lost control of the selling process.

Instead, when the prospect says those dreaded words your response should be something along the lines of, “What is it you’d like to see that isn’t clear from our conversation?” This forces the prospect to articulate what’s on their mind, which cycles you back into the sales conversation and keeps the process on track.

This simple shift in mindset will have an immediate impact on your closing ratio. It doesn’t mean that you’ll close all those people you say “no” to, but at least now you have a chance.

Tip #2: TRACK ACTIONS AND RESULTS

“You can’t improve what you don’t measure”

Understanding this simple phrase will have a huge impact, not only on sales but your entire business. Many business owners think salespeople are a kind of “set it and forget it” resource, when in fact they require continual management.

And you can’t just measure their results – like how many new clients they bring in or how much revenue. Of course you have to track those things, but you need to keep a close eye on things like lifetime value per customer, profitability of an average transaction, leads to customers, number of daily conversations, sales cycle time, and conversations needed to close a customer.

Spend some time understanding your own sales process and develop metrics for

EVERYTHING. Its never overkill. Then start tracking. And in a way that is difficult to explain, the simple act of tracking the right things will improve your results without you doing anything else.

Tip #3 ASK A LOT MORE QUESTIONS

You ask questions to gain information. Right?

No. Most salespeople think that “the close” is where the sale happens. Successful sales pros know differently. The real reason to ask questions is that well-formed sales questions let the prospect to hear their own thinking, so that they can sell themselves.

Every one of your questions should be designed to further uncover the customer’s pain. When that pain becomes real enough for them they start to feel a much stronger need to have what you’re selling.

Each question exposes the customer’s needs, wants and lacks. They should point to the customer’s poor performance in whatever area your product or service will help them. And you keep asking those questions until the customer is practically begging you to tell them how you can help them.

Tip #4: MAKE A STRONG ROI CASE

Many salespeople think ROI is just too complicated to communicate leaving it to the prospect to figure out for themselves. This is a huge mistake because smart business owners only spend money on things they know pay them back. And if they have limited funds, they spend their money on the opportunities with the greatest returns.

Your product or service may be wonderful on its own merits, but if you don’t supply a strong ROI case, your prospect is likely to default to a “no” decision simply because they can’t justify it financially.

Figure out how to credibly communicate the ROI. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it isn’t. Don’t let that stop you because a strong ROI case is often the key to closing the deal. Get the prospect to believe, “This is a no-brainer” and the deal will often close itself.

Tip #5: WRITE AN OBJECTION BOOK

High-performing sales pros know that objections are nothing more than unanswered questions. And when your prospect has unanswered questions, they don’t buy.

Improve your closing by doing this: make a list of every objection that comes up in your sales process. Then turn each objection into a question. Sometimes an objection could mean more than one question, so list each one of them.

Then write out solid answers for each of those questions.

Having an objection book is the best way to make sure you can address your prospect’s concerns. After you answer the objection you can ask if there is anything else in their way of making a decision. Address those concerns as well, and then go right back into your close.

Certainly, these five tips are not the only ways to improve your close ratio; there are dozens more. But each of them will make a significant improvement. Do them all, and watch your numbers skyrocket.

As always, I look forward to your comments so please leave them below.

 

This may be important…

If you sell a B2B product or service with an average customer value of at least $3,000 or more, and you want more business, take a look at Sales Voodü. Sales Voodü will help you implement a high-performance selling system to bring in a steady stream of very qualified leads AND convert them efficiently into profitable business. Check out Sales Voodü here.

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The OOPS Factor

(Please post your comments below)

Women, perhaps more than men, think of whatever it is that happens, as their fault.

Women tend to take things personally. By nature, they often feel responsible for
everything that happens around them. They hear a criticism, for instance, and they see it as some sort of failing in themselves. And that sense of personal failing creates an emotional cloud that hampers their ability to evaluate what’s happening in the moment and hijacks their decision-making for the next two hours.

I call this very common pattern The OOPS factor: emotional reactions to Obstacles, Other People, and Self.

So what exactly is the OOPS Factor?

Obstacles are external circumstances and events that impact your business. Other people – well that’s obvious, but it includes their opinions, criticisms and reactions. Self is your own hidden beliefs and assumptions about who you have to be or become create sales success.

All of these OOPS become an issue because of your natural way of experiencing
things emotionally.

Now – here’s the funny thing – your emotions are an unusual gift. Your emotions
actually give you an edge in sales when you are able to use them to as a “tuning
fork.” In other words, you can use your feelings to gauge what your prospect is
feeling, and get “hidden information” about where they are in the buying cycle and use that information to help guide them to where they want to be (using your
product or service).

The opportunity is to embrace this natural ability and use it to it’s fullest.

Here are a few simple steps you can use to eliminate the emotional static of the
OOPS Factors and clear the channel to “direct resonance” with your prospects.

Obstacles

  1. Recognize the simple truth that obstacles happen in every business. They are never a reflection of you or your abilities.
  2. Identify the circumstances you can control and let go of the ones you cannot. (This step alone will give you much more power.)
  3. Make a plan to control the things you can. (Take action.)

Other People

  1. Engage your rational mind and put emotional responses on the back burner. (Hint: pretend you are evaluating someone else’s business.)
  2. Listen to what’s being said exclusively for information that will help you succee or move your business forward.
  3. Take immediate action on any new insights you learn. (Take action.)

Self

  1. Fill in the blank: In order to be successful, I have to be __________.
    (List your top 3)
  2. Challenge belief: Who told me that? How do I KNOW it’s true? Are there any circumstances where this is NOT true?
  3. Write new belief statements that align with who you are. (Take action.)

Don’t be deceived by the simplicity of these steps. I’ve taught them to thousands of
sales professionals and business owners and they work. Try them and feel your
newfound emotional clarity and power.

~Rhonda Anderson

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Strategies for Holding Sales

 

Follow these tips to make more money by holding sales promotions

It’s that time of year…

Maybe it should be called Sales Season.

Want to know how to make sales work for you – and have more cash coming in right now without hurting your year-round profits?

There are four important tips, and each one will make a difference to whether your sales bring in a much-welcomed cash boost or tank your margins until the end of time.

Watch this short video, and be sure to post your comments below when you’re done.  Tell me what you need to know and what you think…

~pl

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today I’m talking about how to have a sale. It’s on my mind because it’s sales season. Black Friday… Cyber Monday… This is the time of year when all retail businesses, marginal ones, finally make a profit.

Now everybody knows I’m the “higher prices” guy. You know… Higher prices leads to higher margins, which leads to stronger profits, and gives you more money if you use marketing and sales. It’s a virtuous circle. Stronger demonstrable value always, always is the most profitable strategy over the long haul.

But as we know people sometimes need incentives to take action. Time has to be compressed. Sometimes the pressure has to be turned up. Which brings us to The Sale.

Sales are not the only way, but they are a good way to get people to take action.

Sometimes you just have to stimulate some business, you just need to bring in cash right away. Used strategically, sales are not a bad thing. They ARE a bad thing to rely on for your whole business but strategically they’re not bad.

Here are some tips if you’re going to have a sale.

First, you can’t always be running a sale. I’m thinking of Banana Republic. I signed up for their buyer’s club account. And they’re always running a sale. Almost every other day I get some sort of a discount coupon from them. It does drive purchases, it does act as an incentive. But it absolutely hurts margins.

Next, have to offer a reason for the sale. You don’t want people to expect your sale and you don’t want them to think you’re going to do it all the time. Tell people why you’re making this particular sale. It could be a tax sale, maybe it’s a divorce sale, perhaps it’s an inventory sale. It might be your office burned down – a real fire sale or a flood sale. It could be a “you want to expand your business” sale. It could be “I’m an idiot and I just can’t stop myself and we’re going to have a sale”.

You have to offer something as a reason for the sale so that your customers don’t take it for granted that the sale prices are going to be the “new” prices.

Next, don’t have the sale at an expected time. In other words, Black Friday – while it does work to put companies in the black – doesn’t work because in fact Black Friday crushes all the sales for all of the time before, and some of the time after.

So don’t do your sale when people expect you to have a sale.

See, people will compress all their holiday shopping, they’ll compress it to one day. On Saturday right after Black Friday I was in the stores and while they weren’t empty, they really weren’t full. You know what I did on Black Friday? I bought my daughter a new computer. Why did I do it on Black Friday? I got a pretty good discount that I know I was going to get. If people expect your sale, they’re going to wait for it. If it’s the same time every year, they’re going to wait for it. No matter what, don’t always do it at the same time.

Next, have a defined, limited amount of time and stick to it.

If you say it’s going to be a 3-day sale, it’s a 3-day sale. Prices go back up afterwards. Banana Republic had a Black Friday sale, but – as you expect now that I keep mentioning them – prices stayed at the BF level.

Next, make your sales irregular in length. Don’t let  people know how long your sales always going to be so that they can wait until the end.

Last – It doesn’t always have to be the same kind of deal. You don’t have to cut price. You can cut price but you can also do things like a 2-for-1 or a 3-for-2. You can bundle services with a product or vice-versa. You can throw in the upsells, you can add premium value, you can even offer special things that people can’t get any other time. A limited time offer or a one time offer, in other words you can’t get this any other time so you better buy it now during the sale or promotional period.

All of these approaches give your customer more value and your average revenue per transaction where you’d like it to be.

I’m just going to recap to rules for having a profitable sale:

  1. Have a reason, a justification.
  2. Do it randomly in terms of time.
  3. Make it for a defined period of time
  4. Use other strategies besides cutting price.

This is Paul Lemberg and if you think it’s time to just bump up some business a little bit before the end of the year, go on have sale. To your outrageous success…

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The 7 Master Keys to Rapid Business Profits

Grow your business faster than it’s growing now…

Would you like that?

Stupid question, right?

I hear it all the time…

How do I grow my business? How do I get more customers? How do I increase sales?

How do I add customers and increase revenue when I can’t pay my bills? How do I grow my business large enough to sell it? How do I keep my kids in school and pay my mortgage? How do I stay afloat and support my family?

How do I survive — in this economy?

I recently realized just how much entrepreneurs need help now more than ever.

That’s why I created this new video series: The 7 Master Keys to Rapid Business Profits. 7 short sessions to get you thinking about how to grow your business. Each one between five and ten minutes. You may be doing some of this stuff, but I bet you’re leaving something out.

And in times like these? I want all the edge that I can get.

So give yourself an edge.

I’m really excited to be doing this series, so leave me your comments and tell me what you think.

Click the video and get started now…

 

 

 

Click to watch Master Key #1