How many sales does it take to close a sale in the business opportunity industry you ask? Well, how about working the leads that you already have? The duplicate leads are in my opinion a gold mine and is an area that is largely untapped by most to close sales.
by Kevin James Culp
How to close sales? Looking to bolster your bottomline? Dig out those dups and start calling. Closing more deals from duplicate leads is often not thought of as much of a productive path to financial success and you my friend might be correct. It might not make you a mint.
After more than a decade calling on prospective business opportunity franchise shoppers, I have found so many variables in lead generation I wouldn’t have time to address them all in this short Tuesday post. I wanted to share with you that if you are in sales and you work these types of leads that you need to be aware that said “dups” are not worthless at all.
Quite the opposite in many ways actually. For some reason this shopper has expressed interest in your opportunity more than one time and is now deemed worthless, over shopping, bogus, a non-buyer all because they didn’t reply to you? Wow, it it was only that simple we’d all be closing 90% of the time.
Why is learning about dups so important? Let me explain in detail from what I have learned from now making over 15,000 call-verification phone calls, over an eleven year period to people who have filled out a lead form on varies websites whom all shared one quality–each was looking for the best opportunity for them.
As you can imagine, I have had quite a few beyond interesting conversations and after really listening to each person’s needs I found a trait that almost all had in them.
Let me start be saying that they’re interested and for some reason a disconnection was happening. It could have been on the shoppers end i.e. they filled out so many lead forms that they stopped taking calls, looking at text messages, deleting emails before opening and over shopped missing out on the one great business opportunity for them.
The next segment of shopper are folks who had an interest and then didn’t and then did again and for some reason are deemed are invalid by more sales prospectors. Why? I have no idea hence the article and I’m not the only one who is beating this drum. It could however been the sales person’s end.
On the business opportunity novice seller who is reliant on a back office filled with tech that does it for you–right? Well, in some bases maybe but when someone wants to buy a serious business they want to generally click’n’buy or call someone line on-the-spot. Often the sales person see the dup come in and disqualifies it straight away as a dup, not qualified and does nothing.
This is a huge mistake and I think where some might have lost up to 10% of their over all sale this past year. So, if you want to increase your sales in 2020 or even by 2020 go over those dups.
Next, each day that I heard from one client or one consulting connection about duplicate leads and what to do with them I listen and made notes on the call and watched the companies sales numbers when possible. After years of this, a few months back I started to compile data from each conversation and sure enough a pattern started to emerge. The sales people, business owners, anyone who was involved with selling a business opportunity of some sort had success when the phone was being applied liberally. In edition to other tech yes – but live calling was the key that seemed to be missing from the clients I work with who really makes it and for those who do not ever make a sale.
In contrast, I was astounded to know that most people, even some of my own clients see them as bogus information hitting their systems, sales, people, CRM and all the rest. I personally see duplicate leads being submitted as a sign that something is happening properly.
A possible disconnection between what the shopper might expect from the portal that they found the ad, listing, link, blog post etc. on and then click to fill out a form usually. They think wow I completed the form, and someone will contact me not knowing that with so much spam and so many people sending messages with drip systems behind them that they never really make that “first” truly important connection live on the phone.
The one reaching out of you call right away and even I if you leave 98% of voice messages great! Tell them who you are, why you called, the subject line of the email you will be sending. If you plan to send a SMS message tell them what to look for and what you expect them to do if anything. Need them to click a link to download something that they requested? Super. Tell them in the voice message and also make sure to slowly tell this person your email that they should look for.
Did you know that 92% of all customer interactions happen over the phone and that the best time to cold call is between 4:00 and 5:00 pm in the prospects time zone– not yours!
“Takeaway: We’ve heard the chants: “cold calling is dying.” But that doesn’t mean that phone conversations are dying, and this stat is proof. One of the best salespeople we ever knew was glued to his phone yet never made a single cold call. He would spend 2 to 3 hours every day making “check-up calls” – calling old professional friends to (1) maintain relationships and (2) learn about developments in their companies which opened up potential new opportunities where he could help. Next time you see a friend change their job title on LinkedIn or hear about an old client in the news, pick up the phone and make that check-up call, said Brevet Advisors, LLC“.
I’m a huge fan of their blog, check out 21 other mind blowing stats that I bet you didn’t know CLICK HERE.
Sometimes the answer is right in front of you in black and white literally. See the forest for the trees and make sure to follow up with your prospects in multiple methods but the very first should always be the phone. Then SMS, and then email with a purpose and then rinse and repeat up to twelve, yes twelve times to close a deal in many cases.
Thanks for Reading and Carpe Diem My Friends!
SOURCE: Brevet Advisors, LLC and SalesForce
