Your 7 Transformational Steps To Sales Success

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(pleasant music)
- [Announcer] This is Business Connections Live
with Steve Hyland.
- Hello there, welcome on.
This is Business Connections Live,
the program for entrepreneurs, business owners, and SME's.
It's great to have you with us today on the live show.
Got a good show lined up for you over the next hour or so.
On today's show we're gonna be discussing
Seven Transformational Steps to Sales Success.
Now, I know you're heard all this before,
and I suppose the biggest thing about any form of plan
like this is, and the most important one,
maybe it's point number eight, is that you actually do it.
Action is the thing that we all need to do.
But what are the Seven Transformational Steps
for Sales Success?
We're going to be finding out today.
My guest in the studio is Rupert Honywood.
He is the founder and CEO of Business Growth Bureau.
Is it The Business Growth Bureau,
or Business Growth Bureau?
- Business Growth Bureau
- So no the. - No the.
- No definitive then at the very beginning.
Alright, so not the Business Growth Bureau.
You've been on the show before, Rupert,
it's lovely to have you back again.
- Thank you for asking me.
- Change in name for the business,
is that a change in name for what the business is doing?
And for those people who don't know what the business does,
what do you do?
- Great point.
You're right, we did have a name change,
and the reason being is that we felt the previous branding
boxed us too much into a corner,
and obviously, fundamentally what we care about
is helping business to grow, as the name suggests.
And obviously, the way we can do that is working
with our clients to help make sure there are
really good lead flow opportunities coming through
so they can close more business,
and that's what we care fundamentally about.
But the whole thing revolves around the word growth.
- And it is the biggest problem
that business have these days.
I know that we're kind of in this start-stop situation,
and I'm not even gonna mention the B-word here,
but we are in a stop-start situation,
but businesses still, fundamentally what they're looking for
is some way to grow their business.
They're looking for new prospects,
potentially new customers, people that they can nurture,
people that they can talk to.
Is that what you do to help them?
Do you go out there?
Have you got a system that will help them do that?
- Yes, we've put in place some proven methodology,
as it were, to optimize the opportunities coming through
for our clients through what we class as
Seven Transformational Steps.
But actually it's all about building relationships.
We're all interacting with people,
and that's the crucial thing.
It's very easy these days with automation, and AI,
and all this type of stuff to think that's the way.
But you know we're human beings.
We need to be interacted that way so that we want to engage
and people want to buy our stuff, as it were.
- When we look back over a year ago,
what you were majoring, really, on using LinkedIn
to nurture those new clients,
but your business has changed now, isn't it?
Is that because LinkedIn has gone off
in a different direction since it's been bought
by Microsoft, or is it that you feel
there's more opportunity to develop new clients
and new prospects, not only with LinkedIn,
but with other platform?s
- Great question.
With LinkedIn in the business-to-business space,
it is still the best one out there in terms
of finding your clients, and especially if you've
got a fairly high value product or service,
then it's a great place to hang out.
The thing is there are so many other things
going as well, so you see Facebook has had its challenges,
but Facebook advertising can work very well
for certain types of businesses.
You've got obviously Instagram,
which is very much up and coming, doing very well now.
Twitter, which is sort of okay,
but little bit level or possibly declining a little bit now.
So but the fundamental thing is is that especially
now, the way we interact and communicate
quite often multiple platforms are used
to trigger engagement.
So before we came in today we were actually discussing this,
weren't we, and how a journey might start off in LinkedIn.
That might then lead into several exchanges via LinkedIn.
It may be that the person goes off the boil
for a little while, so then basically Facebook can then
take over from there in terms of your engagement.
And that might then re-engage another conversation
on LinkedIn which then may the result
in an email conversation, which may then result
in a phone call.
Quite often it revolves around multiple touchpoints
to be able to engage with someone
so they ultimately want to buy from you.
- When you're talking to prospects that come in
and talk to you, because obviously,
they know what they want from you,
you're saying we will get you more hot leads, warm leads.
When they're talking to you, is it the fact
that there is so much to do,
there are so many platforms that they've now
got to approach, and got to be working on,
that they find it just overwhelming?
- Yeah, and that's a great point,
and I must admit that is why we largely specialize
around LinkedIn, because there are other routes you can go,
but especially when you're trying to do something yourself,
it's better to focus on one thing and do it really well
and get that working really well for you.
Then obviously once that's started to generate
a really good lead flow of opportunities for you,
then start being a little bit more adventurous
and start plugging into some of the other platforms
or technologies out there.
So yeah, don't know whether it helps
to answer that question.
- When you look at the different platforms,
and when you look at what people are doing on them already,
I feel that we're in a situation which I call AOR.
That people are putting more and more content
up on these different platforms.
Unfortunately it comes under the term AOR, any old rubbish.
If I see another video of somebody with no point
talking to me from the front seat of their car,
telling me that they've just had a meeting,
I will go spare, because it just seems at the moment
that those are the kinds of videos,
it seems to be any old content, any old rubbish.
You'll stick it up on the platform
and you're hoping to get results.
Is that the right way, or should you be more strategic,
and should you target better?
- I think that the latter is clearly a lot better.
Sometimes there is, it's interesting actually,
because sometimes, in fact, we did some tests
a few weeks ago, and literally one was very polished
video, and the other one was something actually
with a phone held up to a face, just filmed in real time,
just on a normal camera phone.
And it's interesting, the one that was based on the camera
phone actually got much better ratings on Facebook
than the other one did.
So I think it's probably because it was seen
much more in the moment, and also it was much more
that I was seeing this if I was communicating
with the person who's watching it directly,
as a conversation, rather than it being professionally
put together, if that makes sense.
- Well in that case, then, how important should--
- But I'm shooting myself in the foot
when I come to the studio--
- No, no, no, no, I can see that,
because, but that really, that kind of answers the question.
But I suppose the question I'm asking there is
that both of them, exactly the same content?
- No, the content was a little bit different.
- Well see, isn't it all about content?
Not delivery.
It's about content surely, isn't it?
- You're the expert on this. (laughing)
- Well, I'm not trying to pick a fight with you
all the same.
(laughing)
But for instance, what you do is that you do
very strategic, very targeted messages
when you're representing somebody on LinkedIn,
and you're doing that.
So you know, you research the messages,
you research all of that, well then,
for it to be a fair comparison,
it's about the message, how engaging it is,
what makes people watch to the very end.
Is that not important, do you think, or is it AOR?
Is it the fact that if you do stick any old rubbish up,
people, in some respects, if it's shaky cam,
will watch it?
I feel like I'm picking a fight now.
- Well, no, exactly.
With videos creating, obviously, in reality
it's not my specialist field.
Obviously, that's your area.
But in terms of putting content out there,
generally, for example, LinkedIn, when we put
articles or posts up there, especially if it
incorporates video, within usually 48 hours
we've had over 1,000 views,
which is pretty damn amazing for something
which is free at the end of the day.
- Nothing's free.
If it's free, then you are the product.
- Well, true.
(laughing)
It's true.
- But you're saying, so putting it up on a platform
that effectively feels like it's free.
- True, and I mean, what you drawing, basically,
is the currency of time, as it were.
So if you've managed to get someone to watch that content
it's putting you in a position,
building up in a position as an expert in that space.
Interesting enough, what I would say, though,
is it is actually still the direct personal outreach
which still scores far higher, though,
over all the content that you put out there
is very good in supporting your overall message.
But for example, if you engage people in the right ways,
say on something like LinkedIn,
so you're actually having a genuine conversation,
then the results can actually be quite quick with it,
whereas the other content you're putting up
tends to be more about building awareness
and building your credibility, and relationship of trust,
if that makes sense.
- I mean, we were talking about this whole thing.
Do you think that's still important
to build that relationship?
- Yeah, especially if you're predominantly selling
yourself, or your company organization,
and it's a fairly high product or service.
If it's more of a commoditized service,
then people are perhaps buying much more into that product
or that widget rather than into the individual.
- We've known each other now for a number of years,
and every time you come in I always find it interesting,
and exciting, and informative in what you do.
I think that the way your company does what it does,
the service it provides, is amazing.
If you don't know what the service is,
if you had to sum it up in a minute, what is it?
- Well, specialize in work with our clients
to generate leads, nurture those leads into hot prospects,
and then work with our clients to turn those
into sales-based opportunities.
- Now, as you alluded to earlier on,
initially, it seemed it was predominantly
on the LinkedIn platform.
Things have moved on now, and you're looking
at multiple platforms that you're working on
because it can come from anywhere.
It could even come from a lead at a sales show,
couldn't it?
- Yes, it could.
- So are you combining all that content
and tracking all that content to produce the final results?
- Yes, as best as we can, and again,
we were having this conversation earlier on,
as a conversation may start over LinkedIn
and that becomes the source for the initial inquiry,
but it may be the actual inquiry then goes
through to several different stages,
but it may be then, say, a Facebook adverts,
or it may be the fact that you've got a pixel
on your particular page on your website
that presented a particular type of message
to that prospect, which has finally triggered
that conversation.
But fundamentally enough,
the old school still applies, as well.
So ideally what you want to do as quickly as you can,
is get people to the point where they're actually
asking to have that conversation.
So the conversation could ideally you want to take offline
as quickly as you can, so it would be a phone call,
or a meeting, or coffee, or get them into the showrooms
if you're selling more in a car, for example.
Because at the end of the day, the old school still work.
But if it's underpinned by all the engagement
you can do online, and you can get that working
really well to start with, then that's great.
- Because we've got all this social media,
and all these platforms available, do you think
we are now more hesitant at actually picking the phone up
and calling people?
It always says on LinkedIn, doesn't it,
when you're giving a new contact,
start a conversation.
And I would wonder just how many people actually do that.
- Well, we've found when we reach out to people
on LinkedIn, it's an average, 30% or so that
at least accept the initial connection request.
Now you might say well, actually, that's quite low,
but in fact, if you compare that with say, email,
email does still work today, but it's obviously
a very saturated, the engagement rates on something like
LinkedIn are far, far higher,
and also the other thing to bear in mind as well
is that the average person on LinkedIn
typically earns well above the national average wage.
And in the UK alone, there's 25 million people
on the platform, 19 million profiles reasonably active.
So you know, it's a great place to start the conversation.
And the thing is as well to bear in mind, too,
is that in the old days you used to pick up the phone,
make a lot of outbound calls without any form
of engagement to start with.
These days, people become so resistant to that,
it is about trying to warm a person up first
so that they actually ask for that call,
or when you do ring them, they're at least
know who you are, or are keen to hear from you.
- They know what you're talking about.
- Exactly.
- Where do we start when it comes to
the Seven Transformational Steps to Sales Success?
- Well, I think the first thing is to define
and own your market.
So with that what we're really talking about
is actually being clear who your ideal target customers are,
and trying to think of people as being individuals.
If you can try and put a name, and work out
which sectors they're in, and what type of products
and services they're interested in buying,
and equally what their interests are, as well,
it'll help you a lot with the targeting.
So if you can do, because you can narrow things down
by industry sector, by location, by turnover,
by key phrase, a whole range of different things.
- Is there one important profile
kind of question you should be asking yourself?
Because I remember when we were talking radio,
everybody was talking to Doreen,
and Doreen would be middle-aged,
and she'd be we'd know what age.
When I was doing shopping telly,
we knew exactly the profile.
It was predominantly female, it was 35 to 55 year-olds,
they were rampant, at that time, rampant catalog purchasers.
They knew the price of everything.
The papers they would read would be The Mail, and so on,
and the publications they would read.
So we had a real profile of them, and we knew
who we were talking to.
Is that that important when it comes to businesses?
Do you need that much detail?
- Well, obviously wouldn't necessarily need that level
of detail, but you would need other types of detail.
So for example, if you're selling a service,
which might be, say, 10,000 pounds or dollars, by value,
you might say well, okay, who am I trying to reach?
You might be trying to reach people
in the technology and software sector, for example.
You might be trying to reach business analysts.
You might be trying to reach people who are part
of companies that employ more than 50 people.
You might be trying to communicate
predominantly as high as you can
to that CXO director/owner level, for example.
So if you know those type of things,
it makes a massive difference.
Location is important in a lot of cases.
But also key phrases can be really powerful,
so we use the example business analyst.
Well again, taking all those things combined,
you can actually end up with a really nice target
audience of people to go after.
And then once you know that, then that means
that you can start to put in place a nurturing process
to engage with those people, so ultimately they're asking
to have conversations with you.
- So typically then, it's probably the right thing to do
is to look for a value of the business
that will match the value of the product you're selling.
- Yes, as best as you can, definitely.
Because clearly, if you've got a high-value service,
you don't want to be offering it to people
who just will never be able to buy your product,
service, or widget.
- Which is a problem that some people have
when they go to the likes of, and they are other
networking events, but B&I for networking.
What you're doing is you're dealing with one-man bands,
single-men or women operations, who don't have
the available funds to, maybe, to action your product.
If you're looking for a plumber, great,
but if you're looking to sell multi-million pound
or a several thousand pound product,
they won't have the income or the cash flow to do that.
- No.
There was one slight caveat to that, though,
of course, is that plumber or electrician.
Guess what, they go into lots of people's houses.
So they themselves would know lots of other people.
- [Steve] The ongoing recommendation.
- Well, ongoing recommendation, it's also the people
in the outer network.
So we have repeat incidences, both with ourselves
and for our clients where, for example,
sometimes people can be really fixated at communicating
at director level.
Well, in reality, if it's a large company,
invariably, you'll be dealing with perhaps
a senior management team, rather than director level,
and you're then relying on the individuals
in those organizations to sell you from within.
- That is a process that we forget sometimes--
- [Rupert] So it's a multi-faceted approach.
- So who do you target, do you think in your mind's eye?
Do you target the company, or are you targeting
an individual with a view that they may recommend?
- Ultimately, it's the company may be interested,
but it's the individuals in the organization
which, they're in the B to B space,
which you'll particularly be targeting.
And it's about building relationships up
with those individuals so they actually
want to engage, and they'll sell you from within.
And that's especially if it's a large organization.
If it's a smaller one, then they may be one and the same
person, or as part of the director leadership team.
- So when we say define, that kind of defines
who our target audience is.
You say here that you've then gotta own your market.
What do you mean by that?
- What I mean by that is actually by being almost
the go-to person, or go-to organization
because you've been able to position yourself,
very nicely it leads into the next point,
as an expert in that particular space.
So, and if it's okay to lead on to the next point,
relating to that, it's also about building
on the relationship of trust.
And we talked about blogging and articles a bit earlier on.
That's another great way of positioning you
as being an expert.
But we find it really quite shocking, actually,
how people can actually hide their existence.
So they may think well, I've created a LinkedIn profile,
but actually forget your profile in LinkedIn
is actually the most important part of your real estate.
That's how people actually get to find out about you.
A lot of people don't go as far as looking
at the company page, so this is where it's interesting,
'cause LinkedIn is predominantly a B to B platform,
but actually we're communicating with individuals,
and it's about making sure that profile
is well-optimized to time with the business
that you're working for.
So people get to know your proposition really quickly.
- Time and time again we hear people talking about
LinkedIn, talking about the profile.
Why do you think we still get it wrong?
Do we see it merely as a, because it originally was
was a CV, wasn't it?
Do we still just see it as a CV, as opposed to that
valuable piece of real estate that is,
to all intents and purposes, the key landing page about us?
- Yeah, and I'm afraid LinkedIn also tends to
encourage you to perhaps construct things
slightly differently, as well,
because they make a lot of money off recruitment agencies.
So LinkedIn originally was a great place to put up
basically what was your CV online.
Now of course if your plan is to look for another job,
then make your LinkedIn profile look a bit
like a glorified CV.
If you're actually involved in running a business,
or business development within the organization,
then opt to make sure your profile is well optimized
to suit the people you're trying to reach out to.
And that bit of real estate is really, really valuable.
- They say at the moment that most businesses
do live in a world of obscurity.
Nobody knows that anybody's there.
You drive onto industrial estates,
and you'll see large, multi-nationals that are sitting there
that you've never, ever heard of.
Even they don't go to any lengths to promote themselves.
Here we are as individuals, and we're trying to project
ourselves as experts, or as industry thought leaders.
So getting the profile right, do you feel that is
the first step to going along that route?
- Yes, definitely.
And also the other part 'round that is
if you've got clients which are very pleased
with what you've done,
ask for a recommendation.
And also be very pleased to give one back
if you've got a great relationship with a client,
or other people you've worked for.
Have a give-is-gain mindset,
stealing the phrase from another respected organization.
But it is actually about giving it,
and also because if you give first,
then you tend to find that what comes back later on
is people then want to give back to you.
So if you give recommendations to others,
LinkedIn's great for encouraging you to give one back,
and that adds a lot to the credibility
when people look at your profile,
if they can see single recommendations in there,
that carries a lot of weight.
- If there was one piece of advice you would give
to somebody who is looking at redoing their profile
after this conversation today,
is it the linguistics that we use,
is it the way that we write it,
is it that we write it for ourselves,
or we write it for it to be read?
Is there one piece of advice you would give them
when it comes to that piece of profile writing?
- Yeah, I suppose the key thing is to make the person
feel you're writing it for them.
So write as though you're in your context,
so people feel engaged with it.
But also it is about communicating at a personal level.
So the first part of the profile needs to be
around you as a person,
'cause people need to buy into you first.
Next part is about your company or organization.
But a nice, typed paragraph, typically five or six
key ping points that people might buy into,
five or six key benefits, little bit of a sales hook,
and then your contact details.
So almost treat it like a one-page version of your website.
Very condensed.
'Cause your LinkedIn is also a microcosm
in its own site, in a way.
So you'll find that quite often when people start
to engage on LinkedIn, they won't necessarily
get as far as your website.
But the good thing is if they start to engage
and they start putting their hands up,
why not move things on to the next level?
So it's a great way of enabling
really positive conversations.
- And we always hear the word keywords, don't we?
To include some of the keywords
that people will be searching.
Are they single keywords, or are they long-tail keywords
where it's a particular sentence that people may search for?
- Yeah, that's a good one.
Obviously the bit at the top of your profile
it mentions more about your job title.
Try and make it not just relevant to your title.
So, for example, say it's CEO.
CEO is a little bit meaningless.
So I'm the head of the organization.
But actually put something descriptive in there
that gets very well indexed by Google,
just as well as your main part of your profile
gets very well indexed.
So try and write in such a way that people may put
such terms into Google because that way
you've got a much bigger chance of coming up
as well if people are not inside the LinkedIn platform
when they're looking for you.
- All right, so that's positioning ourselves
as an industry expert and not hiding.
Let's talk about the Social Selling Blueprint.
We're gonna work our way through this.
It's made up, it seems, of three key areas.
And we've got a minute, so let's just talk about
the areas generally, then we'll look at them
in more detail in a moment.
So a lead generation system, that doesn't have to be yours,
or it doesn't have to be anything in particular
as long as you have a lead generation system
in place within your organization, is that right?
- Yeah, obviously speaking generically, but if you think
of three cogs; the first cog to do with lead generation,
second cog to do with prospect nurturing,
so engage with people,
third cog to do with sales optimization.
All those three cogs need to turn in sync.
Obviously, this methodology works very well
on LinkedIn, but actually works very well
through email, or if you're trying to engage people
intentionally on Facebook or elsewhere.
And in fact, in real senses, if you're networking
as well, it follows the same basic principles.
You need to follow that process, but the problem is,
if any one of those cogs is not turning,
the whole lot just stops.
So that's a fundamental thing, it's an overview
of what you need to achieve.
- You're watching Business Connections Live.
Lovely to have your company with us today.
On the show today we're talking to Rupert Honywood.
He is the CEO of Business Growth Bureau,
your strategic partners in business,
and today we're talking about your Seven Transformational
Steps to Sales Success.
That's what we're talking about.
So we're looking at the Social Selling Blueprint.
Lead Generation System you kind of explained.
What about Prospect Nurturing System,
or is it better to work our way through
each bit in more detail?
What would you suggest?
- Well, I think we've actually touched a little bit
on the lead generation side, and the good thing
is we talked about lead targeting in the segment
a little bit earlier on as well,
so that's about helping you to identify
your ideal type of customers, and then segment those down
so you can end up with a really nice, honed group
of people to reach out to.
And the second cog, to do with the prospect nurturing side
is really about--
- This is a bit we don't do, isn't it?
This is a big, invariably, that we get out there,
if we're on LinkedIn, we connect with somebody.
This is the bit where LinkedIn goes start a conversation,
and we don't.
We don't nurture, do we?
- No, and unfortunately, LinkedIn sometimes is
their own worst enemy, because they'll encourage you
to send out a connection request to someone
without even personalizing the message,
because in theory, you can just click a button and do it.
Well, it's always best to personalize the message
because we're human beings again, we're not robots,
thank goodness.
Not yet, anyway.
So next part's when people want to engage
and they have accepted a request,
you really need to send a thank you message
out for accepting the connection request,
and then with that next message,
don't go out with any sales message.
It's about building up the next level of engagement,
because if you and I go out networking
and I said hello, I'm Rupert, and what's your name?
- [Steve] Not toward the air.
- Yeah, not toward, and then you turn 'round
and I came back and sold you my stuff,
and then walked away again, the point I'd make
is that it would make you feel quite disrespected.
In fact, you probably wouldn't want to refer them,
either, and you probably wouldn't want to buy from them.
So, yet, for some reason, people seem to think
it's acceptable behavior online.
So it does require a correct, personal approach.
But it doesn't need to take long.
If people really like what you have to offer,
and if your profile is well-optimized,
then people will engage,
and they'll stop putting their hands up.
So really, the whole prospect nurturing process
is all around that building on the relationship.
- We were talking, and I was pontificating outside
as I sometimes do, but invariably wrong,
and we were talking about the fact
that you don't build a relationship
with the shop assistant in Woolworth's,
if they still existed.
So is the nurturing bit really important?
Is it not about that you've got something,
and what you're really trying to do is
you're trying to attract somebody to say that's what I need.
I need that service, or I need that product
because that's what I'm looking for at the moment.
The nurturing is just the froth
around the outside, isn't it?
- No, I would say it's such a key part of it.
If you do have a service which is highly commoditized
people may not be interested in interacting with you
as an individual.
So Amazon is a case in point.
I know what I want on Amazon, so I go there
and I go and buy it.
- Yeah, there's no relationship there, is there.
- No relationship there, no.
But if you're talking about predominantly a value
or a service, or product which relies on human interaction,
then you need to interact with human beings,
and the people you're interacting with
need to actually be very likable, trustable,
and you need to feel that they--
- That's my future gone down the (mumbles).
(laughing)
Likable and trustable.
(laughing)
- So, but yeah, so and at the end of the day
people will engage with you then,
and you can move things on to another level.
- Have you seen real examples of that,
where you're engaging on behalf of somebody else,
so therefore you're creating a persona for them.
Have you seen where that really works,
or have you seen it where you've created the persona,
you've done the engagement, you've created a hot lead
for somebody, and the moment that they start talking
one-to-one that they're not really the persona
that you generated.
- No, because I think it depends how you craft the message.
Because when you first reach out to someone,
you don't necessarily know what they're most interested
that point in time.
So you can't be too specific over the questions
'cause they're not ready at that point,
and you may not even know.
But so the big thing is, I've seen people
making the whole process far too complex and complicated,
and the messaging, trying to get far too smart over it.
And that also could have the reverse effect.
And one of the worst scenarios, as well,
is if you go out straight with a pitch
the moment someone accepts your connection request,
'cause again, the relationship's not there.
You gotta build on it.
- If that's the norm, it's interesting there,
if that's the norm for the platform,
and it was the norm for the platform,
then that would be okay then, wouldn't it?
If that's what everybody's doing,
then everybody's doing it.
And if you accept a request from somebody,
then you are marketing yourself anyway.
The picture's already there in your profile.
Likewise, the picture's already there
for the person that you are connecting with.
They, too, have already pitched to you,
or you wouldn't be connecting with them.
Aren't we kind of looking for a,
kinda putting our pictures up about ourselves,
then we connect the two pictures together,
and then we're complaining about pitching to each other?
- (laughing) That's a great point.
I think the big thing is in your profile,
people are actually physically going to your profile
to have a look, so they would expect to see
what you do on your profile and how you can help them.
So I'm actually going there 'cause I'm interested,
whereas if you're actually--
- Would it be better then occasionally for us to go no.
- Sometimes, yes.
- 'Cause we live in a world of vanity by numbers, don't we?
Everybody goes hey, I've got 3,000,
3,000 LinkedIn connections.
I know barely any of them.
- Exactly.
And there's a very good analogy of that,
which I won't repeat on air,
respect to the bottom line is it is about reaching out,
engaging people, taking people through a nurturing process,
getting people warmed up so they're asking to have
those conversation, and as quickly as possible then
trying to take those people offline
so you can have a phone conversation, or a meeting,
or whatever your sales process is from that point onwards.
But whatever you do, don't let those leads go cold,
'cause people are expecting to hear from you at that point.
- How important do you think it is to actually,
to take them offline?
I know you said to me before that one the issues you have
is that you generate all these warm leads
and then people get a piece of paper and they go
these are all the warm leads, I'll phone them next week.
- Or if they phone them at all.
- [Steve] Yes.
- Which is quite shocking, actually, what we find.
And also, people go the other way.
They'll try and write these very convoluted,
so-called pitch messages, but not one's interested.
People have only got an attention span
of 10 or 15 seconds online, so you've got to be able
to grab their attention very quickly
and make it interesting.
And the more complex you make it,
things just then stop working
and people feel they're being sold to, as well,
and that's when it goes wrong.
So it is about the engagement part.
- Now there are gonna be internet marketeers
gonna be watching the program today,
and they're gonna be big fans of long-form sales letters,
and then what they're saying is that you're just
repeating the same thing over and over again
in a different way with testimonials, and calls to action
all the way through it.
Do you think is there still a place for those
long-form sales letters, or is it a particular niche
in the marketplace where there's a place for them?
- I think sometimes long-form sales letters
can work a lot better in an email rather than
through a LinkedIn message, because a lot of the time
we're looking at our LinkedIn messages
through our LinkedIn app on our phone,
so you're looking through a very small window there.
And a lot of the time as well, when you're doing it,
you're on the go, as well.
So it is about grabbing people's attention very quickly.
So if you have got someone's attention for 10 or 15 seconds
you're doing pretty well.
But you need to word the message in such a way
that people won't say yes to either one of those responses
without barely thinking about it.
So you need to make it so intuitive
that they want to engage with you.
That stuff just happens.
- I'm gonna put you on post.
Can you give me an example of that kind of question?
- Yes, for example, if you were to say, in our case,
as we're interested in business of helping people
to grow businesses, so a great question for us
would be are you interested in business growth?
Now you might think it's so blindingly obvious,
why would you ask the question?
But actually it sums up what we do,
and if someone can't answer yes to that question
they're not a good client for us,
'cause we want to help businesses to grow.
So that's actually an obvious question,
but it's also a qualifying question.
But it's also the type of thing that someone, in their mind,
can answer that without barely thinking about it.
Whereas if I actually made the sentence a lot longer,
and then try to wrap it up in some form of complexity,
I would have to think about it, and therefore
you've lost the moment.
You'll probably never hear from them again.
- It's interesting because isn't there a process,
is it the nine-word email?
I think it's something like that, maybe not nine words,
I'm not certain, but the question on the email
that you send out to old prospects, or old clients,
are you still interested in, fill in the gap?
And it's a yes or no question.
If they are, then that's good, and if they're not,
then it doesn't matter.
- Well, quite.
There is one slight caveat to that,
it can also be an issue of time.
Where sometimes ultra-short works, interestingly enough,
is via text message, and obviously you have to be
very careful of compliance, all this type of stuff now.
- You'll be in the door, you know that.
(laughing)
- [Rupert] We haven't got a barrister in the building.
(overlapping speech)
- A barrister, our GDPR expert.
- So, I mean, I don't know about you,
but if, for example, I'm about to meet someone,
but perhaps the appointment was arranged several weeks ago,
you might send a short text message out the day before
to simply say I've got a meeting tomorrow at 10 o'clock,
is that still convenient?
And most people, because it's a personal message,
will actually reply yes, sure, looking forward
to seeing you.
So very, very small sound bites like that,
especially through the medium of text,
can work very well.
So it doesn't have to be long,
whereas email sometimes, you can very short emails
can work well.
Equally, some longer ones can.
So LinkedIn, generally, with a qualifying pitch message,
try and keep it short as you can
'cause people's attention span's very short.
- Just very briefly, you talk about taking them offline,
which is interesting, so that is telephone calls,
written word, the letters, things like that?
- Yes, and in fact, we talked about it earlier on, actually.
Even good old boring lumpy mail just becomes
so unfashionable.
It is a great thing to do.
So again, if you've got high-value product or service,
that can be part of your integrated marketing solution.
So it doesn't have to be all through social media.
- That would be a really good name for a company,
wouldn't it?
(laughing)
- You're only saying that because, of course,
it's integrated.
- It's integrated marketing.
Moving slightly on.
(laughing)
We're gonna be talking about sales optimization systems
in just a moment.
Just give us a brief introduction to that then.
Sales optimization systems.
What do you mean by that?
- Okay, with sales optimization (stammering)
let's say you've got for every 10 hot prospects
that pass over to you, it might be for every 10 of those
that might lead into, say, three meetings,
that might lead into one sale.
Whatever your numbers actually are.
The important thing is actually knowing your ratios.
If you've got a product which is in demand,
it might be for every five you get through,
that leads into two meetings, it leads to one sale.
If you've got a very high product or service,
a value product or service, but it's also in a
very, very competitive space, your ratios might be
20, three, one instead.
And why is that so important?
Well, that helps to determine what activity
you need to put into the top of the bucket, as it were,
to actually generate those number of sales at the bottom.
And that's really, really important.
So you need to know your numbers both in terms
of the lead generation, but if you;re nurturing prospects,
so it's sales-based opportunities.
But you also need to know what the numbers are
in terms of the average value of a sale, as well,
because if, for example, you've got a product for sale
which is a thousand pounds or dollars,
but it's gonna cost you 2,000 pounds or dollars
to acquire that customer, clearly,
that's the fastest way of going broke.
But actually, a lot of people do it,
especially if you're using pay-per-click,
and Facebook, LinkedIn, are great case point.
If you get things wrong, you can burn through massive
amounts of cash really quickly,
- And it's easy to get wrong, isn't it?
- It is very easy to get wrong.
It's almost like you need to have, again,
a very well-oiled machine.
And again, this is the nice approach with something
like LinkedIn, 'cause apart from possibly needing
to upgrade to Sales Navigator, which we'd recommend,
what you can do on that the rest of it,
you can just invest your time
and generate some really good activity for your sales.
Course, if you really want to put rocket fuel under it,
then of course I'm biased, but you could use us.
But the point I'm trying to make is
it's very, very low risk, and you haven't got to pay
LinkedIn any other money to do it,
whereas you do pay-per-click, a click's just a click,
and it can burn through cash very quickly.
- The thing about LinkedIn, as well,
when it comes to pay-per-click, it's very expensive,
isn't it compared to the others?
I mean, it's the most expensive off the ones
that are out there, isn't it?
- Yeah, and at the moment the jury's still
a little bit out on how well that works at the moment.
It can work well, but it's much easier to get it wrong
on LinkedIn than it is through
some of the other platforms out there.
- More to come from Rupert in just a few moments time
hereon this edition of Business Connections Live.
I hope you're finding it interesting.
Fascinating insight into what you should,
and what you could be doing when you're online,
and when you're using your LinkedIn to grow,
and to get more prospects for your organization
and for your business.
Is there anything else we need to be considering
when it comes to optimizing our sales system?
- Yeah, I think that the devil's in the followup.
That's the most important thing.
- You just come on and said if someone contacts you,
follow them up.
- Yeah, we actually have to have conversations like that
regularly, actually.
It's quite shocking.
I think people have got this real fear of the phone.
And also, we talked a touch about this earlier on,
a little bit lazy, as well.
That people almost seem to expect people
just to come to them.
Well, if you put a website up,
you don't drive any traffic to it,
no one's gonna buy what you have to sell
so they're not gonna know you exist.
If you don't use some form of physical engagement
at different points, people are never going to
buy from you because they're not going to know, again.
So and the other part around that, too,
is what I would feel is the massive lost opportunity cost
through indecision.
In fact, we call it decision paralysis, in effect,
because what you can end up in a situation
is where a company's struggling to get business,
but what they do is they cut money on marketing
so if, for example, you've got a turnover of, say,
half million pounds a year, and your goal is to bring it up
to a million pounds over a year, you want to be increasing
the sales by 40,000 pounds a month.
So if you actually take a three month delay
in making that decision, that's actually cost your business
120,000 pounds, and that's straight on the bottom line.
So it's what clouds the decision process,
but it ties in very well with a lot of this,
'cause at the end of the day we want our customers
fundamentally to grow and accelerate
the rate of growth in their business.
- How often do you have that conversation,
and how difficult can that conversation be,
and the realization that they're losing that much money?
- It can be tough, especially it it's a smaller business,
because what can happen is you can
get sales that just dry up.
But because they're running it more as a lifestyle business
they not running it as a profit business
in the sense that normally you and I would invest in it.
So for example, if you realized you'd got a problem
in one particular area, you would invest and put money
into it if you knew it was going to get you
in to a much better place tomorrow.
So what ends up happening is someone,
people can fail to put the auction mask themselves,
so that's meaning that this business ends up
by being stuck in the same place,
never really being able to get out of it.
And of course, we're in great times at the moment
because we've got massive disruption going on
in the marketplace.
It's up to us to seize those opportunities of change.
The companies and organizations, or individuals,
which are bold and actually fight through now
are the ones that'll come through on the other side.
They'll be actually leaving a lot of the competition behind.
- With that we nearly said the B word.
- We didn't manage to say.
- We got away with it.
We never said the word.
Okay, now this is interesting.
It says here know your numbers and plug into,
it says your expert system.
When it comes to knowing your numbers,
you alluded to it earlier on, that a number of contacts
turn into a number of leads,
that turn into a number of meetings,
that turn into a number of sales.
How many businesses that you meet
actually do know those ratios, know those numbers
within their business, or are we reinventing the wheel
each and every time that we approach a prospect?
- Well, it obviously is gonna vary an awful lot
from one customer to another.
But where possible, what you need to be doing
is trying to work out which clients or customers
are unprofitable for you so you're not trying
to target those, and equally, could well be
that even large customers may not be right for you.
So for example, if you're dealing with local authorities
they may expect everything to be submitted
in the way of tenders.
Well actually, if you're turning over perhaps
a quarter million pounds a year,
can you afford to be spending a lot of time
putting in proposals for tenders?
It might be a massive tender.
Would you ever stand a chance to get in the contract?
How much does it really cost to acquire that customer?
So again, that ties in very much with the cost
of acquisition, that sort of massive hidden cost.
And it requires a high level of expertise.
So it is fundamentally really important about
getting to know your numbers, and then making sure
you target the right type of potential clients.
- Do you think that small to medium size businesses
actually what they do because they evolve
from the single-man startup, the single-woman startup,
that they seem to continue at the same kind of mindset
as they get bigger and bigger, so that, as you said,
they start as a lifestyle business,
'cause what it's doing, it's bringing in an income for them.
But even when they get to 100 employees,
they're still running it like a lifestyle business
and not running it as a business business.
- Yes, although I would say once you get up to that size
you typically would have probably a head of HR,
and you probably have a head of finance,
and all this type of stuff.
- Chances are, they've probably left by that stage.
- Well, they would have done if only because
it's had investment, probably they'd see it as
being voted out by the new board,
which tends to happen as well.
But I think it's born true in some of the stats,
'cause 76% of businesses in the UK,
and it's a similar percentage in the US, I believe,
are literally one-person businesses.
Another 18% of business employ between two and 10 people.
So 94, 95% of people, or companies in the UK and the US
are actually run by businesses which got 10 or less
people in them.
So, but that's a massive market.
You don't need to look at the numbers, they're massive.
So there's massive opportunities in that space,
but understanding you're trying to reach
is very important in terms of your targeting
from marketing point of view.
- I think today has been really valuable for organizations
and individuals who are looking to grow their business.
The biggest thing is that it is all about action.
The airways are all yours, who you are, where you are.
Camera number four.
- Lovely, thank you for that.
Fundamentally, it's about defining and owning your market.
Also, presenting yourself as the expert,
and not hiding your existence online.
It is about using the Social Selling Blueprint,
so Lead Generation System, prospect-nurturing,
sales optimization system, and it's also about
knowing your numbers, and knowing your numbers
is so important because that way you can determine
how much you can really afford to invest
in the growth of your business, and how you can
move it on to another level.
(optimistic music)

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