Trouble selling?

Hey friend.

I did a few sales calls this week and ran into a recurring theme when talking with small business owners.

Selling stuff is hard.

All of the customers I spoke to had read dozens of books by the most popular marketers out there on how to guide a lead from impression to checkout.

A lot of the concepts are the same, but when overwhelmed with so much information and trying to implement so many tactics you end up accomplishing less than you think.

In fact, trying to implement too much at once, especially as a novice, will cause you to confuse leads (and yourself) rather than sell to them.

Today, I want to simplify some of the core concepts about how to sell something. I've been doing it for a long time, so maybe we can clear up some myths and misconceptions together.

TL;DR;

• Novice (and even intermediate) marketers, overwhelmed with options and information, can make poor decisions about how to invest their money and time when selling things.
• Here are some guidelines:
  • Don't sell things that don't make money.
  • Focus on selling your core offering.
  • Don't get in the way of customers giving you money.
  • Sell by helping and building trust.
  • Charge what you're worth.

Part 5.

"Sell me this pen."

~The Wolf of Wall Street.

If you're a novice (or even an intermediate) marketer or salesperson, it's more than likely you've read some of the most popular marketing gospel.

• DotCom Secrets by Russel Brunson
• The Science of Selling by David Hoffeld
• Influence by Robert Cialdini
• Happiness Advantage by Shawn Anchor
• Million Dollar Habits by Brian Tracy
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Anything written by Grant Cardone
• Etc...

All great reads are packed with effective tactics and marketing essentials. I've read many of these myself and have implemented much in my own business.

However, the mistake I see novice marketers make after binge reading is over-investing too early in the implementation of some of these tactics before the business is ready for it. This causes other key areas of the business to suffer as a result.

I used the word mistake, but "mistake" isn't really the right word. Instead I mean something that I wouldn't personally do or recommend to others based on my own experience. Your mileage may vary. Keep that in mind when I use "mistake" moving forward.

So if you're starting a new project, or not getting the results you want from your current business, let's revisit our marketing strategy.

What's your primary success metric?

Every business has a primary success metric. If this number is healthy, the business is healthy. Conversely, if it's not healthy, the business struggles.

Most businesses have the same primary success metric: The bottom line, aka revenue.

This is of course a gross oversimplification. There are other factors that impact business health like expenses and such, but ignoring revenue can only lead to bad outcomes.

A key mistake novice marketers make (one that I've made several times) is designing campaigns and programs that don't lead directly to revenue-generating activities.

For example...

Groundhogg has a free version in the WordPress.org repository. Many years ago I spent $3K in 1 week on Facebook ads promoting the free version of our CRM in hopes that would lead to people upgrading.

Of course, no one upgraded and it was a huge waste.

I could have instead spent the same money on sending people to a dedicated landing page focused on selling our paid plans, or a paid trial (what we do now) that converts much lower (opt-ins) than the free thing, but creates revenue (what actually matters) much quicker!

You'll notice when browsing the Groundhogg website these days, it doesn't say free anywhere.

When you're starting out, don't invest in things that don't make money.

What are you selling?

At Groundhogg we sell licenses, a barber sells haircuts, and a therapist sells happiness (maybe?). When wanting to increase revenue, we need to increase the number of units of what we sell, duh. We call this the core offering.

The next key mistake I see novice marketers make is trying to sell things that don't result in direct revenue. They ignore their core offering.

One of the business owners I spoke to, newish to marketing, wanted to implement the ever-popular "free book + shipping" offer into their sales funnel. Keep in mind that their business is consultation, pay per 1hr appointment.

Their desired flow looked like this.

1. Click an ad or find them on Youtube
2. The Call to Action is a Free + Shipping book offer
3. Read the book, want more
4. Book a consultation
5. Sign up

No doubt an effective strategy popularized by Russel Brunson and Clickfunnels. Something that I've tested and implemented myself before Groundhogg. Given you have the staff, funds, logistical know-how, and bandwidth to write, print, ship books, and handle returns, then, by all means, go for it!

But there are a few hiccups when novices attempt this, besides the logistics of selling books.

Problem 1.

Not only now do you have to sell your core offering, which is hard enough to do effectively. Now you have to sell your book, too. Not only that, you have to sell them on actually reading it.

Problem 2.

In order for someone to get their desired outcome from your core offering, you set the expectation that they have to read the book first. This is a very high level of commitment.

Problem 3.

If your book sucks, then it's all over. You lose credibility. Even if your core offering is really good.

Problem 4.

You sink so much time, money, and effort into this book thing, only to eventually realize it was not the best tactic for your ideal customer. Something more direct may have worked better.

The reason it works so well for the top marketers is that they have years of experience, testimonials, reviews, budget, credibility, authority, staff, etc. to make it work. Their core offering is solid and selling already, so they can work and focus on the book while the core offering is humming along.

If your core offering is not solid yet, that's where you need to focus, and stay focused. Only once your core offering is solid should you start looking at more complex sales funnels like Free + Shipping.

Focus on selling your core offering before complicating things.

Speaking of complicating...

Why are you making it complicated?

You know who you are. With great power comes a great desire to make complicated journeys and automations because you can. But ask yourself, is that helping, or hurting your business?

9/10 businesses could drastically improve their revenue with the simplest of sales funnels.

1. Book a call
2. Sell on the call

1 in 2 of Groundhogg's customers go through that process before buying. The other half do the $1 14-day demo first. Simple, easy.

Novices think that in order to get someone to buy they need to have a book, or an eBook, or a lead magnet, or whatever. That might be true for some leads. But many leads would much rather skip that and go straight to the top to talk to a rep, or even just buy.

It's incredible how many people just sign up for Groundhogg without any call or trial. You should remove arbitrary and extra steps to booking a call, signing up, subscribing, and giving you money.

eBooks, freebies, demos, and other tools exist for the leads who need them to make a decision. They are adjacent to the main customer journey. Don't make them necessary.

Never get in the way of someone giving you money.

How are you earning trust?

You might have designed the most badass of landing pages, offers, sales funnels, and email sequences complete with the favorite tactics of the top marketers. But without trust it will never perform to your expectations.

Trust is the basis of most relationships. Without it, relationships seldom last. 

I learned this lesson early when buying ads for Groundhogg. Without a history of established trust with customers, it was difficult to get bites on my offers.

So, how do you earn the trust of a lead?

The best way is reviews and testimonials. But that doesn't help if you're just starting and you don't have any customer reviews to pull from, or you're in an industry where you can't collect reviews easily, or at all.

So what do you do instead?

Tone down the "salesy" language and increase your output of "helpful" content.

Salesy language on landing pages is not effective if there is no trust, and can come off as scammy.

Helpful content is perceived as altruistic and helps build trust with the lead. 

There are lots of ways to build a portfolio of helpful content:

• Blog posts
• Social media interactions
• YouTube videos and shorts
• Facebook group

But the easiest way is just to do free, no-obligation calls with leads.

On this call, you identify the problems, offer part of the solution, and sign them up to learn the rest. It's easier to establish a base level of trust when chatting with someone face-to-face.

If you've ever done a call with me you know that I spend 80% of the call talking about your sales funnel and giving you direction on how to best achieve your desired outcome, whether you use Groundhogg or not. I have a terrific closing ratio 😉.

Sales without trust is scammy. Helping with trust is sales.

Why are you selling yourself short?

You are no doubt an expert in your profession. Years of study, investment of money, time, and practical experience have led you to start a business with the aim of helping others with the problems you've previously faced.

You know you're worth $1,000, but your rate is only $100. You've priced yourself there for what you think are good reasons.

• You've entered a saturated marketing with lots of competition
• You haven't earned a lot of trust in the market yet
• You don't have a bank of helpful content
• You want to undercut the competition in hopes of attracting customers

The problem with doing that is that your desired customers know that you're worth $1000, but since you're only charging $100 they think...

• "It's too good to be true"
• "It must not be that good"
• "It likely won't solve my problem"

And then instead of getting the customers you want, you get the ones you don't want.

Groundhogg used to cost $99/yr for everything when I first started. That attracted poor-quality customers who ate up a lot of my time and had unrealistic expectations. Now we're priced as one of the most expensive WordPress plugins, but still very economical when compared to SaaS CRMs.

Now, if your much more mature competition is also charging $1,000, then you should charge at least 80% of that. That way it goes from, "It's too good to be true," to, "That's great value, let me give it a try."

If you're worth more than your closest competition, great! Charge more than them! Just be prepared to deliver and back up the claim that you're worth more.

Charge what you're worth (or at least close to it).

Let's wrap this up...

This email is getting kinda long, so let's review the key concepts.

Don't invest in things that don't make money.

Use your precious time and money to improve the flow of revenue to channels in your business that create revenue.

Focus on selling your core offering.

Selling one thing is hard enough. Stick to your core offering, at least until it's humming along without the need for your input.

Don't get in the way of customers giving you money.

Reduce the steps to checkout, or getting on a call with you. Make it easy to get to the order form. Books, lead magnets, free courses, and other freebies should be tangential for those leads that need them for decision-making help.

Sell by helping and building trust.

Create helpful content and participate in your community. Or simply do calls, as many calls as you can, identify and solve some of the problems.

Charge what you're worth.

Charging too low will attract the wrong customers. Charge what you're worth, or at least close to it if your competition is in the same ballpark. If you're worth more than the competition then charge more, just be prepared to back it up with results.

Did I miss anything? Disagree? I'm open to hearing from your experience. Reply and we'll chat.

More to come,

Adrian Tobey
Founder, Groundhogg Inc.