How to Resurrect Your Sales With a Few Simple Steps

You or your team have spent countless hours researching, planning, and rolling-out your digital marketing and sales tactics. And your efforts paid off! You were able to launch that new product, offer or service with great success. The results you gained were validation that you had steered your business in the right direction – so you doubled down.

You found more ways to move grow sales and created more things to sell. Which they did, at first……and then something changed.

You aren’t exactly sure when it happened, but you gradually became more aware that something was not quite right.

The more you perfected your sales scripts, your sales funnels and your promotional emails the more it felt like your marketing was stuck (and sinking) in quicksand.

Now it seems that the harder you push, the more resistance you face.

Your steady stream of sales has slowed to barely a trickle and now it’s not enough to comfortably sustain your personal or business growth needs.

But why? Your funnels are perfect! You worked hard to get that piece in place. You were told and guided that getting that right would lead you to the growth you need.

So, you find yourself grasping at the only logical conclusion you can find which is that funnels and email marketing no longer work.

Or worse yet, that maybe your customers no longer want or need you. That maybe you have become irrelevant, outdated or not good enough.

The Crisis – Back to the Drawing Board?

If your business has reached an existential crisis – you may be wondering what to do now? You may be looking for entirely new tactics. Maybe social media, live videos, or Facebook ads might be the ticket that will jumpstart your efforts.

What if I were to tell you that all is not lost, and it’s not entirely your fault? What if you can still resurrect your sales pipeline with a few simple shifts in your approach?

The fact is that someone moved the cheese, what used to work (pester and annoy) doesn’t work anymore.

The digital marketplace has matured. People have become weary of the aggressive bait and switch, push and sell tactics to bamboozle people into buying things.

While the so-called guru’s preaching these methods may have made big names for themselves, they are riding on the coattails of their old success. And their methods just won’t work for most people today.

To get your sales engine running and humming along today, you need a fresh approach – one which recognizes that today’s buyers are less na?ve and more discerning with their time and dollar.

Say Hello to the Era of Relationship Marketing

Fast cash sales funnels are like a flash in the pan – you can get dramatic quick results, but once it’s done it’s over. You either sell your product, or you burn the lead by repeated sales pushes.

Now we are not saying sales funnels don’t work! They do in the right context, but they will fail spectacularly if sales funnels are all you do.

Why? It’s because the repeated “buy now” approach completely ignores the 97% of leads who are not ready to buy right now – and hopes that those who are will know, like and trust you enough to buy right there and then.

It’s a little bit like proposing to someone on a first date. Sure 1 in a million might say yes, but wouldn’t you get better results by dating them first?

This is what relationship marketing is all about – and we call it the lifetime customer value journey because you prove your worth as you go, and it pays off in dividends – maximizing the results you get from leads rather than burning them out with the perception your hand is always in their wallet

This concept is nothing new at Genoo. We have been ahead of the game for years by developing resources, tools, and technology to help you place your leads on a more reliable sales journey. One where you nurture them, watch them and react to them when they are ripe and ready for a sales offer.

It may take more patience and ongoing commitment, but the sustainable results more than makeup for it. When used correctly, nurtured leads generate 50% more sales-ready leads – at 33% lower cost and a 47% higher average value order.

So, by playing the long game, you get to bring home more big wins and more sustainable and growing results for your efforts.

How to Play the Relationship Game and Get Results

You need a few things in place to be able to play the relationship game and win. Ideally, you need to have a well thought out marketing and sales strategy – otherwise, you run the risk of throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks.

But that might scare you off, so we’ll start with a few things that you can try out for yourself and see what happens.

1. The cornerstone of this strategy is a solid understanding of your ideal customer. Who are they and what problems are they facing which you can fix?

There are many approaches to getting this solid – but let me ask you this: What questions do your perfect potential customers ask you BEFORE they become a customer?

Make a list of 10 questions/issues you hear a lot.

2. After this, you can think about how you fit into the picture? What’s different about you and how you can fix their problems?

Again, to make it easy, answer each question you just listed above. Then look at whether you can expand on your answer a bit. Can you talk for 3 minutes on the question? If talking is easier, 3 minutes recorded turns out to be about 800 words — perfect length! Just get it transcribed, do a little editing, and you’re good to go.

Now you’re cooking with gas! This is all about starting to consider what you can say to your leads, your perfect potential customers that will capture their interest and earn their respect.

3. This is what you will use to nurture your leads through the lifetime sales cycle. In some industries with high-value products or services, the sales cycle can take months or years. Be prepared to commit and keep nurturing them for as long as it takes with relevant articles, videos, and resources.

Don’t get overwhelmed by what I just said above. I think about it this way: When I was a kid, I loved backpacking. On one trip in the Sierras, we were hiking up to a peak – and when I looked at the peak from the bottom, it seemed like a long, arduous journey. But when I just started to look right in front of me and take the next step, reaching the peak was easy, and enjoyable.

What you want to build is a habit in your marketing. One that you can execute on like getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth. It’s just something you do as part of your routine.

4. What does the nurturing process look like? Here’s a taste – take the questions and your answers and post them as a blog post on your site – one at a time (think 1 or 2 per week, spaced out). Then write an email for each one to your perfect potential customer (not as a group, but to ONE person), and tease them to find out more (i.e. click to the blog post).

Send the emails out when each post is published. Track who opens and who doesn’t – and who clicks through. Those who engage (i.e. click), think about how you can follow up with them on that question… do you have a cheat sheet? A quick guide? An assessment? Something that would forward their ability to move them in the direction of really implementing a solution or solving the issue? If so, follow up with those who click through and offer it to them.

Watch and see who takes you up on it and downloads it.

If you have low open rates and super low click-through rates – it can mean that you don’t really understand your perfect potential customer – OR your list has already started to shut you out.

After the initial set of emails (10) – move those who did not engage – didn’t open or click, into a different “disengaged” list. Then move forward with the ones who are responding (by opening and clicking), and continue with them.

Once you understand your nurturing process, you can think about where you can insert your sales offers along the nurturing journey. Think about what behavioral signals (page views, clicks, shares, downloads, replies, comments, etc.) will tell you they are highly engaged or interested.

Then think about how you can best package, time and deliver your offers, so they land with maximum appeal and least resistance?

5. Finally, you can think about what you need to bring it all together. Is your marketing technology as intelligent as your strategy? If not, then it’s holding you back. Ideally, you will (and should) automate as much of this as possible, so it is an operational habit that is easily accomplished and sustained, while you focus on closing the leads who are ready to become your customer.

For many, this may seem like a lot of things to grab hold of and maybe overwhelming!

Try out the approach offered above — give it a chance with the simple initial steps we’ve outlined. Post your questions or comments below – we are here to help!