It’s long been said that selling is a numbers game. This myth is one of the reasons why so many salespeople waste time and energy talking to people who will never buy from them. It’s the leading cause of burnout in salespeople as they experience rejection after rejection after rejection. You may be wondering “If what you’re saying is true, why does this myth persist?”
Why?
The simple answer is a lack of understanding of who their ideal customers are and how to attract them.
Ineffective marketing
Absent an ideal customer profile, marketing messages attempt to reach anyone who might be interested their offering. By attracting both people who are the ideal customer as well as many more who think they may have an interest, the lack of specificity about who the ideal customer is subjects salespeople to a lot of “leads” that are time wasters.
Effective marketing delineates, and communicates, a company’s ideal customer profile in a way that attracts only those customers who fit the profile and repels all others. When this is done effectively, the sale is virtually made when the salesperson gets a call. The salesperson doesn’t have to educate, or convince, the prospect that what they have is a good solution for them. Prospects already know that what you’re offering aligns with their values; they simply want a better solution than they are currently getting.
Effective marketing
Here’s an example from my personal experience to illustrate the difference between effective and ineffective marketing. During my fractional CFO days, I developed a leadership training program based on a system I employed in corporate. I went to market with these results:
- In corporate, my staff and I cut 16,000 hours out of a 40,000 hour budget, morale was higher than it had ever been and at the end of the first full year together we closed the books in 5 working days with no overtime and no audit adjustments.
- A client, within a month cut her billing cycle from 3 weeks to 2 days.She freed up $350,000 in cash, paid off her line of credit and left it untapped for 4 consecutive months.
I went to market touting these results and got tons of phone calls…but my close rate was abysmal. I kept wondering “Why can’t I close the sale? Who wouldn’t want results like these?”
When I got serious about answering these questions, i realized that there are three types of managers:
- Autocrats – who view employees as automatons. They key in the instructions, flip a switch and employees better darn well do what they’re told.
- Paternalists – who feel a moral responsibility to provide employment to people who aren’t necessarily top tier. Consequently, they don’t expect a lot of them.
- Engagement managers – who engage employees in identifying opportunities, streamlining processes and solving problems.
My program is designed for the third group. Once I realized this, I changed marketing from “If you want results like this” to “If your the kind of manager who likes to engage….and you want results like this, give me a call.
I got a lot fewer calls, but the sale was virtually made when I got it. I didn’t have to educate them on engagement leadership, they were already employing it and they knew it worked for them, they just weren’t getting the magnitude of results I’d gotten.
The primary benefit of clearly communicating that I was looking for engagement managers is that autocrats and paternalists didn’t call.
Autocrats reading my message would think “Why go to all that trouble when I can simply tell my staff what to do?”
Paternalists would see my message and think “That’s harsh.” They prefer to address poor performance by providing training, mentoring or shifting the workload instead of holding their employees accountable for their performance.
Qualifying question
The icing on this cake is that, with the ideal customer profile, I could qualify a caller with one question…with 95% certainty. I’d ask: “If you faced [this situation] with an employee, how would you handle it?”
Autocrats would say “I’d tell them to…”
Paternalists would say “I’d get them some training, coaching or shift the workload.”
Engagement managers would say “We’d sit down and talk about it. Together we’d come up with a solution.”
No salesperson relies on just one question to qualify a caller. I didn’t either. But 95% of the time, answers to follow up questions affirmed the perception gained from the first response.
Takeaway
If you want to:
- Dramatically improve your close rate.
- Avoid wasting time with people who’ll never buy.
- Qualify “prospects” with just one question…with 95% or more certainty.
create a profile of your ideal customer and employ it consistently in your marketing messages. It’ll assure that for you, sales is no longer a “numbers game.”
Not sure how to create that Ideal customer profile; tune in next week when we discuss how to create that profile in a post entitled “Attracting More Ideal Customers.”
If you enjoyed this insight, please share it with friends and colleagues. They’ll appreciate that you’re thinking of them.
Resources
For a complete overview of Greater Profit/Fewer Sales concepts, check out Dale’s books, Pricing for Profit and Generate Greater Profit With Fewer Sales:
Even More Profitable training programs assure that your organization enjoys the benefits of being a Greater Profit/Fewer Sales organization.
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