3 Phases of Success: Using Your Head to Leverage Your Business Growth – By Winton Churchill

One of the reasons most frequently cited by entrepreneurs for the demise of their business is “low sales.”

Too often an entrepreneur on the brink of success throws up their hands and says, “I need more sales...and I can’t find them!” Some look at it as a given...like the weather...things just didn’t take off and we can’t do anything about it. Others look at “low sales” as a problem in need of a solution.

Like any problem you face, it is good to break it down into its component parts. When looking at the “low sales” issue too many entrepreneurs look it as one big hairball. We help our clients break the hairball into pieces by looking at these 3 areas of the sales process:

1. Finding Opportunity
2. Moving Deals Forward
3. Closing Deals

Let’s look at each one in more detail...

1. Finding opportunities

If you make a $50,000 product you’re probably not going sell a lot of them especially with a one-shot email (although rarely does a week go by that I don’t see somebody trying to pull this one off).

But with that same effort, using an email crafted to open a sale (rather than close it) you have a realistic possibility of adding legitimate, qualified prospects who need your solution to your list of prospects.

And more important to your bottom line, you can build rapport, educate and engender appreciation systematically before you ever send your sales people out on those $2,000 face-to-face meetings.

Under the old marketing model which companies thrash themselves with daily sales, your team would grab that shy information-seeker by the lapels and shake them until they either bought you out, or died.

They would engage the prospect, qualify them, build rapport, educate them, grow the relationship, assess problems, identify solutions, and finally make the sale.

What most entrepreneurs don’t realize (and this may be the most important concept in this entire article) is that by effectively using email, you can systematize and automate a lot of the pre-close engagement activity.

That frees up you or your sales rep for the very valuable, very expensive face-to-face or voice-to-ear contact at a time when the prospect is most receptive.

2. Moving deals forward

As you move to the next segment of the cycle, it’s very important to stay focused on problems that are most troubling to your prospect.

During this segment you have the opportunity to use the power of automated systems to feed your prospect a customized stream of information that helps them further qualify themselves either in (or out) of your sales prospect category.

During this segment, it’s a mistake to start selling the product too aggressively (entrepreneurs struggle with this concept). You’ll have to fight the temptation to sing your product’s praises, claiming you have the best widget in the tri-state area, or that you guarantee service for eternity.

You want to stay away from any sort of “selling” in this part of your email process.
Your goal is to convince your prospect that you are somebody who can help them solve their problems, instead of someone who gets invited in, shows up and says, “Well, here’s the brochure and here’s the price list and we have 10% off if you order by Friday. Sign here.”

3. Bringing deals home

This is where you or your highly trained, relationship oriented sales people do their best work.

They enter this stage of the process with the email system having sorted the wheat from the chaff and, ever so subtly, philosophically aligned your prospect with your intended solution.

Your specialized skills help your prospect discover how they can get the most value out of your offering. This is in sharp contrast to the endless dialing for dollars.

Conclusion

The value in breaking a vexing problem like “low sales” in to its component parts can help you shape and tune you sales process so you have a reliale and often predictable flow of business.

About the Author:

Sales Lead Generation Expert Winton Churchill improves the efficiency and effectiveness of sales and marketing efforts for thousands of businesses. If your company experiences complex sales cycles and if you want to increase sales with more effective lead generation programs then GET YOUR FREE SNEAK PREVIEW of his new book: “Email Marketing for Complex Sales Cycles.” Get it now at: http://www.churchillmethod.com/chapter


For more information, visit www.churchillmethod.com. Visit www.virtualblogtour.blogspot.com for the most up to date information. His full tour schedule is posted at http://virtualblogtour.blogspot.com/2008/06/winton-churchill-email-marketing-for.html. Winton Churchill is offering a wealth of free gifts for every person that purchases his book Email Marketing. Visit www.churchillmethod.com/bookbonus for full details about how to download all of these free gifts.