Archives: Resources

I want to try to help with a gift (hence the pic) to show you a method to generate 10 meetings for £20 without cold calling.

Number 1. BE FOCUSSED: What industry can you provide the most value? Pick 1 only!

Number 2. What value do you give the industry? A) make them money B) save them money or C) save them time.

Number 3. Quantify the above, I help “accountants” save X money by doing Y

Number 4. Find relevant accounts on Linkedin that match your industry, location and size of company

Number 5. Find the ideal decision makers at the company. Mid market or smaller start at the CEO and work down

Number 6. Save the Linkedin search URL’s of the contacts and pass them to a freelancer on upwork.com

Number 7. They will then take search results and put into a google sheet for you

Number 8. Get free trials with email search software like #Voilanorbert. They allow you 50 free emails (others do as well) Get 500

Number 9. Join reply.io for email sending on a 30 day free trial to send the emails.

Number 10. Make email highly personalised Hi John, I’ve helped accountants like you save money by doing X, happy to share insights, would you like to talk?

Number 11. Reach out to prospects on Linkedin, connect and start conversations, offer value first

Try this, it works. 10 meetings would be the minimum expectation.

#sales#prospecting#marketing#bootstrap

If I showed you a way you can get more sales and all you have to do is mention your worst feature to a prospect, would you believe me?

If you’re a founder or in sales I’m sure there are topics you want to avoid when talking to prospects

Perhaps there is a feature your competitor has that you don’t

Or maybe your delivery times aren’t great

Whatever it is, avoiding a topic because you fear it is quite simply kryptonite to sales

You never want to be “in your head” when talking to a prospect

When you’re not congruent your prospects feel something is off, something doesn’t feel right

And they would be correct, ultimately you are hiding something by not saying anything at all

Don’t wait for the topic you fear to come up

Raise it yourself!

Next time, raise one thing you fear to a prospect that you think is negative, then move on, don’t focus on it
 

 
Number 1: It probably isn’t as big a deal to the prospect as it is to you

Number 2: If it’s negative, by raising it voluntarily everything else you say after will hold 5 times more value to the prospect than if you didn’t mention it at all

Why? Because you’re being honest

Delivery times and features are nice but trust is what wins deals

If you know someone who could benefit from this please share

PS the picture is of a famous Seinfeld episode where George does the opposite and starts being honest. He approaches a woman in the diner and tells her he is unemployed and lives with his parents. She is very impressed and likes the approach. 🙂

#sales #marketing

Free consulting is where you give a prospect all your answers and knowledge before qualifying them as a potential client.

If you want to sell more the advice given will help. (Sandler sales training inspired)

I know it feels good to unload all your knowledge on someone. You feel intelligent and you feel that you are busy.

You can even justify this by saying well there is “the law of reciprocation” in that if I help them they will just want to do business with me.

This isn’t the case.

Help others by all means but don’t expect anything in return.

If you want to win new clients respect your time and respect your knowledge.

First, understand if the prospect has a problem that you are indeed able to solve.

There is no point spouting possible solutions unless you know that your solution is relevant.

It’s a waste of time for the prospect and you.

So next time you are on a Zoom call.

Hold off on your fancy presentation. Instead, take the time to learn about your prospect.

You don’t do this as a sales gimmick.. you do it because you really need to know if your company can solve their problem.

It’s as simple as that.

#sales#sandler#qualify#close#owner

The Trust Ladder is a concept I learnt from the company Xant Labs and the founder of Insidesales.com, Ken Krogue. I really wanted to share it as I think it is some amazing insights.

The Trust Ladder explains the different levels of trust you can have in the mind of a prospect. The higher up you go the more trust you start off with. As we all know gaining trust is the best way to driving long term business with a client so understanding the trust ladder will give you a big advantage and show you ways to position yourself to gain more trust.

So here it is in summary, in order from highest to lowest.

1. Family

2. Friends

3. Industry Expert

4. Industry Peer

5. Celebrity

6. Common Experience

7. Earned Right

8. Peer

9. Acquaintance.

10. CEO of your company

11. Your Boss

12. You

Family – Of course if you know a prospects brother, mother, father etc this is going to bring the highest level of trust immediately. Perhaps you did business with their father. Or you dated their sister (maybe don’t mention this). But you get the idea. Family is the highest level of trust.

Friends – Do you know any of their friends. Are you friends with them already. Look into who is in their circle and see if there is any cross over.

Industry Expert – If you are a well known expert within your industry that is invited to speak at events and everyone knows you will have a really high level of trust. This is an area we can all be working on in order to reach this expert level.

Industry Peer – Let them know you are from the same industry as them. This builds trust as you are both from the same background and will have a lot of knowledge cross over.

Celebrity – This is why companies pay the big bucks – if a celebrity is endorsing your company then you are going higher up the trust ladder.

Common experience – Did you go to the same events? Did you go to the same school? the same uni? Do you come from the same city / country? Do you go for the same football team?

Earned right – This is where you take time to earn the right to contact someone. Perhaps you have reviewed their website and come up with 10 steps they can take to increase conversion rates and you put this into a document. You certainly have earned the right to contact them. It doesn’t have to be so detailed it could simply be that you took 5 mins to read up about the prospect and now you have earned the right by being more personal.

Peer – They are a CEO you are a CEO, they are in sales you are in sales.

Acquaintance – You met them once at a previous event

CEO – The CEO because of the senior role always has increased trust. (Perhaps if you are not getting anywhere with your sales cadence build in a personal email from the CEO)

Your boss – Like above your boss has more credibility by status than you so use this when you need to build trust. Get them to come in on a meeting and introduce themselves. Jump on a call briefly etc.

You – we all have to start somewhere but by using the trust ladder, reviewing peoples backgrounds and profiles there is no reason you can’t find some cross over for shared experience or to earn the right.

I hope this helps in your prospecting endeavours.

www.vouchworks.com can help you with your sales prospecting requirements.

I learnt the trust ladder from Ken Krogue at Insidesales.com before they rebranded Xant. It explains how you can scan what you have in common with a prospect to gain their trust. Highest point on the ladder is family. What is at the bottom? #salesprospecting hashtag#sales #demandgeneration

I want to share a close that helped me sell in excess of 1 million dollars in products

It’s funny so I thought I’d share it

This close is suited for high-value B2C companies

I know what you are thinking, closes don’t work

I agree If you haven’t built rapport or listened then no “close” will work

I was selling home improvement products like roofing with prices £10 / £20K so not cheap

Usually sold to a husband and wife at their home

A negotiation always took place, I’m at 20K the client wants it for 15K

I would call my manager to ‘approve’ a price reduction which I knew he could (the prospect needs to feel they earned the reduction)

While on the phone: “John, my manager says he can’t do it at £15K but he can meet you halfway at £17.5 however it’s on one condition”

The buyer is concerned about the condition and is keen to know what this is

“He can do it at 17.5 on the condition that you take your wife out for dinner”

The wife and husband look at each other. Smile / laugh and then turn to me

“Are you happy to move forward?”

90% – YES

Followed by “My manager would like to thank you for your business” (great to secure a sale – hard to take back a thankyou)

This close works because it turns a stressful moment into a funny one

#sales #close

Do you use email as part of your outreach strategy?

Did you know in 2019 over 280,000,000,000 emails were sent? (280 billion emails said in Dr Evil voice)

With such high levels of emails floating around these days companies like Google and Microsoft have tightened their spam filters to protect their users.

Spam filters are reading emails and looking for certain words and the combination of these words in an email.

Try to avoid words that make exaggerated claims or promises like:
100% more
100% free
100% satisfied
Additional income
Be your own boss
Best price
Big bucks
Cash bonus

Avoid using too much urgency:
Act now
Apply now
Become a member
Call now
Click below
Click here
Get it now
Do it today
Exclusive deal

Going through a list of words and checking them off isn’t going to be a great use of time.

So I’ve included a link with a spam checker you can use instead. https://brotherhood.zone/spamwordschecker.html

Just copy your email in here and press submit to see what words might be causing problems.

#emailmarketing #spamfilter #b2b

If you want to significantly increase the sales in your B2B business be careful not to fall into the automation trap.

The world is constantly moving towards automation and AI. Every process in your company is currently being improved with robotics or some form of AI but when it comes to new business sales development in my opinion traditional methods beat automation.

It is natural to want to automate and let a machine do the work and in a lot of use cases it delivers tremendous results. Where automation/AI falls short is trying to engage with C level, Directors and owners of companies. Decision makers have their own AI, it’s called their mind and if a message looks like it has been automated the chances of it going to spam have gone up exponentially.

What works best in B2B sales is traditional sales methods. Taking the time to establish the best target accounts, mapping out the decision makers within them, researching the companies, the decision makers and sending highly personalised messages based on this research that is relevant and engaging.

Personalised and thought out messages pass the decision makers AI of the mind and deliver great results. You will engage more of your target accounts, book more meetings and improve the reputation of your company with all prospects. If a decision maker doesn’t need your service right now your company has left a much better impression for the future when they do.

Did you know 83% of executives say they are happy to receive cold email as long as the message is personalised and relevant to their company. Sending a message where there are a few variable fields based on name and company will not work effectively these days. People are aware that tech exists to place a few common variables spread out in a message. The human mind can see those variable fields in 2 seconds and in a further 2 seconds your message in in spam. What gets past this is actually sending a personalised message.

Direct mail has is starting to have a renaissance.

Everyone thought sending a letter was dead but let me ask you if you received information from a company that was highly personalised, that offered valuable insights specific to your role/industry and that included a hand written note what would you think? Unless you are one of these people who hate all forms of sales I would dare say you would be impressed. When the sales person follows up to this message your connect rate will go up dramatically and the prospect will give you the time of day because you took the time for them.

There are no short cuts, it takes old fashioned time and effort. This cuts to the main point that in the B2B world what resonates is the opposite of automation. When someone knows you have taken the time to stop, think about them, their company and how you can help them this is what resonates. This is what breaks through in todays world of automation and AI.  The human element.

This does take time and most sales people don’t want to spend their days researching and putting together personalised messages. It isn’t the sexiest thing in the world to do is it but what is sexy are the results it brings.

I can help your company drive more meetings and engagement through these old fashioned methods. connor@vouchworks.com

#sales #marketing #b2b #ABM #accountbasedmarketing #leadgeneration #salesstrategy #ai #automation

How should I grow my business?💰

There are so many options. Email, Linkedin, SEO, PPC, hire a sales rep, events, channel, content, outsource, cold calling.

What to do? It’s confusing.

How to grow your business is a dilemma most founders find themselves having.

To answer this question, ask some different questions first.

The first question to ask is what is your client’s lifetime value?

Until you know what a customer is worth to your business it’s difficult to plan what acquisition strategy to use?

I like to use a rule from the SAAS industry which is to try not to spend more than 1/3rd of your client value (income) on acquiring new clients.

Let’s say a client pays you £40K in revenue over their lifetime and the gross margin is £20K.

In this example your budget to acquire new clients is circa £6500. (33% of CLV)

If you convert on average 1 in 10 leads you have a budget of £650 per qualified lead.

We should also ask:

How much time can I dedicate to these tasks?

Do I want to learn how to do it?

How much money do I have right now to invest?

How quick do I need a payback?

The answers to these questions will help you pick the right strategy.

#CLV#marketing#cac#strategy

Are you happy with your sales pitch?

Does your pitch include a section about your Promised Land?

The Promised Land strategy is used by hundreds of VC backed tech companies and has increased sales in some cases by 10x!

Once developed your promised land will act as your company’s over arching strategy.

This approach was created by Andy Raskin.

Andy states: “The Promised Land is my shorthand for the desirable, difficult-to-achieve future that you commit to make real for your customers”

Elon Musk showcased his promised land which was “Accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”

Your promised land must be desirable to your client.

Show that this change taking place will bring about new winners and losers.

Describe how the change is happening with or without your company which makes it easier for your clients to buy in.

Sell your promised land to your clients.

As your company believes completely in this vision your services are totally geared to helping clients reach the promised land.

Your visions of the future align. This is the change you are trying to bring about in the world.

If you’d like a copy of a presentation that uses the “Promised Land” approach and has been called the best sales deck ever, just type “Deck” in the comments.

 

#sales

RARE TIP – Change your mind set and change your results. (Guaranteed)

Most sales people are feeling nervous when they cold call. If you feel you are not worth the time of your prospect on the call then you are dead.

A lot of sales people deep down don’t think the decision maker really should speak to them. You feel like an imposter and the receptionist is doing you a favour by busting you.

Yes they realised I am an imposter and the call can end now.

Instead I want you to think that you are the CEO of a billion dollar company.

You are in your own private office, sitting on a beautiful leather chair, at a mahogany desk, your office looks out onto the city, you are in a £2000 pound suit and you are smoking a Cuban cigar.

You realise you need to share valuable and time sensitive information with the CEO of another company (prospect). Take this mind set into a cold call.

What I want you to feel is this:

You have value. You are important. You have valuable information that you must share with the prospect.

It’s truly valuable to them and you are doing them a favour by sharing it with them.

The difference in your tonality, timing, confidence and belief will help you improve results dramatically. (give it a try)
#sales