What Keeps You From Closing More?

As marketing brings in leads, leads must bring sales – or what’s the point of all this effort?  Indeed, if your leads aren't paying off, there’s trouble afoot. 

There is a huge difference between being “close” in a sale, and getting to “close” on a sale.  One pays, and the other, well, doesn't   If the “no close for you” scenario is happening too often at your company, there could be a reason.  One of, say, seven reasons: 

1. Too much technical input – The former technician who is wowed by technical features, installation procedures and the sheer mechanics of a new system often fails to say how any of this actually benefits the customer.  Forget trying to impress them with your head knowledge.  Impress them instead with their benefits. 

2. Not listening – A customer will give the clues for a sale to the salesperson who is listening.  So watch and listen.  

3. Not communicating clear benefits – You can talk all you want to about systems, efficiency, prices, financing, maintenance and your superiority.  If the customer can’t fit this into his “What’s in it for me?” mentality, you may as well just go home.  Close on benefits and solutions that make sense to the customer.

4. Not asking for the sale – In high school, all us guys learned this painful lesson at the prom:  No matter how neat your hair was, how cool your outfit was, how many times you flossed your teeth, or that you had the exact right amount of Hai Karate cologne on, eventually you’re going to have to ask the girl to dance.  Same goes for salespeople.  There’s a semi-uncomfortable impasse at the end of the presentation where you must get a decision.  These closes can move you past that point toward the real point of your visit, which is to get the sale.

5. Not selling the company – Customers are often convinced of many things in the presentation from you and from all the other companies, but they’re looking for that “difference” which is often the integrity of the company.  Tell it.  Sell it.  Close on it.

6. Not selling your honesty and trustworthiness – Just like the above, too many salespeople get stuck on a great presentation that has no “personal” feel to it, no relationship, no eye-to-eye transfer of trust.  The salesperson that fails to appear honest (even though he or she may be beyond reproach) will not close many sales. 

7. Not presenting the “closing solution” to the customer - This is perhaps the biggest crime of all.  A customer wants his “solution” packaged for him (that’s why you’re there!)  Then, he wants this package presented as a logical, natural progression from his current situation to your solution for him. 

Now that you know what not to do, let me share one very important mindset shift.  A full 80% of all sales are made based upon how well you are liked by the customer.  From your neatness in appearance, timeliness in arrival, respect to customer’s homes, listening skills and more, much of your “sales” are really related to your likeability.

Even your website needs a little personality added to it. Customer’s go to your website way before your technician even steps foot in the driveway. If your site is “ugly” and hasn’t been updated in over a year, you’re most likely pushing customers away.

Try including testimonials, home-care tips, employee profiles and even a website only coupon or discount customers can use. Tie these all together with a nice format and easy-to-read text and your customers will know you’re professional way before your tech rings the bell.  

Also, remember that likeability is more than just smiling, being polite and complimenting the customer’s house as you walk in the door.  It is a method of immediately identifying with the customer and starting a relationship. 

You don’t need to change your personality, just become more “in tune” with your prospects.  See things as they do.  Pay specific attention to all members of the family who are available at the sales presentation.  Laugh with them; acknowledge their fears or concerns; ask permission.

By the time you are halfway through your presentation, you’ll be recognized as “one of the family,” so make yourself at home and identify with every person you meet. 

Being likeable – as simple as it sounds – will be your most powerful closing tool.  As you become more of a genuine, caring friend, you’ll find people accept your suggestions not like a salesperson, but as an adviser. 

Remember, people more likely buy from friends than from strangers. The quicker and more sincerely you become a friend, you’ll raise your closing ratio and your number of friends immediately.  Not a bad outcome! 

Is Another Million Dollars Hiding in Your Business Too?

Just finished up a Coaching Call that has me panting slightly, just like the coaching members who heard it. Longtime client Buddy Smith runs Russell’s, a neat and profitable $ 5M contracting business in Virginia. Though it was running well, Buddy’s mind began to wander.

He’d hear one side of phone conversations as he walked past the CSRs. “They seemed polite and professional” he said. He’d get the appointment set-rate spreadsheets. He’d see the sales close ratios that resulted. All seemed okay. Then one day it hit him,

“What if I increased the set-rate from the same number of leads, and even had the same sales ratio, my sales would go from…” and he tapped out the numbers. “Whoa” he thought. And the process to uncovering $880,000 in sales in one year, without an extra dime in marketing dollars or sales dexterity began. “It was amazing” Buddy said. And here’s how he did it.

Buddy pounced upon a theme we explore a lot in SMI and in coaching: “Stretching the topline.” The theory is simple but profound.

Most contractors focus on either lead generation or sales closing ratio. But there’s a “missing” link in there.

I often coach that there are two sales in every phone call. It’s not just the actual sale at the house, but the appointment that precedes it. If you don’t get the appointment, you’ll never get the actual sale. Amazingly, the contracting industry largely ignores this “first” sale.

Buddy’s idea was to “stretch” the number of appointments out of the same lead count in two distinct ways:

1. Record the calls to determine if where, and how often appointments were being missed.
2. Train his CSR s for maximum phone effectiveness for one goal: Book the call.

He figured if he could stretch the topline of appointments, he’d have to sell more. What he didn’t realize is the volume of appointments being lost by otherwise very adept CSRs.

Biggest Problems Were Also Easiest to Correct

In recording the calls, he found two problems that were “killing his leads before they had a chance to buy.”

First, his call volume by time of day peaked during lunch. This is precisely when the CSRs would take lunch, leaving them short-handed or depending on untrained call takers. “I could see on our data log that 3-4 calls a day were hanging up from too many rings or were too long on hold. This was over a thousand leads a year!”

Second, “giving away” information on the phone that didn’t land the appointment. “We had people call asking, ‘So how much is a pound of Freon, how much is your trip charge, or how much is a furnace?’ and being nice contractors, we’d often answer … and the customer would say ‘Thanks’ and hang up!”  He calculated this happened roughly 30-40 times a month, or another 400-500 possible appointments gone.

“Without call recording, I’d have never known these problems were vaporizing nearly 1,500 leads a year!”

He began training CSRs with top-quality scripting to help prevent these ; plus, he sharpened up:

1. Staffing during peak times, staggering lunch breaks.
2. Answering consistency. We have one greeting by everyone who touches a phone.
3. Call handling. Russell’s trained to eliminate the 'Frustration phrases' for customers “…which drive customers straight to the competition!” (Get a no-cost list of these at the end of this article.)
4. Appointment setting scripts. “We now know the key phrases to use that get commitments from customers.” (Another no-cost report at the end.)
5. Call ending. “This was great. We used to just end our calls with ‘See you Tuesday’ or whatever. Now we make sure to ask, ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’ and we pull thousands of dollars of sales using this one technique.”

As a bonus, Buddy was able to change the culture of his call handlers and improve the image, while differentiating his customers. “I almost used to cringe hearing what we’d say on the phone to customers. Now – though we still have room for improvement – I feel like we sound as good as the best nationally-trained CSRs out there. And that’s a great feeling.”

Not just a great feeling, but adding nearly a million dollars in sales has helped his cash flow, company morale, staff incentives and commissions, while boosting the customer count for the company. Even more amazing…

“I feel like we have another million dollars in sales waiting for us next year!” And with Buddy’s electric enthusiasm, I feel he’ll find it.

How You Can “Find” a Million Dollars in Hidden Business

1. Call Recording: Buddy used “Call Source” but there are other competing companies.
2. CSR Training: Buddy uses Power Selling Pros. These are on-site and off-site “live” training sessions.
3. Alternative CSR Training: The CSR NitroPack. This is a pre-packaged CSR training that includes scripts, objection handling, upselling, transitioning phrases, how to hire the ‘right’ CSR and even tests to help grade your CSRs for maximum performance.

TWO NO-COST Resources to help you get started:

1. Common Phrases that Drive Your Customers Crazy, plus...
2. “The Missing Link in Your Contracting Business.”

Simply request the reports by sending a polite email to: coaches@hudsonink.com or call 1-800-489-9099 to get them.

Coaching Clients: Make sure you listen to the entire call. You’ve already been sent an audio link and workbook.

Happy Selling. This may be the best Christmas present you get!

- See more of Adams articles here

Copy the “Old School” Success of Amazon

I recently wrote about Contractor Media Integration to help dispel the myth that online and offline are somehow separate. They’re not. The web is merely a means of message delivery, like any media. However…

There is one element of web marketing that remains profoundly different from other media. (It’s also “conveniently” left out of most every web media salesperson’s pitch.)

Not knowing it can be crippling to contractors. It even posed a lethal limitation to web-based sales giants like Amazon, eBay, Pro-Active and J. Crew. Yet, they quietly “discovered” a very old school way of exploding their profit that you’ve already known for years, but have probably been told to avoid…

As a Direct Response marketer (meaning, focused on sales and leads, not on “soft” advertising results), promotions have one of two goals:

1. Direct Sales – Asking for the order in the promotion.
2. Lead Generation – Getting a warm lead, prospect.

Now, if you want to tilt the response heavily in your favor, you will use the leads from Item 2 to make the offer of Item 1. (This is one way we can guarantee to outperform any previous marketing campaign or you get a refund. Yes, it’s that simple but most people miss the simple stuff in pursuit of the complicated.)

Profit Point 1: The target is the most important factor. (My most alluring promotion for generators will fail if wagged in front of people who’ve never lost power.) Having more contacts on this list is the bedrock to meteoric and consistent business growth.

Profit Point 2: You would do well to constantly build your “target list” through any means available, all year, to constantly “prime the pump” and never ignore a previous warm lead or customer. Identifiable targets are gold.

Profit Point 3: The “profoundly different” element in web marketing is that you have no definable target. Don’t gloss over this point, as it ties the lesson together.

All former media – mail, TV, Yellow Pages, radio, billboards, you name it – were “pushed” to a known audience. (Direct Mail was and continues to be the absolute king of reliable, controllable Push Marketing.) We pushed to some hopeful group, expecting a little interest and eyeball, then waited for the phone to ring. We chose the market.
With web marketing, they choose you. They choose the search terms, based on their needs, whims, and desires, instead of just staring at the television or opening the mail. You don’t have a target without knowing their thoughts or having their permission.

That’s why the most successful online marketers must rely on Pull Marketing.

Profit Point 4: You must master “Pull” marketing to build your list. This means becoming magnetic through the following methods, in order of importance:

a) Your local listing
b) Your own site’s “attractor factor” (SEO)
c) Your Pay Per Click campaigns
d) Your social “interactivity” to drive leads

Ordinarily, I’d stop here. The above is enough to rouse any contractor who’s sick of seeing his web-based lead generation remain as flat as Snooki’s brain activity during Scrabble. (Or doing anything for that matter.)

If you only pursued the 4 Profit Points, you’d soar above your competition, as we have seen many contractor clients do. Yet there’s a twist to the story.

What if you were primarily web-based and had already built a business using those principles? How would you grow the coveted list?

Amazon spent 8 years out of 11 losing money. Then they correctly figured out that they’re not in the “online retailing” business, they’re in the list-building business. Now they “retail” to that list. A lot. And they have burst through the logjam into fortunes previously unknown.

eBay spent 9 years parasiting its own list of auction junkies without much target growth and a dead stock price to show for it. Then they figured out they’re not in the auction business, but are in the list-building business for buyers and sellers. (Points 1 and 2, restated.)

Profit Point 5: To build your leads and sales, integrate offline and online.

The key to their success AND YOURS is realizing they had to grow their lists. They couldn’t rely on the glacial pace of “normal” growth of recession-weary consumers. They couldn’t keep pounding their well-worn house lists. (Sound familiar Mr. and Mrs. Contractor?)

They had to come up with a new way of lead generation to drive traffic to them. And this new method?

Profit Point 6: Direct Mail is back, in a big way.

Yes, dust off the pony, load up the saddle bags and start licking some stamps. They (and a parade of online giants) have rediscovered Direct Mail as a “gateway” to their sites, to build their list and to boost sales. New school, meet old school, and multiply. How?

Like this:

• A postcard gives a QR code for an offer, video or “to read more” online.
• A letter invites the reader to visit online or call, and gives the discount code in the letter. (Thus heightening the value of the letter.)
• A newsletter offers a discount for a service they read about, different recipes or archived articles online (which should include an “info capture” device for email addresses ).

The look of the cards/letters matches the landing pages. The online language references the mail piece. It is truly integrated and truly successful.

The “new” success of direct mail is being copied by such large mailers that – no matter what “mail death” news you’re hearing – commercial mailings are up 3%, direct investment in advertising mail is up 5.8%. (DeliverMagazine.com) These marketers don’t spend $48 Billion in a media that’s not returning dividends.

Summary

If media integration works for them, it can work for you. Please quit thinking of online and offline as separate entities. Integrate them. Don’t think of “our email list and our snail mail list.” Let online and offline offers be the same and offered simultaneously.

Retailers are adding tens of thousands to their email lists by using direct mail. Don’t believe the “word on the street” about other media. (How many sales have YOU made using Twitter?)

Focus on being in the list-building business for contractor services . Do it through all of your marketing, in a cohesive whole, consistently strong across the media. As you’ve always known, success starts with a solid foundation.