Fill Your Funnel. Tom Hopkins
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in new information and trying new things. Even when approached with excitement, new things can be uncomfortable at first. That’s perfectly normal. Your goal is to strive for a new normal that includes the endeavor of prospecting and selling via social media platforms and email.
Because it’s important to understand the whole of the concepts being presented in this book, we recommend that you read it all the way through at least once before beginning to apply the strategies. You’ll want to understand the parts to the system before making a commitment to using the whole.
Please note that there is a huge difference in the amount of success you’ll achieve when you make a commitment to something versus skimming the general thought process or theory. As with any strategy, it won’t be 100% perfect. If there was a system that was 100% perfect, everyone would use it and it would quickly lose its effectiveness. However, we’ve proven the strategies in this book to be successful in our own businesses. They have worked as we are reaching out to new potential clients, generating qualified leads, and growing healthy business relationships.
Depending upon your type of product and type of client, this system could start bringing you results today or it might take a few months. Your success rate will be dependent upon the amount of effort you’re prepared to invest in applying the system. Also, accept the fact that it won’t work with every potential client. In no other field besides sales is it more evident that no two people respond to an offer in exactly the same manner. However, we hope you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the number of folks who may have previously been hard to reach who will now respond to you.
Let’s begin by stating that this is not a get-rich-quick strategy. It’s another proven system to add to your existing arsenal of selling strategies. Just like a baby learning to walk, you may spend a bit of time being frustrated in getting it going, but also like those babes, when you remain persistent and learn from each challenge, you’ll get where you want to go.
As with all sales strategies, you can count on experiencing some rejection. Rejection is part of the equation of the sales process. You cannot experience sales success without it. Period. The only difference with online rejection is that it’s more like a cyber cold shoulder. Some of the people you contact will simply ignore you. Other potential clients might block you from their email contacts and you won’t know it for a while. Or, an email filter may mistake your message as spam and prevent it from ever reaching your intended target. It happens.
Sales is a numbers game. The more ideal candidates you reach, the more likely you’ll achieve success. And, through social media, it’s easier than ever to search out those in your ideal demographic. The point of this book is to turn the numbers in your favor.
Never be afraid to tell anyone about what you offer. When you believe in your product and the benefits it provides, it’s your obligation to share your knowledge of it with every qualified buyer with whom you can connect.
[Dan Sidebar]
Are you selling the right product?
Somewhere between working in my own advertising agency for 20 years and launching my new companies, my wife strongly suggested that it would be a good idea to get a sales job with another business. After much deliberation, I went online and got a job with someone else’s advertising agency. Since I felt I knew how to close sales and had done it all my life, I thought this would be a piece of cake. It wasn’t.
During a period of about three years I worked for three different companies as a sales person. I set appointments with some of the biggest businesses in the world but could not sell anything. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t close my way out of a paper bag. Even worse, I couldn’t figure out why. However, the minute I took the chance and went back into business for myself, I started closing sales. I closed sales literally from the first day I opened the business.
Want to know why I couldn’t sell with those other companies? The primary reason was because I didn’t believe in what I was selling. (And my buyers could tell.) Once I believed in my own product, all the rest fell into place. Business got a whole lot easier—and became way more fun!
Only sell what you are proud of and believe in. If you don’t, it’ll show. Your buyers will sense it and they’ll move on to another product or service and salesperson who does believe in the benefits of what they offer.
[End Dan Sidebar]
Not all the people you feel are qualified buyers will think your product qualifies to meet their needs. That’s why the field of selling exists! Your whole purpose for being, as a sales professional, is to educate buyers so they realize that the value of owning the benefits of your product is greater than the value of keeping their money. It’s really that simple.
Social media platforms are wonderful tools for educating people on the benefits of our products in small bites—just the way most of us have come to want our information—Twitter-sized. Each platform has its strengths and, as we’ll cover in chapter 2, its nuances. It’ll be important for you to understand and use each accordingly.
Fear in Selling
The profession of selling isn’t for the faint-hearted.
There will always be fear in sales: Your fear and the buyer’s fear. You will fear saying the wrong thing and then having to live it down or to live up to it. You fear offending potential clients in some way. You fear losing face with your loved ones about how good you are at selling. You fear not being able to earn the income you need or want.
There’s even a fear of success. That’s right. Some people can’t handle success any better than they can handle failure. They worry about the added work and responsibilities involved in great success. Those fears may not be real, but they seem real. What it boils down to is a fear of the unknown. Sadly, most folks would rather stay in their comfort zones, even if they struggle there, than step outside those zones to achieve potentially great success. We hope you’re not one of those people because serving more clients and earning the higher income those sales generate is very, very rewarding.
To help you serve your buyers better, let’s review their fears. Buyer fears include being lied to, making poor decisions, losing or wasting money, or owing money. These are general fears. Some of your clients will have others. It’s your job to ferret them out and help buyers overcome them. This has to happen before they’ll get comfortable enough with you to make a decision.
The role of the sales professional is one of eliminating fears so buyers will open their minds to making buying decisions that are truly good for them. The most important phrase in that last sentence is “good for them.” Every sale is good for you, isn’t it? You sell. You earn income. If you want to earn a great income, focus on helping buyers make decisions that are good for them. If the decision isn’t good for them, what does that do to your relationship with them? What happens to your reputation? Ugly things.
When you assist people in making decisions that are truly good for them, you’ve hit the big time. You’ve achieved pro status and will generate a pro’s income through continued business with those clients, and the friends, relatives and associates they send your way as referred leads. “Good for them.” Keep that phrase in the forefront of your brain with every client contact.
Let’s go into greater depth on some of those common fears you’ll encounter with your potential clients:
1. Being lied to. Let’s face it, the stereotype of the salesperson isn’t a very positive one. On television and in the movies, salespeople are typically portrayed as being pushy, aggressive, and saying whatever it takes to make the sale. Yes, this includes lying to buyers. Sadly, the good guys in sales don’t make compelling characters. Because of that, we enter every sales process having to break down the buyer’s pre-conceived notions about us. We have to prove ourselves every step of the way – not just demonstrate our product’s benefits, but prove ourselves. We have to say what we’re going to do, then do it. Then, we sometimes even have to point out to the buyer that we did it. All this is to break down sales resistance and build trust. People won’t buy from you if they