You're In Business To Make A Profit, Right?
The easiest, most profitable way to grow your business is to make a fantastic offer to a new prospect or customer the moment they identify themselves.
Think about it.
The Best Time To Make a Sale Is Right After The First Sale
- designed, paid for and ran ads for your business to get people to your site or store.
- worked on *SEO so your site would appear for the correct search phrases to people to your site or store.
- created some type of "lead magnet" and tied it to an auto-responder so visitors to your site would opt-in, thereby identifying themselves to you as warm prospects looking for what you do and interested in how you say you do it
What do you mean, Wes?"
Allow me to elaborate.
If you click the image above or this link (Special: CD Combo Pack) you'll be taken to a page on where you can buy my two best-selling CD's, "Making Good Money In Bad Times" and "The 7 Deadly Sins of Selling" at a deep discount.
This is the page I show all new prospects that sign up for this email newsletter, "The Weekly Whisper." (Since you're receiving this feel free to take advantage of this offer, too, by clicking Special: CD Combo Pack."
Sales of this combo pack have exploded since I started thanking new visitors that opt in for The Weekly Whisper by taking them directly to this page with this fantastic offer, which is not visible to the general public.
Making sales is exciting.
What's even more exciting is the fact I am rapidly growing my list of paying clients to whom I can make additional offers that compliment my CDs.
You Can Build a List of Prospects or a List of Buyers. You Choose.
There's a big difference there.
Most business owners and sales people make the mistake of buying or building a list to sell somebody something. Savvy entrepreneurs sell something to somebody to build a list.
(Go re-read that last sentence again.)
(Now go re-re-read the sentence before the last sentence again and sit and ponder it for a few moments. THAT is the key to changing your business, your income and your life forever.)
"But, Wes, MY business is different."
Really? Let's look at the casket-selling industry. Can't get much tougher than that, right? I mean, how can you upsell dead people?
"Upsell a dead person, Wes? What the heck?"
First of all, making assumptions is a bad thing in sales because ALL buyers of caskets are ALIVE when they buy them, either for themselves or a loved (or not-so-loved) one.
For the sake of this discussion let's say the buyer is a woman making pre-need arrangements for herself and her husband. She comes in and buys a nice set of matching mahogany caskets with matching lace, silk and satin and arranges a payment plan with the salesman.
To hone in more on this buyer let's say she's 65 years old, she and her husband just retired and are upper-middle class (the poor don't make pre-need arrangements like this.)
Go For No
In Episode 78 of The Sales Podcast, Andrea Waltz explain the concept she and her husband teach about going for no in the sale.
The concept, as shown in this example, is to simply consider what else a 65-year old, upper-middle class couple might want or need or be spending money on and offer that for sale.
Since they're buying caskets...maybe they'd buy a $10,000 or $20,000 or $50,000 burial policy right there on the spot to make sure they are not a "burden" on their children. You know those policies you see on TV and in Reader's Digest that require no physical exam?
Cha-ching.
Now that they have funds for the funeral you could offer them a private family plot at a nice savings if they commit today.
Cha-ching.
Maybe they could use a referral to a good estate-planning attorney. With the current stock market gyrations maybe they need a new financial advisor. Maybe they need a new realtor to help them downsize or move into an active adult community. Maybe they need a new travel agent to help them see the world like they've dreamed of doing together for 40 years.
Create Affiliate and Joint Venture Offers
Does the funeral home offer estate planning or financial advice or travel help?
Probably not.
Can they create a mastermind group of people in those fields and send them referrals for either a finder's / referral fee or reciprocal business that helps everyone in their group because they are addressing ALL of the needs of their clients?
Yes.
Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching!
Having clients in this industry I know for a fact the new and different items they offer as up-sells are tremendous and needed and purchased and are adding to the bottom lines of the more creative companies that realize they must differentiate or suffocate.
How do YOU differentiate YOUR offering?
What are you offering your new prospects and clients to get them spending more, faster with you? It's the same as when you're asked to super-size your order or add a hot apple pie for just 99 cents or you're given Sirius satellite free for 3 months with your new car.
Figure out what your new clients and prospects will buy from you IMMEDIATELY upon raising their hands and/or pulling out their wallets to make their initial purchase and you'll have more happy clients and more money in your bank account.
Now go make your competitors plan their "Going Six Feet Under " sale.
Market like you mean it.
Now go sell something.
P.S. I first updated this on 10/28/12. In the last 30 days I've generated 243 new opt-ins into my Infusionsoft database plus 46 affiliate leads I've driven to Infusionsoft from links like that. If you'd like to learn how to say Goodbye To Prospecting check out this post.
