Love Your Business TV - Videos Archives

Making Your Cashflow Work Harder

Make your cash last longer and stretch further

In this show, I’m joined by Richard Mason and we’re going to show you how you can make your cash work harder for you and your business.

Making Your Cashflow Work Harder. Richard Mason from Ricosta Capital answers these three keys questions:

We Never Seem To Have Enough Money At The End Of Each Month

We’ve just won a nice project but we need cash before we get paid. Our bank has turned us down who can help?

Our bank has just withdrawn our facility where can we go now?

Plus looks more free business finance advice.

To access the FREE CASH Review >>> click here <<<<

FREE Business Advice & Tips…

Transcript From Live Show

And remember…Better Never Stops

How To Run Effective Marketing

Is your marketing giving you the return expected? How To Run Effective Marketing campaigns with leading expert Jake Mason

Love Your Business TV – In this show we answer three questions to enable you to run better marketing on-line campaigns:

1. How to get the most out of your website
2. Pay Per Click – where do you start
3. How to get the highest possible return on Pay Per Click

Today I’m joined by Jake Mason to talk about how to run effective marketing campaigns on Google & Facebook. Jake has enormous experience in this area having previously run marketing campaigns for Netflix & B&Q to name a few.

FREE Business Advice & Tips…

Transcript From Live Show

Adrian Peck:
Would you like your website to be more effective? Good afternoon, and welcome once again to Love Your Business TV. I am Adrian Peck, I am the host of Love Your Business TV. I’m also the founder of Better Never Stops. We deliver business advice and coaching programs to entrepreneurs and business owners across the UK, helping them feeling more fulfilled, more rewarded, and certainly have more fun in their businesses.
Adrian Peck:
I’m really passionate about helping the UK’s business owners and entrepreneurs to get the most out of their businesses. Every week I do this live broadcast to Facebook and YouTube to hopefully give you lots of free advice and tips so you can improve your business and you can make all that hard work so much more worthwhile. I’m also the author of How To Fall Back In Love With Your Business: The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Rediscovering Your Mojo And Enjoying Everyday By Living Your Dream.
Adrian Peck:
Now, if you want to catch up on any previous episodes, we stream this live on Facebook and YouTube. We also turn it into a podcast and it goes onto Spotify, Apple, and Google so you can catch up on all the previous episodes there. If you want to reach out to me, please do. I love the feedback you’ll be giving me. It’s [email protected]. You can get back to me any time and just reach out to me. If you’ve got any questions today that we’re going to covering, then please just drop them in the message bar as well and we can cover off any questions there.
Adrian Peck:
So I’m going to move on today. I’m really, really excited today. We’ve got Jake Mason’s joined us today. I will just get him on screen actually, because he’s disappeared. He should come on here. Welcome Jason.
Jake Mason:
Hello.
Adrian Peck:
Jake even. Got your name wrong, that’s really embarrassing.
Jake Mason:
Great start, great start.
Adrian Peck:
Deary me. Good afternoon to Jake Mason. Jake is somebody I’ve known now for about a year. I’m going to let him introduce himself, but if I just dropped in the word, Netflix and B&Q, hopefully you’ll be a little bit excited by him. Let’s just make you a bit bigger there, Jake. So please introduce yourself, Jake.
Jake Mason:
Hi, I am not Jason, I am Jake. Very easy mistake to make. It’s actually been made my entire career. Having the name Jake Mason very quickly at a scan of an email, it looks like Jason, so I will respond to Jason, I respond to Jake, call me what you like.
Jake Mason:
Thank you for that kind intro, Adrian. I should have used another name there for you, but unfortunately I’m not quite that quick. Thanks for that kind intro. As Adrian says, I’m Jake Mason, I run a marketing agency, digital marketing agency called Incaloop. My background is in big media agencies. I led the digital marketing strategy for Netflix and worked on large clients like B&Q and Nintendo, amongst others.
Jake Mason:
Ultimately, I help businesses to navigate the minds of their consumers and figure out how to create digital marketing that takes someone from unaware of your brand, unaware of your product, all the way through to acquiring them as a customer, retaining them, and upsell and beyond. That’s me and that’s what I do. Hopefully that all makes sense.
Adrian Peck:
Fantastic. As always, Jake has undersold himself. I’ve known Jake for over a year now and one of the things that’s always struck me with Jake is the amount of the detail he knows. It’s not about digital marketing, it’s about actually customer engagement and he’s extremely good at it. I’m really pleased that he’s joined us today to go through this.
Adrian Peck:
Just to keep you up to speed, Jake, really, we’ve been running this series. I put out a survey to a whole bunch of people on my email addresses and on social media, and got some feedback in terms of what their big challenge was at the moment. One big challenge was around sales and lead generation, so we’ve been running these series of these programs and this is the last one on it. What we’re going to cover today really is about how to run effective marketing.
Adrian Peck:
What we’ve done previously is we covered off a focus on lead generation, so about lead generation channels. We covered off what those channels were, how you use them. Then we looked at turning leads into sales and Mike Killen joined us for that one. Then last week I’d done some stuff around asking for the order and how you close business.
Adrian Peck:
The last couple of ones, and I want to jump back because it’s something we’ve done on the 26th of May and I had some questions that came out of that, which is what I’m going to fire at Jake today and really put him on the spot. But we looked on program on the 26th of May around lead generation channels. We kind of covered off what was channels. We then looked at what some common mistakes are around why they’re not really effective, about not using enough and having that match. Then I left you with some actions, which was around making sure you’ve got the right target market, knowing where they look and find, and then doing this market channels.
Adrian Peck:
So what I want to move on today and the reason I’ve got Jake here is to then look at how we then make them effective. I’ve got three quite powerful questions, hopefully that we’re going to really stretch Jake and get our value out of him this afternoon. The first one really is we’ve got a website, which we’ve spent a ton of time putting together, but it doesn’t generate any business, what have we done wrong? This is quite typical question I hear from lots of business owners, so what’s your advice on that, Jake?
Jake Mason:
Yeah, it’s a great question and I hear it all the time as well. Ultimately, the answer is often that the website has been built as a brochure and has been built to sell the product, and it’s not been built in the way that you would normally talk to a customer. If you’re talking to a customer, if you’re talking to a potential customer and doing a pitch, whether your business to business or whether you’re business to consumer, it doesn’t really matter. If you were selling your product or your service, you would introduce yourself, you’d say who you are and then you would go on to say what you do, and you’d talk about your service a little. But before you actually went into pitching it, you’d ask them some questions and you ask them who they are and where they live and how much they earn or whatever the relevant questions are to your specific sector.
Jake Mason:
On the back of that, you’re getting valuable information that enables you to position your product in a way that positions it based on the challenges that they’re facing and their unique circumstances. Ultimately that enables you to pitch your product and your service far more effectively than you would be able to if you just went, “Hey, here’s a brochure. Do you want this or not?” Because nine times out of 10, the answer is going to be no, but if you sit down with someone and understand their circumstances and go, “Well my product, my service can assist you with this challenge with X or with Y challenge, you’re much more likely to get the outcome you want.”
Jake Mason:
Often the website just hasn’t been designed like that and that makes a lot of sense because websites have for years been treated like brochures, like digital shop fronts, but not the actual shop inside because when you step in a shop, you often speak to a sales representative and they ask questions and they sell to you. It makes the sales process a lot better and a lot more collaborative.
Jake Mason:
So often getting someone to a website is tricky and we might come onto that in a second, but if you’ve spent a lot of money on the website and you’re not generating any business, it may very well be because you’re asking your customers to take a step that they’re not actually yet willing to take. You first need to figure out whether the people that are coming to your website are the right people. How long are they spending on your site? Are they engaged? Are they going to lots of different pages? Do you think they’re actually ready to take the action you’re asking them to take?
Jake Mason:
Then the second thing is the action you’re asking them to take. What are you actually getting them to do? What are you asking them to do? Often it’s, here’s what we do and here’s a contact form, or here are all our products, buy them. Typically, a lot of the time and a lot of the time when we come up against this query, it’s because the website is asking someone to take an action that they’re not yet warmed up enough to take. They’re not yet invested enough in your product, in your service. They don’t know you enough. They haven’t seen testimonials. Often that’s the case, either number one, you’ve driven them to the website too early and you haven’t warmed them up with marketing to get them ready to actually take the action or the action you’re asking them to take is too heavy. It’s too kind of heavy footed.
Jake Mason:
So for example, you might be asking them to purchase when actually what they want is to see a product demonstration, or you might be asking them to get in contact with you when actually what they want is they want a bit more information. They want to see that you’re an authority in your space. So often you can do this from a business to business perspective. If you do most of your business on Zoom calls or on face to face, and you need a face to face consultation, what you want is a lead and obviously a contact form can be a way of generating leads, but typically people hate filling out contact forms because what they’re going to get at the end of it? They’re going to get a sales phone call.
Adrian Peck:
One of the common problems you’re coming across then is actually that you’re throwing up a brochure website that actually doesn’t necessarily ask questions or have that engagement, so that’s kind of the first bit I’m getting from that. Then the second part then is actually how you’re then asking that kind of call to action.
Jake Mason:
Yeah. It’s audience, and what you’re asking them to do. Think about who you’re reaching, how you’re getting them to the website and then what you’re asking them to do on the back of coming to the website. If you’re, for example, reaching someone who has just become aware of you and your business, and you’re asking them to take an action and you’re asking them to get in touch with you, the chances are they’re not going to do it unless there’s a really compelling reason to do it.
Jake Mason:
If you’ve been speaking to that person for six months and they know who you are and they see you as an authority within your space, if you then ask them to do something they’re much more inclined to take that action even if the value to them is a lower, because they know you, they know what you do, and they see you as very high value. Therefore they’re more inclined to engage with you. So all these things need to be considered and each individual business will need a different way of approaching this, whether you’re business to business, whether your business to consumer, and what you sell.
Jake Mason:
Typically the higher the value of the sell, higher the value of the product, the softer touch you want to take in the beginning. You want to give something away for free and you want to give something pretty high value away for free to encourage someone to get in touch with you when they’ve come to your website. Otherwise, they’re very unlikely to take that action. If it’s a very low value product, so if you’re asking someone to part with £10, £50, £100, yeah then perhaps you can ask them.
Adrian Peck:
It’s pretty low risk then, isn’t it?
Jake Mason:
It’s low risk, and it’s more about a kind of spur of the moment sale. Yes, you don’t necessarily need to do as much warming of people, but still, it certainly helps to warm your audience up before they come to your site.
Adrian Peck:
Okay, so that brings me on to the next question then is, again, when I touched on the show back on the 26th of May, I looked at some of the channels and I’ve spoken about pay-per-click and the fact that it’s not just the point of having a website, you need to try and get some traffic to it. So we want to do some page click advertising, but where do we start? What’s your advice on that?
Jake Mason:
Yeah, so in order to think about any advertising, any paid for marketing, you need to first understand your consumers, your customers, your potential customers. The best way we find to package this up and understand it is something called the consumer DNA model. The consumer DNA model is a way of understanding how people are made aware of your business and then the stages they go through in order to get ready to purchase.
Jake Mason:
So the D in the DNA stands for drive awareness, and that’s the role of your business at that stage. The N stands for nurture prospects. Again, that’s the role of your business at that stage. Then finally, the A is the acquisition, is the acquiring of customers. So D for drive awareness, N for nurture prospects and A for acquire customers, the consumer DNA model. Ultimately at the top, where you’re starting with driving awareness, that’s broadcast, that’s making people aware of what you do, how you do it, positioning yourself as an authority in the space.
Jake Mason:
When someone is then aware of who you are and what you do, you can then start communicating to them in a different way. You can start to nurture them. You can start to give them testimonials. You can start to say, “Hey, look, we’ve talked about our product and you know who we are, but actually we can back that up. We’ve got great customer reviews. Look at these product demos. Look at the time we’ve spent packaging this product up. It’s amazing. It’s great. It will benefit you.” Then finally, when you’ve warmed someone up and they’re like, this sounds good, great. I’ve absorbed all this information. Finally, then you can ask them to take an action. You acquire that customer.
Jake Mason:
So you need to move someone through all of these stages before you can take any action. If you’re selling something very, very low value, perhaps you can do all of these three in one single session with an advert, taking them through to the website and then finally them purchasing. If it’s much higher value, the drive awareness can take months. The nurture prospects can take months as well. Acquiring customers, that sales process, again, could take months. So how you move through that will depend directly on the value of what you’re selling and your specific sector, but these three steps are true irrespective of the product and irrespective of the service you’re selling.
Adrian Peck:
Some products will more move faster through that process than others.
Jake Mason:
Absolutely.
Adrian Peck:
And others will take longer. What you’re saying is the higher value of the product then actually the slower that process is going to be, and therefore the more engagement.
Jake Mason:
Yeah. Typically, that’s right, yeah. So how does that work and how does that help frame that question? We want to do some pay-per-click advertising, but we don’t know where to start.
Adrian Peck:
What are the platforms? Pay-per-click is quite a throwaway [inaudible 00:15:14] almost, what are all the pay-per-click platforms and what are the differences on them?
Jake Mason:
Yeah, so pay per click advertising is just a catch all term for any advertising where you can essentially advertise and get someone to click through and optimize that back to a cost per click, a pay-per-click. Originally, there were platforms that you literally would only pay for a click on, so you wouldn’t pay to actually show the ad, you’d only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad. But it’s a bit broader than that nowadays.
Jake Mason:
So ultimately the most well known platform, which I’m sure pretty much everyone watching this video will be aware of is Google. It is the best and biggest, most amazing advertising platform in the world, because ultimately they’ve somehow created a platform that enables advertisers to be able to bid when someone is searching, is giving their intent. They are saying, I’m in the market for this, they’re sticking their hand up and they enable advertisers to go, I want to sell an advert to that person. Incredible.
Jake Mason:
But how does that fit into the consumer DNA model? Well, if someone’s searching for something, for example, they’re searching email software, email automation software. They’re already in market, so they already know about it. So that drive awareness, that top stage you’ve kind of missed. You’re already in the position where they are getting ready to evaluate their options and to almost purchase. So advertising to someone at that stage, you need to be aware that actually you don’t necessarily, if you try to drive awareness at that stage, it’s not going to work. You need to start talking about your product benefits in order to get them to click on your advert.
Jake Mason:
So Google being a big key player in that, Amazon being another one, Amazon being a huge marketplace, primarily obviously on the business to consumer side, that’s just selling products for businesses. Google Display Network being another one, Google Display Network is millions of third party websites where you can place your website and apps or you can place your advert as a display advert, and pay when someone clicks on that. Facebook being another platform that enables your huge scale and cost effectiveness.
Jake Mason:
But ultimately, if you don’t know where to start with paper-per-click advertising, think rather than the platform, think I need to be on Google. Think, where is your consumer giving off the signals that they are in market? Is it on Google? Because not all purchases will result in someone going, “I need this on Google.” They won’t necessarily give away that signal. They might be doing it elsewhere. They might be doing what on LinkedIn.
Jake Mason:
So when you’re thinking about how to reach someone and when to reach someone, think about the journey that they go through online and what signals they’re going to be giving off. Are they going to be on social? Are they going to be looking on review sites? Are they going to be on Google? Where are they going to be hanging out and where can you reach them with a meaningful message that’s going to reach them at the right time for them to come to your site?
Jake Mason:
So rather than thinking about paper-per-click advertising, start thinking about where people are and when are they in the right mind frame to receive my message? Because ultimately, ideally you want to start, if you’re going to start advertising, you want to start and put your money right down the bottom of that drive awareness, nurture prospects and then acquire customers. You want to get people where they’re almost ready to convert because that’s where you’re going to get the highest return on investment.
Jake Mason:
However, the ability to be able to spend lots of money at that stage is very limited because all your competitors are going to be there. If you want to distinguish yourself, you need to move up to nurture prospects and then up to drive awareness. That is what enables you to capture your audience all of your own and then they come through to you and your website rather than going to Google, and you are able to then command that audience and own that audience, rather than all your competitors being able to see their digital actions. When they go on Google, you can see it and bet on them. I hope that makes sense and is clear.
Adrian Peck:
Indeed, well, it kind of brings us perfectly onto the next one really then is about really, again, this is the, I see this a lot with businesses. They will have a bit of a dabble, what I call a bit of a dabble on pap-per-click and they’ll stick £500 or £1000 a month and they’ll throw onto Google. Like you’ve just explained really, if you’re doing it purely on that search term basis where people are in the market and they are now ready to buy it, you’re now going to compete with everybody else out there. Hence, very quickly you can burn through £500 or a £1000 pretty quickly with actually not a lot of return on it. So this is something I see a lot where people have dabbled in pay-per-click, but they’ve had a very poor return on investment or actually even they can’t even measure it. That’s a whole different question, but they’ve had a poor return on investment, so how do they then optimize and get that better return investment?
Jake Mason:
Yeah, that’s a great question and the answer unfortunately differs based on the products and service being marketed. Digital advertising came along and didn’t replace other ways of advertising like TV and press and out of home advertising, it compliments them. But because it was suddenly trackable and you could see, oh someone’s clicked on my advert, oh they’ve come through to my website and oh, they’ve purchased, fantastic. Suddenly you could start attributing a value to that and you could say, oh, they’ve purchased. They spent £500. Brilliant. How much did I spend to get that person? How many other adverts did I show? I spent £400 pounds. Fantastic. So I spent £400, I’ve got £500 back. Winner, brilliant.
Jake Mason:
The problem with that is the limitation of digital platforms is that they can only track someone for so long. You can’t track someone indefinitely. So when you’ve shown them an advert or when they’ve clicked on your advert, you can only track them for a certain period of time. So if they take an action off the back of seeing your adverts after that platform, Google, Facebook is able to track them, so they can’t track them any longer, there’s no way of reporting actually that advert played a role in that purchase. That’s a massive limitation.
Jake Mason:
In addition to that, there’s no way of also saying, well, I handed out lots of flyers. Did that person see my advert and did they see my flyer? So we have to take the metrics we get back in digital advertising with a big pinch of salt. That’s where agencies can obviously help and fill the gap because that’s where we’ve got the experience.
Jake Mason:
But in reference to how to improve your return on investment directly, first off, think about the value of your purchase. If it’s a high value purchase. And if it’s a long sale cycle, the chances are that you’re probably not picking up a lot of the purchases that are happening because the tracking is running out. The timer on the tracking is running up before people are making that purchase. So bear that in mind, it may be that it is giving you a return on investment but you can’t track it directly. So that’s the first thing to bear in mind. If it’s a shorter sales cycle and you feel like you should be able to track it and it’s still not delivering a return on investment, then maybe there’s a bigger issue.
Jake Mason:
You need to think about the who, what, when, where, and how of your advertising. The who being who are you targeting? So is your audience the right audience? Are you utilizing all of the levers and the channels that you can to be able to market to your audience? Because first off, you want to be targeting the people that are hottest, that you can deliver your acquisition marketing to. Those are the people that have been on your website, that have shown interest. Those are potentially lapsed customers that bought from your previously and haven’t bought in a while. That’s a fantastic place to start.
Jake Mason:
A lot of platforms like Facebook enable you to upload a custom audience, a database and market to those specific people and only those people. That’s where you should start pretty much any marketing because those are the guys that are most likely to convert, and they’re going to deliver your strongest return on investment. So that’s the who. The what, actually we’ll get jumped forward and go to the when.
Jake Mason:
When is extremely important, because again, think about the consumer DNA model, think about where someone is in that journey towards purchasing. Are they at the stage where you just need to make them aware or are they at the stage where you’re actually able to give them the messaging and being ready to purchase?
Jake Mason:
It’s very, very, very regular that we speak to businesses that are asking people to take an action when they’re a cold audience, so they’re saying, “Buy this product, or come and be a lead or join this webinar.” They don’t know who the business is. If you were receiving that advert, ask yourself, would I take that action? Most of the time the answer is no, so why would you be serving someone and advert? That’s just bad advertising. You need to ask someone to take an action that is representative of how well they know your business.
Jake Mason:
So that’s the when. The where is just as important. That covers the point we were talking about earlier. You need to be on platforms that are representative of where that person is in their journey towards purchase. Are they giving off signals that they are ready to purchase? If so, you can probably ask them to become a lead or to purchase straight away. If they’re not, but you still think it’s a great place to advertise then maybe you should be asking them for a softer call to action. So maybe that’s where you can use quizzes or something, which is a lighter call to action to get them to actually take an action. We covered off the who, we’ve covered off the when, we covered off the … sorry, the what and the where. I’m losing track of my w’s.
Adrian Peck:
You are, aren’t you?
Jake Mason:
Yeah.
Adrian Peck:
And the how.
Jake Mason:
Yeah, well, we’ll jump forward to the how. The how is ultimately the creative. What you are saying? The best thing about digital advertising that you can AB test. You can test different images. You can test different videos, you can test different copy. You can test different call to action buttons.
Jake Mason:
Typically, what we find is that over a period of maybe only a month, we can half the cost per click or cost per purchase or cost per action just by simple AB testing. You can do this yourself. All you need to do is if you’re recording a video, if your advert is a video and it’s to camera, and you’re recording it, just to record two versions of it and see which works best. Then record another version of the one that worked best. If you’re taking images from a photo shoot, take a load of different images and make little small tweaks. Maybe in one you’ve got the background as blue, maybe in one you’ve got the background as green, test them both out.
Jake Mason:
Little tweaks like that over time, and if you’re on it and you spend time optimizing can have a huge, huge impact on your cost effectiveness in the campaign. Then the final thing, which is the most important thing, which I’ve banged on about a fair amount, but I’ll cover once more, is what are you asking them to do? Where are you sending them through to? Would you take that action if you were that person?
Jake Mason:
If you’re hesitant about that, then the answer is you shouldn’t probably be advertising to that person at that time, or you shouldn’t be asking them to take the action that you’re asking them to take. The smaller the commitment you’re asking the user to take and the higher value that they’re getting back from whatever they’re doing, so for example, a quiz is very high value because they can get customized answers and a customized recommendation, the more likely they are to take the action that you are asking them to do. If you’re asking them to take an action that doesn’t immediately have a big payoff for them, don’t expect them to take it.
Adrian Peck:
Yeah, and businesses are always worried about because they always feel that if they’re going to spend money on pay-per-click advertising, and they’re going to get somebody over to their website, that they’ve got go, bam, I’ve got to sell to them now. I’ve got to get that really high engagement. The bit that’s kind of, and from what you’re saying as well, is the bit they need to understand is they need that longer term look at it where they are then nurturing that a little bit more, and they’re taking their time going actually, okay, we’ve got you on there now. It’s soft, soft, soft sell, and little steps they’re taken through.
Jake Mason:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. If it’s a high value product, and I think a lot of the people that will be watching this will probably have businesses where they have a business that sells to other businesses and they are looking to get leads. If it is that you’re looking to get leads, bear in mind, you don’t need to capture every bit of information. You just need to capture one. You do definitely need to capture that one bit of information, because once someone’s left your website, you can re-market to them. So you can market to them again with paid advertising, but you don’t want to be doing that. You want to get them to take an action, but get them to take the action which is easiest for them and which is going to be highest value, because ultimately you just want to start that conversation.
Jake Mason:
If it’s business to consumer and you are selling something, then the process is obviously slightly different. But again, a lot of the time it’s quite a high value item and having them on your mailing list, having them in an email sequence, getting them to engage with the chat bot, however you’re getting them to engage and getting them to give their details to you as a business in return for something valuable, that is typically, much, much more likely to result in a conversation, which ultimately, and whether that’s a conversation that’s completely scripted and automated, or whether that’s a physical Zoom call or a physical call, which is much more likely to result in you being able to ask the questions, which open up the challenges and the problems, which enable you to position your product or your service in a way that is actually going to get them to listen and get them to take the action you want them to take, which is ultimately to purchase. It’s going to lead to much higher value, better, longer term customer relationships.
Jake Mason:
As I say, that does differ by sector, by focus of product. But if you think from your customer’s perspective and you go through your website user journey, you go through advertising and you go, would I be interested in this if I was a customer and would I click on this if I wasn’t aware, or if I was a little bit aware or if I was very aware? Ask yourself those questions. Often, you’ll see some big gaps and you can optimize them yourself. Where you can’t and where you want to really start upping your game, that’s where you use an agency, and that’s where typically you can massively increase your return on investment and reach people where you didn’t think you’d be able to reach them before and really up your marketing game to be able to grow your business to the next level.
Adrian Peck:
Fantastic. A lot of people think that when you’re trying to sell online or when you’re marketing online it’s very different to what you do offline. Actually it isn’t. The rules of marketing haven’t changed for generations and generations. It’s always the same. It doesn’t matter what sector you’re in, what product you’re selling, all the difference is sometimes is that the time difference or some of the messages you’re putting in it, but actually the process is exactly all the same all the time, isn’t it?
Jake Mason:
That’s correct. Absolutely, yeah. People seem to forget about that when it comes to digital marketing, but you’re completely and utterly right. It’s exactly the same concept as having a conversation with someone and selling face to face.
Adrian Peck:
Jake, it’s been absolutely fabulous. Just to finish on then, what are the three top actions that we need to take? Obviously I pulled out the make sure that you haven’t got a brochure website and you’ve actually got engagement in the website. Your DNA model, which I think is just absolutely brilliant, and the message I get from pay-per-click is get somebody else to do it because it is just extremely complicated.
Jake Mason:
Yeah. It can be, it can. Be hiring an expert is a lot more affordable than a lot of people think and the return on investment typically is much better. Yeah, I’d say the one thing above all is put yourself in your consumers, in your customer’s shoes. Think about it from the consumer DNA model. Drive awareness as a business, drive awareness, nurture prospects, acquire customers. What should you be asking people to do on each channel and the actions that they’re taking, your actions you want them to take, are they relevant actions? Will they actually take them and will they complete the action that you want them to complete or are you asking them to do something that is slightly beyond where they are in that journey towards purchasing?
Adrian Peck:
Fabulous, brilliant. Thank you ever so much, Jake. It’s been great to have you on the show and I hope that I can encourage you to come back again.
Jake Mason:
Yeah, absolutely. No, it’s been fantastic. Thank you very much for hosting. If anyone wants to get in touch and has any specific questions I’m always more than happy to jump on a quick 30 minute Zoom. My agency, Incaloop, does free 30 minute consultations. Most of the time in that we’ll be able to identify a few gaps in your digital marketing that you can fill yourself and where you can’t, we can help you out and put a proposal together.
Jake Mason:
The best way to get in touch with me is either on LinkedIn and just search Jake Mason, Incaloop, which is I-N-C-A-L-O-O-P, or email me directly. That is Jake, J-A-K-E.mason, M-A-S-O-N, @incaloop.com.
Adrian Peck:
Fantastic, and I’ll put all those details on the links as well.
Jake Mason:
Wonderful.
Adrian Peck:
On YouTube and Facebook and on the podcast as well. So once again, thank you ever so much, Jake and I look forward to seeing you again in the future. Thank you.
Jake Mason:
Fantastic. All the best.
Adrian Peck:
So that was Jake. Again, big thank you to Jake. As ever, these are all well and good, these shows and stuff, but as always in life, only shit happens. You have to make [inaudible 00:33:43] happen. So take the actions and the stuff that’s been shared with you today. Some really, really good value hopefully you’ve got out of with it. Oh dear, we’ve got a different thing here going.
Adrian Peck:
As always, if you want to know any more, a lot of the content we cover in this is in my book. If you want a free copy of that, just drop me an email and I’ll get a free copy out to you in the post. There’s also lots of free, more advice and tools available on my website, betterneverstops.global, and you go to free business tools, just go on there.
Adrian Peck:
There’s also a scorecard if you want to drill, do a deep dive and a health check into your business. There’s the peckuk.scoreapp.com. That takes you to my very detailed business health check, and you can find out more stuff on that. Then finally stay safe and remember … I’ve just gone onto next week, sorry. Next we’re going to cover what’s really stopping you growing your business. So I’m going to cover some stuff around some of the bits that unknowingly are really holding you back. So we’re going to cover that. As always stay safe and remember better never stops. This has been Love Your Business TV. Thank you.

And remember…Better Never Stops

Asking For The Order

How To Win More Sales By Asking For The Order

Love Your Business TV – We’re tackling that difficult question: How Do I Ask For The Order?

How Do You Ask For The Order?

– What are the common mistakes made in Sales?

– What tactics can you use so you don’t feel like a pushy sales person?

– What Action can you apply to your business right now to win more sales, more often and faster?

FREE Business Advice & Tips…

Transcript From Live Show

Hello and good afternoon. Welcome once again to Love Your Business TV. I am Adrian Peck. I am the founder and entrepreneur of Better Never Stops. We deliver business advice and coaching programs to entrepreneurs and business owners who run or want to run £1 million plus turnover businesses. Every week we stream live to the nation on Love Your Business TV, and we are here to help you either fall back in love, stay in love or fall in love with your business. It’s very much, my passion is to help the business owners and entrepreneurs of the UK and indeed the world, to do exactly that. You work so hard on your businesses and you deserve to get so much out of them, so I bring lots of weekly business tips and advice for you completely free of charge to really help you do that, maximize the opportunity you have and to have fun. It’s really important that you have fun in your businesses.

So every week, say we broadcast live on YouTube and on Facebook, you can also catch up with us on various podcast platforms, which includes Google, Spotify, and Apple as well. You can catch up on all the shows after that. We normally, we turn this show into the podcast and that goes out on a Wednesday on those channels. So if you just hop on those channels on whatever favourite podcast channel you’ve got, search for Love Your Business TV, you can subscribe to that and get your recording on there.
Once again, thanks for all the great feedback that you have. If you want to get in touch with me, please just reach out to me as [email protected]. You can reach out to me and give us your feedback. You’ve got your feedback day, just stick it into the comments on Facebook or YouTube as well. Hopefully, through the power of a StreamYard, I should be able to see those comments as well and any questions that you might have.

So let’s crack on with this week, we’ve been focusing very much on lead generation. This came back off the survey that I’d done with many of you and lots of business owners that I surveyed over the last three or four weeks. One of the powerful questions I asked you was, what’s your greatest business challenge at the moment? Many of you said that your greatest challenge was around lead generations and sales, so I’ve put together a string of about four or possibly five programs I’m going to do now, just purely focused on lead generation and sales conversion for you.

We’ve done the last couple of weeks. The first week we looked at lead generation channels, so we looked at what a channel is, and also making sure that you’ve got the right channel, talking to the right target markets that you have and how you get those out of that. Last week we were joined by the fabulous Mike Killen who had done some really, really good insights. Mike is a very well known sales trainer that works predominantly in the marketing agency arena, but he came and shared some insight around qualification of customers and it can help getting those converted.

Let’s move onto this week. This week, we’re going to move on to asking for the order. So I’m going to share with you some insights around some common mistakes that I see that businesses and business owners make and sales teams make. I’m going to give you some tactics that you can use and implement very quickly and easily, and then I’m going to task you with three actions that you’ve got to take away and go and implement into your businesses as well.

So let’s crack on. In terms of common mistakes, and these are very difficult things that I hear, “Our customers are like us because we’re not pushy.” I get it, you are in sales or you’re not necessarily in sales and your customers like you because you’re not in their face and kind of really salesy and pushy. “If you want to go ahead, give me a call.” These are kind of all stuff that’s said, that I hear being said when I’m in businesses and working with sales teams. This is the kind of line they give, “You want to go ahead and give me a call. I’ll leave it with you.” It’s common, end of that sales conversation, “I’ll leave it with you to come back to me,” or, “Once you’ve got the other quotes, give me a call back.” Again, these are common things I hear said by salespeople and business owners when they’re trying to sell.

Worst of all of course is that that people don’t ask at all. You don’t actually stop and ask the customer if they want to go ahead and, do they want to do business with you? Is that sale right? There’s one that I think is even worse than not asking the question is the fact that it’s been sent by email. You kind of say, “What is your sales followup process? What did you do?” “Well, I sent it by email,” which is just disastrous.

The back of all this, and I get it in terms of when I’m working with business owners and entrepreneurs, they’re not necessarily from a sales background and a lot of the time it’s quite a daunting thing. It’s not a very natural thing. Sales is not a natural thing. Some people are very good at it, but some people are very good at acting. That’s really what I lost sales is. Sales is not a natural process and you are going to get out of your comfort zone by doing this stuff. But the reality is, if you do not follow up with your customers and you do not have that kind of asking for the order mentality, they are going to go somewhere else. They are going to go to your competitors. Somebody else will ask that question.

There’s a survey done and I don’t know who it was done by, so I haven’t really kind of quoted on here, but there’s something like about 70 or 80% of customers want you to make that decision for them. They want to be asked. It’s not about being pushy, and there are some ways that I’m going to share with you that aren’t necessarily out and out kind of sleazy or salesy, in the way that it’s done, but you do need to ask the questions. You do need to follow up with that customer and have a process in there for asking for that order. Otherwise, what’s the point? That business that I see that businesses miss out on because they don’t ask it.

Now I do a lot of stuff on behalf of my clients and various projects we’ll go to when we’re looking for different projects and different suppliers. It always astounds me that I can go out. There was an instance a couple of years ago, where I had a client that wanted two of those big interactive televisions for a showroom, for new showrooms that they were building they wanted these big interactive televisions and were about to spend quite a lot of money.

I spoke with, I tried to contact about 12 different companies that specialized in audio-video technology. I had to research and find these companies. Out of it, astoundingly only about three of those actually returned my calls and got in touch with me. This is despite me emailing them and phoning them. Then from those people, none of those companies actually followed up with me and followed up the sales process. I ended up finding another company through some networking. They came and done a fabulous job and [inaudible 00:08:21] business, not surprising. Excuse me. So it just astounds me how poor businesses can be in that sales process and therefore this is very much a reflection of how your competitors will be as well.

What’s really then holding you back? What’s holding that back from doing those sales? A lot of the time, it’s about poor processes and about having very poor sales processes. Again, sales is not a natural thing that you do. Inevitably, unless you’re a sales organization, ie. like a recruitment company, estate agents, those type of companies where they are very much sales based. Sales is just part of something that happens in your business. It’s not core to it. Therefore, you can excuse the fact that it’s not a home science that you’ve got, but you do need to get good at it. If you’re not, get somebody in to help you get those sales processes right, because that investment will pay dividends day after day, after day.

Sometimes it comes down to a lack of focus. And I see this a lot in businesses where they haven’t necessarily got an out and out sales team, and therefore it’s a function that something else just goes on with it. Therefore, there’s that distraction. When there’s a distraction away from sales, people are always going to migrate away from sales because it’s slightly alien and it’s hard work, and you’ve got go through being rejected and those awkward questions you’ve got to ask people, people will always shy away from it.

“We’re too busy,” is a common thing I hear so much, it’s why you don’t follow up on sales and do your sales process. “We’re so busy, we haven’t got time to do it.” Then what’s the point? What’s the point in doing the lead generation and spending that time to even doing the quotation stuff if you then are too busy to follow it up? You’re better off not doing them and saying, “I’m sorry, we’re closed,” and not taking that time.

Sometimes as well, it’s the wrong customers. That is inevitably where you’ve got a sales process that you’re going on, you’ve got lead generation and that lead generation is actually attracting the wrong type of customers. Therefore, some of those customers you’re wasting your time on and therefore you’re not putting that focus into it. So the answer to that really is get the right customers to start with. See How To Define Your Target Market

There is something else as well, which I have already touched on it, which is the fear rejection. It’s a very natural human trait that we have. Nobody likes to be rejected, even salespeople, even hard and fast salespeople still don’t like to be rejected. So we sometimes, we’ll put in that picture in our head, we’ll build that barrier up that we won’t want to ask those difficult questions because of that fear rejection.

So how can we get around it? How can we get around this fear of rejection? First of all, really you’ve got to accept it. You’ve got to accept it that it’s a part of a natural sales process. Now a few years ago, there’s this guy on television, Neville Wilshire is his name. I believe he’s still with us. He was part of a, on these documentary kind of fly on the wall programs on BBC. It was called The Call Center and he was the chief executive, he was quite an out and out character. I’m sure he still. The center was based in Swansea and he had teams and teams and teams of quite young people that were on the phones, just selling all day, day in, day out.

He had this great saying, which was, “Some will, some won’t, so what? Next. Some will, some won’t, so what? Next.” He drilled this into his salespeople as part of their training process. It’s really about just how adopting that philosophy that if you’ve got a good lead generation machine going on, when you have those customers and you’re having those phone conversations, some of those customers will convert, some of them you’ll never convert, so what? Some will, some won’t, so what? Next. You just move on to the next one. You kind of have to accept that in sales you cannot win them all and you’re never going to win them all.

So the first part of it is to accept it and build that saying, well, some will, some won’t, so what? Next. The other bit is to find out why. A really good practice is to ask your customers, the ones where you don’t convert, “Do you mind if I just ask you why you haven’t used this?” Hopefully they will give you some honest answers that you can then use and you can use to improve, and that’s key to it as well. Accept what’s happening, find out why you’re not winning it and then improve what you’re doing and repeat, and keep doing that process. It will get better and get better and get better. But it’s really key to ask that improvement question, your customers will tell you so much about why you didn’t win business.

So let me share with you now some tactics that you can use. There’s three key tactics I’m going to share with you. The first one is about qualifying your customer. The second one is about asking the right questions. Then the last one I’m going to share with you is about getting permission. So the first one, we’ve touched on this last week with Mike, and if you want to jump back onto YouTube or Facebook or one of the podcasts from last week where we went through about qualifying your customers better, that was the show with Mike Killen. You do need to make sure you qualify those customers. Sometimes it’s about making sure that they’re actually in the right process to buy. Process is not quite the word, but whether they are at the right step to actually buy your product. I’ll give you a [inaudible 00:14:32] example for this.
I’ve done some work, and they’re still a client of mine, they’re a building supply company. We went through their log quote one day and they had something like, it was about £1 million worth of business in [inaudible 00:14:52] quotes. Phenomenal amount, some of these quotes went back 18 months. Now, clearly those things weren’t going to convert. Well, what we found when we’d done the analysis and we spoke to some of the customers and we found out why we weren’t winning the business, invariably is that they were quoting for business themselves. What we found is that we were spending a lot of time or the business was spending a lot of time doing quite detailed quotations for the customer to find out that actually all they really needed was an estimate. They needed something a bit more down and dirty than that.

Actually what we’d done is we changed tact on it. Firstly, we asked the customer at the point of call, “Have you got this business or is this business that you’re trying to win yourself?” We kind of got some qualification questions in there. Then where they said that actually they were quoting themselves, we just gave them an estimated quote rather than spent an hour or so actually building a very detailed quote up because that’s all they actually needed. So there’s ways that you can speed the process up, but still keep in touch with that customer because you’d go back to them. “When is the quote got to be in? When do you think you’re going to win the business?” You can go back to them and find out when it is and then do the follow ups from then.

That brings me nicely onto the … I’m going to touch on number … ask the question, I’ll [inaudible 00:16:21] that in a second. I want to take you through some questions you can ask, but the one thing I’m going to share with you is number three here, is get permission. One of the things, a tactic that I get salespeople to use all the time is about whenever you’re having that conversation with the customer, get permission for the next step. Let me explain how that works, so it’s about getting permission for the next step.

The conversation would go something like this, “Hello, Mrs Jones. If you can’t make a decision, then when would you like to go ahead?” “Well, I’ve got to go and talk to so and so.” “Okay, great. When would be a good time for me then to recontact you, when would be a good time for me to recontact you?” “Okay, next Tuesday.” “If I gave you a call for next Tuesday, would that be okay?”

What you’re doing, you’re getting permission to do the next step. Now, one of the push backs that you’ll get from your sales team is that they don’t like to be pushy. They don’t like to be a nuisance, and they don’t like to feel that they are kind of harassing people in terms of their sales. But if you get permission all the time for the next step, when you then do the next step, you can start that conversation with, “Hello, Mrs Jones. It’s Tuesday afternoon and as promised, I’m phoning you back.” You’re just following up from that previous conversation that you’ve had. Therefore, you’re not pushing. You’re doing everything at the pace that they have allowed you to resume at, so that’s very key.
Let’s move on to some sale closes, and this is kind of this number two, which is about asking the right questions. These doesn’t have to be pushy, these don’t have to be difficult. They can be as simple as, “When would you like to go ahead?” So a part of that sales processes is at the end of it you say, “When would you like to go ahead?”

Another one you can use, “If you’d like to secure that price, I can take a small deposit by card now. What card would you like to use? Can I take your long number?” It’s those kinds of things you can use as part of a close. “What card would you like to pay by?” That’s that kind of question you can ask as well. “Is there any more information you need to make a decision?” The customer says no says yes, then you answer that question. Then the next question, if they have a question back, you answer the question. “Have I answered that question for you? Is there any more information that you need to make a decision?” Again, if they come back with no, then, “Would you like me to dispatch that today?” Or, “Would you like to now go ahead?” It gives you the opportunity now to do that close, because you’ve asked them an open question and you can now close it with a closed question. “Would you like to go ahead?” Or however that looks like according to your business.

The fifth one then is based on what I’ve told you. “You’ve said you wanted to have this delivered by the 30th of June, for us to achieve this, you’ll need your confirmation by next Monday. Are you in a position to confirm that now?” So again, you can use this as a sales tactic, that where you’ve got a deadline for something you can put another deadline in it and say, “Look, I need to know by then, but actually are you in a position to make a decision now?” If they’re not, “Okay, can I phone you on Monday and get a decision from you then, otherwise we won’t hit your deadline.” So you can put, manifests some deadlines in there. Just, if you feel uncomfortable about asking some of those questions, it then feels a little bit more natural.
The last [inaudible 00:20:14] go ahead one then is where you can use that double tactic, in terms of getting permission and also using a sales close. “Would you like to go ahead?” “No, I need to speak to X.” “Okay, when will you be able to make a decision?” They come back with an answer. You say, “Okay, so if I call you on Thursday afternoon,” so it kind of goes, “Would you like to go ahead?” “No, I need to just confirm with my husband, my wife or my business partner before we can just go ahead.” “Okay, so when would you be able to do that?” “I’ll be able to have that conversation with them on Wednesday.” “Great, so if I gave you a call on Thursday morning or Thursday afternoon, we can then wrap all this up.” “Absolutely.” You can kind of see how the conversation goes. So you can kind of put a soft close in there and then get permission for that follow up.

I’ll share some more, I’ve got a whole load of these. I’ll put a few more on again with this recording and I’ll upload with it and I’ll put it onto our website as well, so there are loads more closing questions as well for you. Your action this week really to take away is first of all, to measure, if you don’t measure, you can’t manage. Put some measures in place so you can actually start measuring your sales conversion.

The second one then is to look at your sales processes and review those sales processes. What I’ve shared with you today, are you falling into some of those traps, are you making some of those mistakes? I’ve given you lots of hints and tips about how you can overcome those. Then the last one is, ask the bloody question. Start asking some of those difficult questions and really start closing some of those sales. The fortune is in the followup is one of the mantras I throw out quite a lot. The fortune is in the followup. If you do not follow up, don’t be surprised you don’t get the sales. Keep following up, keep following up, get permission, keep following up.

Remember, only shit happens. You need to make this happen. I share this content every single week. It’s now really down for you to go implement it and make it part of your businesses. Now, if you need any help, of course reach out to me. I’m here to help you in any way, shape I can. I’ve even forgot to mention this week, I don’t know how, but of course all this content is in my free book, how To Fall Back In Love With Your Business: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Rediscovering Your Mojo and Enjoying Every Day by Living Your Dream. Everything I share is in that book. There’s lots of more free content on the website as well, on betterneverstops.global, and you’ve go to free business tools. There’s lots more content on there for you as well.

If you’d like to know how well your business is doing, I’ve put together a health check for business owners. You go onto peckuk.scoreapp.com. There’s a very comprehensive business health check that you can take your business through. Again, off the back of it there’s lots of hints and tips about how you can improve your scores as well, across six very key business areas.

So as always, stay safe, reach out to me, adrian.peck@peckuk. You can also go on to loveyourbusiness.tv. That takes you onto our Better Never Stops website and you can catch up with all our content on there. Next week I’m going to be looking at how to run effective marketing campaigns. I should be joined, I’m just waiting for confirmation, I should be joined by Jake Mason, who is previously involved with Netflix and doing the marketing for Netflix. So he’s going to share lots of great content with you next week, so I look forward to seeing you then. As always, this has been Love Your Business TV. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Please share the content. Subscribe to us. I look forward to seeing you again next week and remember better never stops. I’m Adrian Peck.

And remember…Better Never Stops

How To Turn Leads Into Sales

How To Turn Leads Into Sales

Love Your Business TV – Today I’m joined by Michael Killen, founder of Sell Your Service and a world-renowned sales coach.

We’ll be tackling two key subjects:

“We Have A Number Of Customers Who Just Waste Our Time…”

“All My Customer Wants To Talk About Is Price…”

FREE Business Advice & Tips…

Here’s the link to BANTS

Transcript From Live Show

Adrian Peck:

Good afternoon and welcome once again to Love Your Business TV. I am Adrian Peck. I am the founder and entrepreneur of Better Never Stops. We deliver business advice and coaching programs to entrepreneurs and business owners who run or want to run one million pound sized businesses.

Adrian Peck:

Every week we broadcast live to the nation, giving business owners and entrepreneurs across the UK, lots of free business help, guidance and advice to help you run your businesses better. I have a massive passion in my life, which is really to help you get the most from your business. You work so hard in your businesses, trying to build them and grow them, and you should have lots of fun. And that’s what I do. I’m also the author of How To Fall Back In Love With Your Business, The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Rediscovering Your Mojo And Enjoying Every Day By Living Your Dream.

Adrian Peck:

And that’s exactly what I try and do is help you guys either stay in love, fall in love or fall back in love with your businesses. So let’s move on into today. As always, you can catch up with us on, we turn this broadcast onto a podcast with Spotify, Apple, and Google, where you get your podcasts. It’s live streamed on Facebook and YouTube, so you can catch up on all the previous episodes that we do. It’s all there. Lots of free content for you.

Adrian Peck:

If you want to catch on me always it’s [email protected] is my email address. And of course, you got any comments or questions today, and then just stick them into the comments feed and hopefully, we will be able to see them. This week, I’ve got a really exciting show this week, and I’m so pleased. Mike Killen is going to join us today, who is somebody I’ve met about a year or so ago now, and I’m going to introduce you to him in a minute.

Adrian Peck:

So we want to crack on this week. We’ve had a bit of focus now on lead generation. This is off the back of the feedback that you gave me over the last couple of weeks. I sent a survey out to lots of you, and you gave the feedback that one of the biggest challenges you have in the moment with your businesses is about lead generation and sales conversion. So I’ve put together a series of at least four programs I’m going to do now on a Tuesday afternoon. Last week, we looked at lead generation and lead generation channels. I’ll come onto that in a second. This week, we’re very much going to look on how to turn leads into sales.

Adrian Peck:

So I say last week we looked at lead generation channels. We looked at what channels are and this are things like social media, direct mail campaigns, web, pay-per-click. Those kind of things are your channels. And we looked at some common mistakes and some actions for you to take away as well. Again, you can catch up on that program, that show from last week, by going onto either the podcast or onto loveyourbusiness.tv as well. And you can catch up on that previous show.

Adrian Peck:

So this week, as I say, we’re going to focus on turning those leads into sales, and I’m super excited now because I’m going to introduce you to Mike. So hopefully I can hand him in there, and we should then be able to go onto that screen there. And we’ve got Mike in now, in fact, let’s just make you a little bit bigger first. We can introduce you properly. Hi Mike. Good afternoon.

Mike Killen:

Hey mate. How you doing?

Adrian Peck:

Mike Killen is the founder of Sell Your Service. He is a sales coach, predominantly working with marketing agencies and helps them sell more marketing products and services. He’s also the author of not one but three books. From Single to Scale, Universe Fuel and Five Figure Funnels. Good afternoon, Mike, and welcome.

Mike Killen:

Hey man, how are you doing? I’m really glad to be here.

Adrian Peck:

Yeah, good. Welcome to Love Your Business TV. Hopefully the first of many times I can get you on here. I’ve known Mike for just over about a year, about a year, 18 months. We met on a personal development program in London. He’s super great and a super bloke, and he really knows his stuff when it comes down to building sales funnels and sales conversion as well. So good afternoon and welcome mate.

Mike Killen:

Thank you, man. Yeah. Good to be here. I’m going to take that introduction there and cut that out. It’s the most generous thing anyone’s ever said about me.

Adrian Peck:

Brilliant. So let’s crack on Mike. As you saw last week, we looked at very much about lead channels and how to develop leads for your business. And that’s kind of all well and good, but then what happens once those leads come into the business and how do we turn them to sales. So I’ve got a couple of really key questions for you Mike, so I’m going to hopefully test you this afternoon, but these questions have come in from the business owners I work with and also some questions that have come in from people.

Adrian Peck:

So the first one I’ve got is we have a number of customers who just waste our time. And this is, I hear the same much with a lot of business owners and salespeople. They say we have lots of leads potentially, but they’re just time-wasters. How do we do that better, Mike?

Mike Killen:

Yeah. This is a problem across all businesses I think. I don’t think this is exclusive to any one industry. There’s always tire kickers. And there’s also always people who are window shopping at not the right time. So they’re like, oh, actually… If ask someone, well, when are you wanting to start the project? They’re like, oh, we’re just kind of window shopping. It’s like, oh, well we’ve just wasted a lot of time selling to you and going through that process.

Mike Killen:

This question that comes up, the way I believe that you can, in fact, the way we know that you can solve this is to qualify out as early as possible. And I’m sure we’ll talk about that in a bit, like how we do that. But it’s interesting to first of all note, what is it exactly that indicates that it’s a waste of time because for some people it’s, for some businesses, for example, you might say, well, it’s a waste of time because they’re not able to start for another six months or another 12 months. That’s a huge waste of time for us. Our industry has a three-month buying cycle. They’re clearly just window shopping.

Mike Killen:

Another waste of time might be budget. So your projects might be 10 grand, or they might be 500 quid or whatever. And someone comes talking to you and you sell to them and you have a conversation with them. Those leads come in. And then all of a sudden they’re like, oh yeah, well, our budget is 50 quid or 500 quid. And you’re like, well, that’s a huge waste of time.

Mike Killen:

I think the third, probably the biggest one. And there’s a few other areas, but the biggest one is again when you have a conversation with someone and this one used to drive me absolutely nuts until we kind of eliminated it was, I would talk to typically a marketing manager and I would say, this is what we can do for you and this is how we can help your business and this is how we can help you grow. And they go, fantastic. Thanks so much for that. Thanks for the proposal. I’m just going to show this to my boss and I’m going to show this to the director, and they’ve got to sign off on it and I’m like, well, that was a huge waste of time because now I’ve got to sell to him or her as well. So I kind of wished that they were on the call in the first place.

Mike Killen:

So anytime you’ve ever thought there’s a customer or a lead or whatever you want to call them, who has wasted our time, it’s probably because you haven’t qualified them.

Adrian Peck:

Okay. Brilliant. And that probably brings us quite nicely actually onto our second one, which is then all my customer ever wants to talk about is price. And again this is a massive issue, challenge that I see for a lot of salespeople is that the customer, all they’re interested in is price. Predominantly most of these markets are saturated with choice and therefore it’s kind of always a race to the bottom. And one of the things I hear and it makes me smile in a way is a comment I had back from business owners to say, well, we’ve got a really great relationship with our customers. They tell us what price we need to be. And it’s kind of like, oh dear.

Mike Killen:

Oh my God. That sounds like an abusive relationship rather than a… That’s insane.

Adrian Peck:

How do we get around this, Mike? What’s the principles here?

Mike Killen:

So no matter how well our previous agency did, we would always get customers and it was funny, sort of the higher up the food chain we went it was almost like the most immediate question that they asked. They were like, look, just give us your price. And the first thing I want to quickly mention is what I call is the turn. It’s a little bit of framing. So it’s a little bit of me saying, actually, I’m in control here. I’m here to sell you. You actually don’t decide this yet. I’m here to work out whether you’re the type of customer I want to work with, not whether I’m the type of supply that you want to work with.

Mike Killen:

So we have this turn, which is, they immediately say, just give us the price, give us your best price. And I go, I absolutely am going to give you the best price I can. I just need to ask a few questions first, so I can give you the most accurate price I’ve got. And then we don’t have to do a lot of back and forth. Does that sound reasonable to you? And of course, every customer’s going to go. Yeah, of course, that sounds perfectly reasonable.

Mike Killen:

So immediately we’ve batted that off the table because if I tell you the price, if I just say, “Oh, this house is 500 grand,” it’s irrelevant of what your budget is. You’re going to go 500 grand is a lot of money. And then I’ve got to work up to that value point. Instead, I want to flip that and make sure that I stack all the value first and then tell you the price and you go, 500 pounds is a steal for this particular house. So the first thing I do is turn them and I say, I’m absolutely going to give you the price. I want to give you my most accurate price, so we don’t have a lot of back and forth. I just want to ask you a couple of questions. Does that sound reasonable? Yeah, of course. Fantastic.

Mike Killen:

And the second thing we ask and if at any point the price comes up during the sale stage, the proposal stage, the follow-up stage, whatever, it’s probably because you haven’t qualified them first. If your customers get to the proposal stage. And I see this a lot, both with agencies and sorry, I work a lot with agencies, so that’s why I keep referring to them. If the proposal comes through, and they go, oh, we were kind of hoping it could be a different price. Or like you say, you might have a supplier who says, “Well, our customers want to pay this.” Finding out and qualifying them first is a really good way of pushing that question later.

Mike Killen:

We have this process called BANTS. So it’s B-A-N-T-S. Before I even talk to them about the project or how we can help with them, even if I’m available to work with them, I want to get these five questions out of them. So B-A-N-T-S, which stands for budget, authority, need, timescale and suppliers. B-A-N-T-S. We have forms, project inquiry forms. I’ll share my project inquiry form with you guys. And you can just rip that however, you want. It’s worded slightly differently. But even if I had to get on a call with someone back when we were first starting our agency, I would pick up the phone and I’d say, “Hey, I want to have a really quick conversation with you guys. First of all, what kind of budget are you looking to spend on this?”

Mike Killen:

And if they um and ah about it, unfortunately, we don’t have time to go into how to get that question out, but I want to get that firm answer from someone because anyone who ums and ahs about it later and kind of brings up price is a problem. It probably means I haven’t qualified them or asked them that question early enough. I’d way rather on the call them say we’ve got 500 quid. I go, there’s nothing I can do to help you. If my price is 15,000, and they’ve got a budget of 10,000, chances are they’ve got 15,000. So I at least want to know the margin that they’re in.

Mike Killen:

So budget, authority, who’s the decision-maker. Is it just you? Do I need to also talk to your manager as well? They go, yeah, but they’re really busy. I go great. But I need to talk to Batman. I can’t just have a conversation with Robin. I need to talk to the head honcho. So I want to understand who the decision-maker is, who chances are is probably the person who holds the purse strings, and they go, well, that’s the accounting department. Great. Get them on. I want to make sure that that someone is on the call. I need the decision-maker on every single call.

Mike Killen:

And again, if they go, well, we aren’t really able to do that. I go, but then I can’t help you. If your decision-maker isn’t able to say, yes, this sounds like we should spend some money on it. I could sell to you all day. It could be the world’s greatest project, but if they’re not able to see the value, it’s irrelevant. So A for authority, N is needs, what are you actually looking for? What solution are you looking for? What is it you’re suffering from? What can I help with?

Mike Killen:

And that’s where we get a bit softer because they say well, these are our goals. These are our problems. We’re looking for this. We’re looking for that. Great. I want to get that out. But again, you’d be surprised. Social media marketing is a really good one. You might have an agency that deals exclusively with automation and you might have an agency that deals with audience management. As a social media agency, you’re potentially going to deal with both of them. But if someone comes and says, we’re looking for someone to just automate all of our tweets and Facebook posts you go, well, we’re actually not the agency who can help with that. It’s not our specialist area. So you still want to get their needs.

Mike Killen:

T is timescale. When are you looking to start? When do you actually want to kick this off? They go three months, six months, maybe that’s suitable for you. Yeah, well we’re just window shopping at the moment. We haven’t really got a firm time. And again, all of this is telling you how serious are they about working with you. And as you’ve talked about, especially in your book, the more you commit back to that business, it’s funny how much people want to work with you. And I believe qualifying is actually a really good way of getting people to want to work with you. It’s kind of getting them to jump through hoops. So T timescale, when do you want to start working.

Mike Killen:

And finally S for suppliers. Who else are you working with? Have you approached anybody else? Who’s currently doing your marketing or your finances or whatever it is? So B-A-N-T-S. Budget, authority, need, timescale and suppliers.

Mike Killen:

And eventually, if you can get those questions down, you can put them into a form and say well we’re swamped at the moment. Could you just jump over to this web, loveyourbusiness.tv/project? Get them to fill out this form, qualifies them, takes them 10 minutes, less than that. Or, if you’ve really scaled, you’ve just got people on the phones, just qualifying your customers saying, hey, we noticed that you downloaded our worksheet. You downloaded our report. Are you the decision-maker, you’re the best person to go through and just go through those same five questions. And yeah, eventually you’ll start actually seeing fewer. Less ratio or a lower volume of leads, but good. Because the ones you do see will be really ready and waiting to work with you and you know you can add value to them.

Adrian Peck:

A lot of clients I work with Mike are the kind of businesses that manufacture something, and they sell, or they’re making something and sell it in terms of it could be an engineering type of product, or it could be where they have boxes of kit that they’re making into a bigger kit and sending that. So a lot of it is kind of trade-based. So how would you apply BANTS to a trade-based… A B2B sale?

Mike Killen:

Yeah. And like everything, as soon as you say, this is what you want to do within your business, everyone says, well, it wouldn’t work for my business.

Adrian Peck:

It’ll never work in my business.

Mike Killen:

Right. I’m like, well it must work for someone otherwise you wouldn’t have it.

Adrian Peck:

Our industry’s different Mike. You don’t understand our industry. It’s always different.

Mike Killen:

Exactly. And as someone who has worked in insurance, health insurance, dental, car rentals, welding equipment, garden manufacturing, all the way up to really big SAS projects and data security on a government level. One of the companies we worked with did the data protection for number 10 Downing Street and everywhere in between. Qualification is not for the benefit of the customer. It’s not for them to go I actually want to push you back. It’s for your benefit. First of all, stop thinking of it in terms of well, it wouldn’t work for our industry, because we categorically know that it works for every industry. Any industry that is worth their salt chances are the reason that they’re the number one or number two player is because they have some kind of qualification process, regardless of the questions, they have a qualification process.

Mike Killen:

And the reason is because they’re looking for signals we can add value to this customer. That’s what they’re actually looking for. The budget question is not just a case of how much money can we get from them or how much money have they got to spend it’s can we actually add value to their business? Do they have the resources to add value? When you’re starting a business, it’s all well and good paying a grand for a website, but chances are you actually wouldn’t get any benefit from one of my 15,000 or £25,000 websites because you’re just starting out. So even as a manufacturing business who literally just sells bricks and someone comes to you and says, I want to work with you.

Mike Killen:

Let’s say two sides. First of all, the big side, you’ve got a massive housing manufacturer. We want to work with you. We want some of your bricks. Awesome. What’s your budget? Oh, right. Well, we’re looking to spend this much. Great. If you’ve got 10 million, we can help you because that’s the minimum order quantity that we work with. We need to know that information because I need to know, is it worth me continuing working with you?

Mike Killen:

And on the other side, let’s say, you’re looking smaller scale. You’re B2B. And you’re looking with tradies. You go great. What kind of budget are you working with? You want to know everything about, well, are they even going to be able to continuously work with us? Are they going to be able to continually buy bricks from us or are their prices so low that we know that they’re going to be out of business in three months’ time?

Adrian Peck:

Yeah, that’s a good point.

Mike Killen:

You’ve got success signals. You’ve got stories and classic customers who you think we hate working with them, but we’ve got customers that we love working with. Great. There’s probably some pretty key differences and I guarantee you, they’re going to fit around that B-A-N-T-S formula where you think we know that the people we like working with and that we can add value to typically spend 20 grand a month with us.

Adrian Peck:

But that’s always the big barrier, isn’t it? Because I’m a sales guy. I’m in my business and if I start applying this BANTS process and what you’ve kind of pushed I’d said brilliant, okay, but I’m going to push back now Mike and say, but if I do that, I’m going to have less customers.

Mike Killen:

Yeah. Good. Don’t you want fewer customers? This is always fascinating to me because first of all, I would way rather, even from kind of the fear of loss or the scarcity thing, I’d way rather work with 10 customers who are really high value than a hundred customers who are low to mid-value. So yeah, the chances are, but we want to lower the number of customers that you work with. We actually want to do that.

Mike Killen:

In terms of initially is the number of customers going to drop and your cash flow going to drop? Potentially, yes, but this is how… And we had to look at this again, when we were running, our agency was if we stop getting the £500 websites through, or the five grand websites through, looking at those projects, they weren’t profitable anyway. So although the cash flow came through, the customers were of such low quality and it’s not their fault.

Mike Killen:

It’s our fault because we took them on that we were running ourselves ragged, and we weren’t making any money on them. We physically weren’t making any money on them. And I think a lot of the time that we’re trapped in this cycle of, well, feast and famine kind of those waves. I have to go get the next customer to bring some cash in. If you spend some time just stepping outside of that and thinking are these types of customers profitable? And a lot of the time they’re not, and that’s like a whole other conversation that I’ll let you take care of the fear of letting go of customers. But I would way rather have fewer profitable projects.

Mike Killen:

And it’s a funny thing about the universe or whatever, as soon as you start putting that stuff out there, it tends to reward you. It tends to say, cool, you’ve started qualifying customers. Clearly you only work with customers who pay 10 grand and I promise you that those higher-quality customers have got high-quality referrals as well. They’re your referral engine. If you’re only working with low-value customers and it has to start somewhere. So yeah, the profitability is probably the number one thing I’d look at per customer. It’s a good question though. It does happen. It is a problem.

Adrian Peck:

So yeah, I mean, there’s always the pushback when I work with businesses as well. And you talk to them about changing their marketing and going after the kind of the bigger fish, obviously, there are fewer of them, but they are more profitable. They are less grief. And actually they fit better as well with the values of the business itself. And therefore they’re much easier to actually deal with and much more rewarding.

Mike Killen:

And I actually, personally, I don’t think there’s any data to say that there are fewer high-quality customers out there. I think if somehow we could magically find that data, I’m sure Google or Facebook have probably got that, but we would find that actually there’s as much across the spectrum, but for whatever reason, there’s actually fewer people trying to aim for that higher tier of customer. That we do know. And I have data on this because I ask my customers how much do you spend per marketing funnel or whatever. We know that there’s fewer people going after that higher echelon. So bizarrely that’s actually where there’s less competition.

Mike Killen:

Yeah, you’ve got to work harder. You’ve got to have processes in place, but I’d way rather… You talked about the fishing analogy. Just because it’s a bit more of a hike to get to that pond with bigger fish in it, take the hike then. Fine. I’ll spend an extra hour walking there. So yeah, it’s worth aiming for.

Adrian Peck:

Excellent, brilliant Mike. We try and limit this, but I think we could talk all day on this it sounds a bit, but the shows we try and do are around this 20, 25 minutes. So what about key actions to take away from this, Mike? What’s the key things that the [inaudible 00:22:50] should be doing in terms of sales conversion?

Mike Killen:

So first of all, having some kind of BANTS framework and also knowing what you want the answers to be is critical. Have a sit-down and think, well, what do we actually want to hear when someone says, what’s your budget? Do you want to hear five grand, 10 grand, 250,000, whatever? Who are the decision-makers? So knowing what that framework is. And personally, like I said, I’ll send you over that worksheet URL

Adrian Peck:

That would be brilliant.

Mike Killen:

Try and automate it. Try and get someone else or something else to take care of it and then you can focus on other areas. That’s what I would work on.

Adrian Peck:

Brilliant Mike. Thank you very much.

Mike Killen:

Thank you for having me.

Adrian Peck:

You’ve been absolutely fantastic and thank you very much for coming on. I hope again, hopefully it will be the first of many times you’ll come and join us. How can people get in touch with you, Mike, if they want to know more about you and the wonderful work you do?

Mike Killen:

Sure. Well, you can head to hit to sellyourservice.co.uk or you can check out my YouTube channel, which is youtube.com/sellyourservice all one word. And that’s got tons of sales videos and pricing and objection turning. Don’t worry, once you’re on my funnel or once I’ve remarketed you I’ll find you.

Adrian Peck:

Brilliant, Mike, thank you ever so much.

Mike Killen:

Thanks, man. Thanks for having me on.

Adrian Peck:

Great, thank you.

Adrian Peck:

That was Mike Killen. Really great guy and hopefully he’s given you some great advice there. Well, I know he’s given you some really great advice there. If you want to know some more stuff again head over to sellyourservice.co.uk.

Adrian Peck:

Remember the actions that we’re taking away. My motto, one of my mottos in life is only shit happens. Everything else you have to make happen. So think about some of the stuff that you’ve learned this afternoon. How are you going to apply it to your business? How can you apply that BANTS philosophy and put that structure into the business? I think could be really powerful for you. So as always, you can grab a copy of my book, just drop me an email and I’ll send you a free copy of my book. All the stuff that we discuss is all in there.

Adrian Peck:

You can catch up on the previous shows of course as well. There’s a score app. It’s peckuk.scoreapp.com. That gives you an ability to go and measure your business from across lots of different varieties and gives you a benchmark of where you are on your business and stay safe.

Adrian Peck:

Next week I’m going to do some stuff around asking for the order. There’s always that awkward bit when it comes to the end of that, so with conversation about how you actually ask for the order. So I’m going to deal with some barriers that you come up against and I’m going to knock those barriers down for you next week as well.

Adrian Peck:

So as always stay safe and really looking forward to again, to seeing you next week. Get any questions, any feedback, please just drop me an email or put comments and stuff in there and I look forward to seeing you all next week and remember better never stops.

And remember…Better Never Stops

How To Define Your Target Market

“Stop Selling To Everyone…”

How To Identify Your Target Market

This is probably the one single step that is often ignored by businesses or, at best, given far too little consideration when developing products or marketing. Here’s the hard truth and the one thing you MUST get right:

Getting your target market right is the single most important aspect of marketing success.

You can have the most amazing product but if it’s marketed to the wrong people it will never be that successful.

What I’m about to explain to you may chill you to your core. But in order for your business to separate away from your competitors, you need to take a piece of the market and own it. Unless your market is very small, and that would be a whole other conversation we’d need to have, you cannot successfully serve your entire market. Doing so just dilutes your products and they will be weak generic ‘also rans’, and I’m sure this isn’t what you want for your business.

Stop trying to sell to everyone. You cannot be all things to all people, you simply haven’t got the budget, the time and the resources for it.

The analogy I often use when talking about target markets is fishing. Imagine one of the beautiful large lakes in the Lake District, or an equally beautiful Scottish loch. In this lake or loch are thousands of fish of just about every freshwater variety you can name. Every day you get up early to sit around this lake or loch with hundreds of fishermen who are just like you, you’re all competing to catch the most amount of fish. Daily you’re all there and you keep catching fish, all using pretty much the same equipment, the same baits and the same methods. And of course, you all catch the same random types and size of fish. Over time you grow smarter and work out that not all fish are equal, catching certain types of fish are much more valuable and rewarding to you.

So you think, “why don’t I catch more of those?” But, and here’s the scary bit:

You’ll reduce the volume of fish you catch.

You’ll need to invest in working out how to catch your right fish.

And of course you’re addicted to catching volume and breaking from this would be very courageous. You get thinking about how rewarding it would be to get up every day, sit around the beautiful lake or loch and only catch the fish you really want. You don’t need to waste time catching other fish that sap your time and energy, only for you to eventually throw them back. Over time, and while your competitors keep fishing for everything, you specialise in salmon fishing and become the market leader. A bit later you work out that trout are also caught a similar way and you like catching them. Now you’ve got two target fish.

We need to get to the heart of your preferred target market.
This is how you’ve got to think about your business. Who are your Salmon and Trout? What types of customers do you like to deal with and would dearly love more of? Which types of customers would you like to throw back?

Let’s just step back a second to make sure we understand what we mean by target market.

A target market is a clearly identified group of people or companies within the total market who:

Share similar characteristics or traits such as geography, buying power, demographics, and incomes;

Need and want your products;

Can afford to pay for your products;

Can be reached by marketing activities;

Are large enough in volume to warrant investing time, energy and resources to gain a return on investment.

Don’t worry, as you’ve seen with our fishing analogy you can have more than one, in fact you can have several. If you think about a department store and brand like John Lewis, you could argue that their target market is everyone, for indeed anyone can walk into one of their stores or shop on-line and buy their products. But they don’t want one customer to buy one product. They want customers to buy lots of products and keep coming back for more. Their target market is aimed at mid to high earning customers but both male and female, and different age groups. In comparison their target market is very different from Primark. John Lewis doesn’t stop the ‘non target customers’ shopping with them, they just choose not to market to them.

I like Ted Baker clothes, but I’m not their target market, their brand is aimed at an audience at least 15 years younger than me. Each season, when they design their clothes, I’m certainly not on their avatar board or in the mind of Ted’s designers. They have a very clear understanding of their target market and they stay very close to them to keep their products in tune, and hence their great success. Of course that doesn’t stop me buying their clothes but I’m not their target market, they don’t spend money marketing to me.

How To Identify Your Target Market

We need to discover who your perfect target market is and we’re going to use two tools, the Customer Identifier and the Your Perfect Customer Matrix.

The first step is to identify the types of customers you serve using the Customer Identifier. Here you’ll find two versions, one for Retail if you sell to consumers (B2C), and one for Business if you sell to companies (B2B).
B2B
If you sell B2B, this is probably going to be slightly easier for you as you’ll tend to have a list of all your customers’ names. Using the Customer Identifier B2B sheet, copy a list of your top 50 customers in column ‘Customer Names’. Your top 50 should be by spend, i.e. the top 50 customers who spent the most money. Using the column headings (Sector, Location, Size etc) work along the columns, which will help you identify the common characteristics and traits. From here you should be able to put your customers into some sort of group or groups.

B2C
If you sell B2C, this is a bit tougher. If you’ve got a list of customers, again copy and paste your list here and work across the column headers. If you haven’t got a list of customers, work with your team to create a list of customer types and group them.

On the next sheet, Your Perfect Customer Matrix, you can rate your different groups. Using the header columns score each group 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) for the following for each:

They want your product

They can afford your product

They will pay a premium for your product

You can reach them quickly, easily and cost-effectively

There’s enough of them to make your business successful

Your business already has credibility with them or you can quickly gain credibility

Their location allows them to be serviced conveniently and cost-effectively

Their market condition, decline or growth; score 1 = rapid decline, 2 = decline, 3 = steady, 4 = growing, 5 = high growth

The higher the score the more perfect that group is for you, and ideally you’ve got groups scoring 25 and above.

How To Generate More Leads

How To Generate More Sales Leads

Love Your Business TV – How Do You Generate More Sales Leads?

In this video we’ll be looking at lead generation:

– What are Lead Generation Channels?

– How do you apply them to your customers?

– What are the common lead generation mistakes businesses make?

– How can you improve your sales and lead generation today?

Here’s the link to How To Define Your Target Market

FREE Business Advice & Tips…

Transcript From Live Show

Good afternoon and welcome to love your business TV. I am Adrian Peck. I am the founder and owner of better never stops. We deliver business advice and coaching programs to entrepreneurs and business owners who run or want to run 1 million pound plus turnover businesses. I’m also the author of how to fall back in love of your business, the entrepreneur’s guide to rediscovery or mojo and enjoy every day by living your dream. So every week like a broadcast live to a life the world actually in fact these days to a live stream on YouTube and Facebook, I’ve really there to help inspire the business owners, you guys, entrepreneurs to stay in love with fallback in double your business or stay in love with your businesses. I believe that when you’re running your own business, it’s all about having fun. And if you’re not having fun in your business, then why you’re doing it and you really need some help to put that right.

So my present every single week various different topics we cover to really gain help you stay in. There’ll be all business or full backing of your business and really get the most out of it. When you’re in those zones, you really can conquer the world. And that’s certainly what I’m here to do. And I do apologize. We’re a little bit late today with had a few technical hits. My PC was running really, really slowly and I’ve done that plastic thing and then trying to restart it. And of course I had done a windows update and it’s been locked me out for the last 20 minutes. So it’s wonderful to be here today with you. If you want to reach out to me we’re live on Facebook or YouTube, you can also catch up on the various podcast.

We turn this into a podcast and it goes out on Spotify and on Apple as well, and Google podcasts. And you can also find this on a love your business.tv. That takes you through to our better. Now the steps were better never stopped website where you can catch up on all the previous shows as well. If you want to reach out to me please feel free to reach out is Adrian dot Peck Peck, uk.com. And also if you’ve got any comments or questions you want to go, they just put them into the comments bar and on. I’ll try and answer them as we go along or certainly at the end. So this week I want to move on if I can get this to work and talk to you about lead generation that’s just close that down a little bit.

So I want to talk about lead generation and a big focus on lead generation and sales. Over the last couple of weeks I have put out a survey to business owners that has gone out to, I don’t know, about five, at least five to 10,000 businesses now. And we’ve had quite a strong response on that and the overwhelming topic. That was the big challenge at the moment. So that the, the kind of the survey asks was what were your, what was your biggest challenge at the moment for your business? The big challenge that came back was about sales, lead generation and sales conversion was the big challenge. So what I want to do over the next at least probably four weeks really is to really focus in on that and give you some hopefully some really good content around what it is you can do first around generating leads and then importantly selling them as well. So this week I want to concentrate on lead generation channels. We are going to cover,

If I can get this work, it doesn’t seem to want to work today. We’re going to cover kind of what our channels and just, I want to kind of get away from some of the jargon if you liked. So when we’re talking about channels, what do I mean? What are the common mistakes that are made? And then I’m going to lead you with three really, really important actions that you can take right now to to generate leads. And to really have an immediate impact on your business. So that’s what we’re going to cover next week. And we’re excited. We’re going to have a mic guy called Mike Killen join us next week. Mike is an expert in sales conversion and sales process type stuff. And I’m really excited that he’s going to come and join us next week. But let’s crack on with this week.

Let’s cover a look at our lead generation channels. So first of all, what do we mean by channel? And kind of let’s demystify some that March at that jargon if you like. So a channel really is is the way that you go, a new talk, a new try and get leads in for your business. So what we’re talking about, we’re talking about websites, we’re talking about social media, we’re talking about shows and exhibitions. You might do a, we’re talking about email campaigns, direct email campaigns printed advertising telesales, direct marketing press releases and PR, that kind of stuff. So these are channels. These are the channels that you choose to go and, and find your, your your target market. And that’s kind of very much what they are. This is what we talk mean about by channel.

And I again apologize if that’s kind of teaching you how to suck eggs, but it’s important that I don’t want to leave you there kind of thinking what the hell is he in about having got the first step, let alone look on the other ones. So we’re going to do now is look at a what are the common mistakes that I see with businesses and the way they try to go to market and why they tried to get leads and generate leads. So the first mistake that’s really a massive, massive mistake that I see business owners make or business make is around what I call target channel match. And that’s make sure that first of all that you are target, you have the right target market that’s on the right channel and you’re matching that with the right message as well. And I’m going to come up with the types of messages in a moment, but I’ll talk about them, the match or that message as well.

And really, I want to think about the analogy I always use and I’ve used it in my book as a whole channel on this whole channel. There’s a whole chapter on this in my book. I wanted to do to think about channels. My analogy is always about fishing. I think fishing is a great analogy when you’re talking about target markets and when you’re talking about your customers and clearly having the right channel and the right match. If you want to go fishing for Cod for instance, you’re not going to do that in a Lake. I’m pretty rarely you could find a cold swimming. You’re on a river, and I’m sure people will prove me wrong, but certainly not in the rivers of the UK. And you’re gonna find them in the sea, and that’s predominately where you do. And it’s the same for if you take a fresh water fish, you’re not gonna find them in the sea as well. So the important part is about manage matching your target market that’s there in the right channel. So what are your fish that are in the right channel and you need to match that together. Otherwise your, you’re never, your lead generation is not going to work. It’s not going to be effective.

Yeah.

So that’s, that’s the real kind of first real important bit is matching your targets to the channel, to to the place that you were actually then on the channel that you’re on. The big message here is stopped selling to everyone. I see it time and time again that that business is, are not quite sure about really what their target market is. And they try and wrap this really wide. We can sell to everybody. Well, you can’t talk to everybody and when you do, your message just gets really diluted. So the first point of part of that is really just making sure that you stop selling to everybody and you get your niche, right? You get your target markets absolutely nailed. But there’s a whole piece of this in my book, the idea of in, in chapter six but I’m also going to put it onto my website. I’m going to put them on website, answer this. I’ve already written the article is called stop selling to everybody and you’ll find it on my better never stops website. If you go on the tools and you’ll find it in there under the separate section in there as well. But I’ll put a link to it at the end of this as well. So you’ve got the links directly to it.

So the the second common mistake I see is not using enough channels and now you need to be used to get at least four to six constantly. Now a great part of this kind of common mistake I see is that when businesses get busy, they kind of slow down or turn off some of their marketing. So they get busy and then they start getting quiet because the marketer turn the marketing off. So then they go, we’re about to do some marketing now. So they turned that marketing back on. And then they get busy and then they turn it off and then get busy. And what happens is you get this, this, this peak and trough this feast or famine of the leads that you’re bringing in, what it means then issue that every time that you try to get your marketing re going, there’s a huge amount of cost that goes into it and you go, Oh, we didn’t really work properly before.

I don’t quite know. So therefore you kind of carry on. You try to do this kind of feast and famine way. It really doesn’t work. You need to keep your your your lead generation constantly going all the way through all the time. The other part of it is that marketing is not an exact science. It really isn’t. And the more channels you’re using, the more testing that you can do and therefore the better and better you can get those messages. And also the the call to actions that you’re putting to them as well. You can’t do that if you keep stop starting. The other thing about using more channels is that the channels change. You know, sometimes eBay might be sorry e-marketing might be really hit when you’ve got a good cake on. There are times that’s not working so well.

Just recently on on kind of Google paper click for instance with one of my clients, we literally saw a dramatic drop over a 48 hour period in his paper click now Peter and the guys at UAE, they keep it constant. They’re constantly constantly doing pay per click advertising on on Google and non things like being in a 14 hour period. All of a sudden their volume, web volume trebled in a 48 hour period, exactly the same spend, but it traveled and the only, we’ve analyzed the whole market event and the only thing that we can decide or conclusion we’ve come to is that actually their competitors turned their paper. Click. Advertising ops is the only logical thing that we can go through and therefore, obviously it’s auctioned based and the less people that are on your shin, the price goes down. So for the same amount of spend, they got three times the amount of traffic. And guess what was really busy during during the end of March, April and certainly into may is websites. Their website was, went absolutely through the roof. Last year they had done something like 300 orders for the same period, I think it was for me. In may they’ve done 800 orders, so from three to 800 orders, same amount of spend. That’s why it’s important to keep those channels going all the time and use all those channels.

So the third wrong common mistake that I see is about using the wrong type of message. So what do I mean? On each one of those channels, you need to have a different message instinctively or invariably, the customers that are on it are in a different mood depending on what channel they’re on. So what do I mean by that? Clearly, if you’re using social media, that person isn’t on social media to buy your product. That’s not their intention. When they jumped onto onto Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram, they weren’t necessarily there any shape or form to buy your product. But all of a sudden your products popped up and you’ve said, buy me, buy me, buy me. And it’s gone. Well, well, no, don’t, that’s not the mode I’m in. I’m not in a buying mode. And therefore you need to change your message to match the mode they’re in and the platform that on equally if they are on on Google and they are searching for your product or service, clearly they’re in the market to buy it and therefore your message and then the pages you take them to need to be different as well compared to what they did on social media.

So where you have to think about what is your most wanted outcome when you’re on those medias as well. So if you’re going to take a customer from Facebook and you have to start educating them through that process, you know, you got to think about the message you taken, the outcome you’re going to do, you are not going to sell for them. Sell to them, move in a couple of clicks. It just isn’t going to happen unless your product is out of this world or is a very low risk product. And the higher and higher your product cost is the longer and longer you need to build that relationship over. And that’s the kind of thing you need to think about. So it’s all about getting the right message on those platforms. So don’t fall into the mistake of having the wrong type of message on those platforms you’re doing as well.

So we’ve covered really three very, very common mistakes that people make. So that is not having enough channels and having the wrong message and not having that massive, that message that and the channel match, right as well. So then what are, what are the things that you can date? What are the actions you can take? So let me take you through, I’ve got three really important actions for you to away from this. The first one is target market. And again, if you go on to better than other stop, stop global I’m going to put an article on there called stops that into everyone. And it’s very much aimed at helping you get your target market right. If you don’t get your target market right, you try and sell to everybody and that’s really not going to happen.

Your message gets very diluted. It gets very confusing. And it’s just not as powerful. Now I know what you’re thinking and as much as that, if you try and limit down the target market, your trying to go for you then won’t have as many customers who as many leads. And I can promise you exactly the opposite will happen. And I want to think you think about the difference between a meat machine gun and a sniper or, or an a rifle and machine Kung. You’re spraying bullets all over the place and how those bullets actually hit your target versus a sniper and a rifle that are just shooting one bullet into one target at a time. And that’s the difference. I say, if you go onto onto the better, never stopped and you’ll see the article on the right and they’re called stop selling to everyone.

I’ll put the links on the on the YouTube and the Facebook live as well, so you can jump onto those. So that’s the first action to take is to make sure you’ve got your target market absolutely nailed. Once you’ve got your target market, absolutely nailed. The second action on here becomes really easy. And that the thing that you need to think about is about where to go look for your customers or where to find them or sorry, it’s where your customers go look for your product or service and where you can go and find your customers. And ideally your target market. You need to be able to identify both. So let me just explain that a little bit more. So first of all is where does your target market wave that go look for your product or surface when they’re in that buying mode?

So where are they when they’re in that buying mode? So, you know on here I’ve put this is a form that I use. It’s in my book. It’s a very simple kind of checklist that you can go through the waving, put your target market down on there. And in fact, let’s just make that a little bit bigger for you. So you can see, so you can look on how you see your, your, your lead generation channel and you can put your target market in there. So where are they looking? So obviously would they look on a web search? Would they go to a web directory? Would they go to a trade show to find your service or an exhibition? Is it something you can do on a joint venture? So would the Pyre up very much with a joint venture?

Or is it around search engine optimization? Kind of gain is about web. So once you’ve got your target absolutely nailed you can go through this form and go, Ashley, where is it? My target market would look to go and find those my services or products. The second one. Then on here, I get this to work is then where would they find, where can you find those people? So again, when you got your target market kind of nailed down and honed, where is it that you can, you know, those people are where you can then go, therefore go find them and you can go and put them your message in front of them. So again, you’re thinking about things like social media. Is it sponsorship emails, text, mail campaigns post also with email, you know, have you got a list or can you generate a list of email of emails for your customers?

Can you go to and by postal information? And therefore directory direct marketing do letter campaigns. Is it through advertising? It, you know, where to go and find them to do advertising press releases. So what magazines, newspapers and stuff like that are looking at where they go networking seminars to their phone campaigns, that kind of stuff. So I’ll give you a little bit of a of a, an example here in terms of sponsorship. One of the clients I work with, they do windows, doors, conservatories, that kind of stuff. They’ve got to, they’ve got a trade division within the business. And when I got working with them, identify that they’re trying to do this, they do it our sponsorship in football, but they use their retail brand in football. And I actually said to them that what you need to do is split that.

And actually your football is more associated with trades. That’s what your trades people are either going to watch football every week or actually that’s taking part in it. So we respond to the local football team. We also sponsored all the football, the local football leagues. We’re sponsored by them as well. So immediate, we know that, that that target markets and we’ve done the surveys through their trades. We knew that their trades are out playing or watching football on the weekend. So we’re putting their name in front of them all the time as well. So this gives you a little bit of, for instance, of how you can use it.

And remember you should be using four to six of these. All of the time, you should be broadcasting out on these channels four to six all the time, every day. You should be out there doing marketing to them through those channels. So the last one I’m gonna talk about then it’s about market channel, message match, market channel message match a bit of a mouthful, but what do, I mean it’s about gain going back to understanding what channel you’re on and how you are then going to get that message right to then talk to them and eventually sell to them. So is it where they are searching for something? If they’re searching for your for your product and therefore, you know on there, then it’s really you’re in selling mode and you can then get that message right about what it is you’re selling and get them on the right pages when they are clicking on those links as well.

But if you’re there, if you’re in a social media type format or where people are are then more than they’re not in that buying mode, they’re more in that kind of the browsing mode. You then need to think about the education you can do to them to help them buy those products. So how is it you can take them from that social media platform to go, Oh, did you know about this? And then age them through those messages as well. So that’s the difference with the education match for education message versus the setting message. And that’s really, really important. So make sure you get your market channel message match right and you getting them right in the right modes.

So remember, you know, I have a great motto in life is the only shit happens and everything else has made me to make happen. So think about the three actions that I’ve given you today. Think about how you can apply them in your business. Jump on the website onto better never stop, stopped global on those free tools and I will put those forms on there. And also the the target market presentation as well. I’ll give you the the clip out of my book that you can go and download and you can take them that, I will turn it into a presentation as well over the next 48 hours as well. So that will be on there. If you want a free copy of my book has all the stuff I cover is covered in my free book which you can’t see at the moment.

There’s no problem you hold now, but if I do that, so if you want a free copy of my book, just reach out to me. Adrian dot Peck Peck, you tag.com and I’ll get a free book out to in the post to you. So feel free, feel free to do that. And if you want there’s, I’ve got a score card as well. It’s a health check. This better than ever stops business health check. If you want to find out how to improve your business and this health check looks across the whole of your business. If you go to PAC UK dot score app.com and you can do a health check on that, you’re on your business, you get a 20 page report with also with lots of help and advice in there about how you can improve each one, the sections of well based on your school.

So I really hope that’s been hopeful. I really hope that that has helped you with your lead generation. We’re going to continue the theme over the next two or three weeks as well, and at least that time and I say next week we’re going to look at sales conversion processes with Mike Killen. Really excited about that. Mike’s a great, great guy. I know you’re going to get lots of information from that. But in the meantime, stay safe. I mean, remember if you want to reach out to me, it’s agent dr packer pecky K. Dot com. Please keep all your questions on comments, come in and really enjoy the feedback you’ve given me and remember better than ever stops by major impact. Thank you very much.

And remember…Better Never Stops

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