095: Sales Right Under Your Nose

"More leads? Yes please. But first - are you losing the ones you already have?"

For an established business like yours where you’ve already worked with hundreds of clients, there are so many levers available to you right now. 

In this episode I'm walking you through seven real situations where sales are slipping through the cracks of service-based businesses - and what to do about each one. 

By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:

• The micro-moments happening right now in your business where sales exist
• How to ensure future leads convert at a higher rate, making more out of your marketing
• How to stop losing the leads you already have

Instead of throwing more marketing at a leaky bucket, let me show you how to make the right intentional shifts - from the inside out. 

Enjoy!

For your Complimentary Consultation click here or visit: shannonstone.com.au/consult

Let's Connect on LinkedIn!

If you’d like to work together, book your Complimentary Consultation here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Have you noticed so much business and marketing content out there is so abstract and airy fairy? Like what they're saying sounds good, but what do you actually need to do? That's where the Good Marketing Good Business Podcast comes in. This is where I share practical strategies to help you grow your service-based business. And in case we haven't met yet, I'm Shannon Stone, award-winning business and marketing consultant. And for the last decade or so, I've been diving in deep with small business owners, helping them to make more sales and get more done in less time. And today's episode is no different. Enjoy. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. I am really excited for this episode. Today we are talking about sales right under your nose. And it's going to be one you will definitely need that pen and paper. And the reason being is it's very tangible, very actionable. I'm gonna tell you specifically where in your business right now you have sales that you're sitting on, and I don't want to just improve this for you right now, I want to improve this for you in the long term. So these are not like here's just like that odd lead over there or here, whatever it might be. If we can highlight this problem in your business, we can make a forever solution for it. So definitely have that pen and paper and let's get into it. So every business, right, they want to have more leads. But my stance is that yes, you need more leads, and you also need to stop losing the ones you already have. One of the big reasons I stand by that is because if you double the leads you're getting in your business with the same processes that you're currently working with, it's just gonna double your frustration. So my aim for you would be to double your leads and double your clients. But if we're going to do it under the same conditions that very much likely exist in your business as so many others that I speak to, it's going to create a lot of frustration for you. So while I want you to double down on your marketing, and we're going to talk about that, I also need us to think about this in a really holistic kind of manner. Because people will often think, when I have more leads, I'll do better. My response to that is do better, and then you'll have more clients. So it's not just about when you get that flood of leads, everything will be okay. We need to make things okay now in order for that flood of leads to even get past the front door of your business. So you either need to one improve these broken processes and these specific scenarios that I'm going to talk about today, and we've got seven of them, or you need to improve these processes in tandem with rolling out your marketing. And why I love marketing, and I love it from this really holistic point of view, is that marketing brings up, people are gonna think, how is this a good thing? To me, it's a great thing. Marketing brings up the problems that are happening in your business. It reveals so much intel and so much data about where you need to improve things to not only uh generate more clients and more conversions, it strengthens your business overall. So your marketing really is that conduit to understand where are those pieces breaking or currently broken in my business, as well as the feedback you're getting directly from the market, whether it's around pricing, the way you're packaging things, even it's the only way I personally in my business find out about what's kind of happening in the marketplace with Innovator Commerce competitors. I don't look anywhere else, it all comes from the people that come to me asking for my help, and that's such incredible information, incredible market research. So we can talk about all the beautiful byproducts of marketing all day long, but in this episode, I'm gonna show you where sales exist right now under your nose, and we've got seven tangible situations that are making you lose leads. And like I just spoke to a business yesterday, and I just thought, you know, it's just worthy of its own podcast episode. I've got to share this with way more people. Okay, so let's talk about these specific situations that are coming up. So the way I'm presenting, we've got seven of them and seven problems basically. For each problem, I'm gonna share one or two solutions, but for every problem in your business, and think about this for this episode, but also everything else going on. For every one problem in your business, there's multiple solutions, and that could be you do multiple, like you try multiple things, or it could also mean it requires multiple steps. So sometimes it's like it's not just to solve your marketing problem, you do marketing, you know. That's one way of looking at the solution. There's actually multiple steps to it, or multiple pieces required to solve that problem. Okay, so let's jump into it. So the first one is first problem is

Problem 1: Following up with leads too slowly

SPEAKER_00 5:40

following up with leads too slowly. So the solution to this is to really decide what is a reasonable time frame to follow up with leads. Because if you are following up with them too slowly, you're gonna lose them, of course. They're gonna, when they're inquiring often about your service, they're inquiring about other people's service as well. So, what is a reasonable time frame for you or your team, whoever's doing this activity, to actually follow up with that lead and whatever your process looks like at the moment. Like I said, one problem, it can have multiple solutions. So if you're following up with leads too slowly, think at think and look at your business and that process currently. What is going on there and what actually needs to change? I've got an example of this. I was inquiring about venues to run my boardroom days and a few other in-person things that I am really excited to be doing more of this year. And so as I reached out to different venues and things, it was such like you can't take the business brain out of the person. It was such an interesting scenario to see what the process is to inquire, like you know, I'm looking for the exact same service. I'm looking to find a venue, a function room to host specific events. And the way that I had to kind of go about putting in an inquiry, some of them it was on the phone, some of it it was a form, and different degrees and different elements of a process. And there were definitely some that I would just say hands down, they're doing the process really, really wrong. But it just kind of shows, okay, like some of them on this point, following up with leads too slowly, one of them I didn't hear back for a whole week, a whole week. And like I said, when someone's inquiring about your service, they're usually inquiring about other people's service as well. So, what is a reasonable time frame based on you know the context of your business and what that really looks like? What is a really reasonable time frame? And when are you gonna lose people if you don't capture them in that specific time frame? So that's the first one. The second problem that comes up is not gathering

Problem 2: Not gathering the right information

SPEAKER_00 8:02

the right information from the lead in order to help progress the sale. And I want to use this event inquiry one more time as an example that I was doing. So the problem here not gathering enough information from the lead in order to help progress the sale. So one of them I reached out to, I did the form, I filled in the form that they had on their website with the details. They then followed me up via email asking more questions. And essentially, because I am inquiring with other people, it's like the one who gets the information from me in the shortest amount of time that ticks all my boxes is essentially going to get my sale. But the person or this business came back with more questions, and I'm thinking those questions are imperative to them actually making and progressing that into a sale. So those questions should actually be on that intake form to begin with. So if you think about your business in this scenario, are you gathering all the information, the right information from them from the get-go, whether it is a form or they're booking a call on something like Calendly, or even on the phone and you're asking them questions, like what is the information you genuinely need from them in order to help progress that sale forward? And I think when you think about this process, I don't think I know, I know when you think about this process, it's going to strengthen the whole sales process. You're going to come across as someone who knows what they're talking about. If you inquire on a particular service with a particular business and they're leaving the questions, sure, they're going to obviously give you the floor and let you answer your questions, I would hope. But imagine if they're helping to lead the conversation and they're asking questions that relate to you, relate to your problem, relate to their service, that triage of three different things, they're asking the right things. You're going to think, wow, this person, this business actually knows what they're talking about. They're really professional. They're asking things that I didn't even know to ask. They're helping me with a really informed inquiry right now. And this is important because if you're not asking these questions and someone else is, you know, a camp uh the next person they're inquiring with, a competitor essentially, they're probably gonna go with the person who asks the right questions. And even if they're say they're talking to three different possible providers, and one of them has amazing questions, which they didn't think of at the beginning, but then they go to the second provider to get a quote or to have a conversation, and the third, but they're carrying through those questions learnt from the first person. It's like there's still a strong level of trust with that first person. So this is not alone enough to, well, it can be, but it's not always enough to get the full sale because obviously you're not just selling, you're not usually just making a sale because you ask the right questions on that alone. You need other supporting information and parts of your business that check the boxes for them as well. And this is why I've covered seven different things. So that's a strong, powerful one to think about. Not gathering the right information from the lead to help progress the sale. That is problem number two. Okay, problem number

Problem 3: Coming across as desperate for the sale

SPEAKER_00 11:38

three is coming across desperate for the sale. So think about this. You've got leads coming in, and even if they're in, you know, low volume, often this problem comes up the most when the volume of your leads is really low. Whether it's you or uh, you know, a team member who's taking care of the sales, um, coming across desperate is like a guaranteed way to lose that sale real quickly. I've got a great example on this one, but when I think about this being a problem and what is the solution for a business, I really feel that it's taking a bigger, it's like taking a step back. If someone is having to be desperate on a sales conversation or in that sales conversation, we've kind of got bigger things going on here, bigger solutions that need to come to the party. It's like you need to really look at the sales strategy that's going on, the sales process. Like that person could be really desperate, coming across as desperate for the sale, because they think maybe it's the one and only chance I get to talk to them. You know, if I don't tell them everything I need to squeeze into, you know, this 30-minute or 60-minute conversation, whatever the time frame is, if I don't give them everything right now, they're gonna walk away. Like we need to, there's a lot, a lot going on here. If someone's coming across desperate for the sale, if it's the business owner as well, like whether it's the business owner or a team member, I think the the way that comes across can be really different. So another possible solution is to look at other value, valuable parts of you, of your business, of your services and products that you need to focus on in order to make the sale. So obviously, there's a a big chunky piece of that sales strategy and sales process really missing here, but it could be some other areas. That's why I said every problem has multiple solutions, multiple possibilities. The example I did want to share on this one is I again was on the receiving end of a sales pitch, and the guy I add this here because it wasn't desperate for the sale, but it was transparent. So the person was trying to sell me something for my business, which I was genuinely interested in. So we're sitting down having a sales meeting, and he in it, and again, can't take the business brain out of the girl, but I I try to. I just want to be present. I'm I don't want to like psychoanalyze anyone's business, especially if like I'm in the the customer seat in that sense or in the possible client seat. I really just want to be present, not psychoanalyze it all, but I do my best. But basically, he said, look, the reason I want to work with you is X, Y, and Z. And one of those X, Y, and Z reasons, he transparently said, is it is that I do need your business, Shannon. It's, you know, obviously growing my business depends on making sales like this as well. So he was really transparent. He said something over those lines where he said, he was really transparent. He said, I do need your business, Shannon. But he wasn't desperate about it. He was transparent about it, and he supported it with other pieces as well. It wasn't the main focus. It wasn't that, Shannon, I need to make my targets this month, or you know, you're my do or die client if I don't sign you. It wasn't anything like that. It was really genuine, it was very authentic, which is an important piece I want to add in here because I I really believe that marketing should be authentic as well as sales as well. That should also be authentic as well. You know, you'll see those companies where it's like we're having a closing down sale, everything's gotta go, floor stocks gotta go. But like this has been going on for like five years, and you're like, I thought they were closing down. And so clearly that is not a it's just a marketing tactic, it's not based in authentic authenticity. And when it comes to service-based businesses in particular, like forget, forget doing like falsified, gimmicky kind of marketing, especially, especially in the B2B space. It's not gonna cut. People can see it from five miles away, and so that's number three. So coming across desperate for the sale, all right.

Problem 4: Warm conversations, no sales

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Problem number four is having conversations with leads that are warm but not salesy. And I this is maybe the only time I would use salesy. I want to say in a good way. So say you're someone that you have this great and you often have these great conversations with potential clients, and they're always really warm, they're chit-chatty, they're bubbly, like it, you know, they sound great, you feel like you sound great, but it ends up just being a great conversation and doesn't really go anywhere. Feels good, but you're not making any money. And so the solution or a solution for this is that we really need training on the sales conversation. We need to turn, we don't want I I never want to diffuse or diminish the strengths of people. Like, if you're bubbly, if you're great at talking to people, like we want to keep that. We just want to make sure we put a structure and a framework around that and give you some supporting elements that are gonna help turn that great warm, fuzzy conversation into an actual sale without it being that like bait and switch, or you feeling like it's that bait and switch. So conversations that feel warm but don't go anywhere. I would be looking at training on the sales conversation as well as just that framework around your sales process as well. Okay, number five, problem number five

Problem 5: Not hearing back from the lead

SPEAKER_00 17:31

is not hearing back from the lead. So very typical one. Sales that are sitting right under your nose often fall into this category. Not hearing back from from the person that you spoke to. So, what is the solution for this? Your follow-ups. Your follow-ups do need the attention. So many parts to this, because like bigger picture to it is your sales process, and that follow-up process needs attention. One nice hack that I can give you for this problem a solution for you when you speak to someone, like I do believe in people taking time to think about it. You know, you have that first phone call or that second phone call, and they want to think about it, they want to talk to their husband or whoever it might be or their significant team member, whatever the case might be. I do believe in that. And so you I also believe in conversions as well. And so I always suggest people schedule in a follow-up call. So have this great conversation. Where do you want to go from here? Really would love to think about it. I'd really like to figure some things out. Sometimes people need to kind of take in everything you've said, make sure it's a viable financial decision for them, whatever it is, and then they come back to you stronger. But we want to make sure they do come back to you. So just say to them when's a good time for us to connect again. Maybe a 15-minute follow-up chat. Really easy, really simple. That is problem solution number five. Okay, number six is

Problem 6: Enquiries sitting without progressing

SPEAKER_00 19:01

inquiry sitting without progress. So say people, first up, I'm like, if someone inquires in your business and it doesn't progress, like they don't get a response from you or the next step isn't taken. Like, my first question is like, why? Like, has someone called you and then it hasn't gone anywhere? So we really need to investigate why do inquiries sit idle? Are they in an inbox? Are they, you know, in a form? So the solution for this could be that, you know, you get inquiries from all these different platforms and they're not flowing into one central inbox. Maybe it's just that you don't have the visibility over the inquiries coming in. And so it's like you're clicking across five different platforms from email to the website form to your email marketing system to social media, you know, you're looking in all these different places. That's one possible solution for that. Another could be that for some reason the inquiries feel different on different platforms. Maybe you get, you know, inquiry, you know, maybe your business doesn't really use Instagram, but you do get like the odd response or inquiry over an Instagram. But for some reason, because it's not a central part of your business, you don't really know how to respond to them. Like, oh, is it just like an Instagram lead? And you know, they're they're usually time wasters. Like, you do we come up with stories about those particular leads? And for some reason, that lead feels different. You know, we want to investigate the reason why, and then direct them to your normal sales process. It's like it doesn't matter where all the leads come from. First, we need to capture them all, but we all lead them to a phone call. Maybe that's just as simply as what it needs to be. So that's number six, inquiry sitting without progress. And problem and solution

Problem 7: Unable to handle objections

SPEAKER_00 20:52

number seven is, and again, this is all linking back to sales sitting under your nose. Number seven is unable to diffuse or respond to objections. So those sales objections, whether it's pricing, whether it's not right now, whatever the thing is. This, it's like you can get all those leads in the world, right? But if you can't handle, and I would say, you know, not every client has objections, but what if a lot of them do, and you don't know how to handle that? So the solution here is sales training to handle the objections, or and this is probably more of my favorite, it's addressing the objections before they even become objections. And depending on your sales process, what this looks like, this can happen early on in the call. This could happen. You send them something beforehand before you have that call where you're addressing certain elements of potential objections that might come up. This is also where your marketing can have a great can kind of lift the weight. So addressing objections in your marketing. Is really helpful and imperative as well. Helps you to not have to deal with those objections because they they get diffused before they even become objections. So that is number seven. Problems. The problem was unable to diffuse or respond to objections. The solution was either sales training to handle the objections or to address the objections long before they become objections. Okay, I said you would need your pen and paper for this one, but as always, there is the LinkedIn article, always titled the same as the episode, which has all of this documented, makes it really, really easy. As well as the transcript. I find people prefer the article over clicking the transcript for some reason, but it's all good. All right, let's start to wrap this up. There's a couple of points I want to end on to really help you to solidify this and help you in your business. So, one is that I'm a really big believer in growing your business from the inside out. And when you're an established business, you know, you've been in business for years, you've already worked with hundreds of clients, if not thousands, depending on like that scope of your business and what you do. There's so many levers that will make you sales right now. These sales are sitting right under your nose. And we can think, you know, when I have more leads, I will make more sales. And yeah, you will. It's like in some part, it is that's where like that side of the equation does make sense. But I don't want you to have the mindset that it won't matter because I'll be getting far more leads, you know, why don't we focus on increasing the conversions and focus on increasing the leads? That's a better and smarter way to grow a business. There's a saying that says, if you can't save a dollar out of ten dollars, you won't save a thousand out of a million. So if you can't take care of the leads that come to you, and in those seven problems that we presented, if you're like nodding your head, oh yeah, that does happen, even if it's on a low scale or a low volume, if that is happening in your business, you're going to be, and you are losing leads right now. And so this same frame of mind, if you can't save a dollar out of ten dollars, you won't save a thousand out of a million. We have to tackle these problems now if you want to keep growing from here. And it could be a reason why your business has stalled and hit a plateau. So it's not just when you have more leads, you'll do better. Do better, and then you'll have more clients. The last thing I wanted to share before we get to the action step is it can be really normal, I find, especially for business owners that have a team. It's like we start to we surface these problems, right? And they're like, oh my god, that the team's not doing this, or this problem is it, like it shouldn't be like this, or whatever the thing is, even if you've like told the team a hundred times over and it's still not sticking, people or business owners can get, understandably, really frustrated that these issues, and I'll put them like in inverticomas, issues exist in your business. And this is why I say I love marketing for the byproducts that it brings up, it will show you where the gaps are in your business, and this is really the playing field of business. So I feel like saying here, you know, don't take these issues

Action Step

SPEAKER_00 25:27

personal. It's like that thing of, you know, when was the best time to invest 10 years ago? When's the next best time? Right now, it's like, okay, things, things change, things happen, but now you've got the awareness around it. And impartial to this as well is in the book, The E-Myth. If you haven't read it, do read it and then you understand this analogy or do a quick Google chat GPT. But while you as a business owner want to say bake cupcakes, like the e-myth book, just because your business sells cupcakes, that's not how you actually sell cupcakes to have a successful business. It's like whatever it is that you sell, we can't just be focused on like way back in the day, I did quite a bit with photographers and some creative industries and very attuned to investing a lot in their equipment. You know, there's some industries where it's like it's all about the gadgets and the gear, and like, you know, and and you would have often that equivalent, especially if you started off, like I used to be a marketer working for other people, then went into marketing. It's very natural for me to gravitate towards learning about all the marketing things, this, that, and all the other marketing things. But just knowing about marketing is not enough to have a successful business. And I want you to just put yourself in that equivalent there to think about okay, that's why I share these things with you. This is why sales are sitting right under your nose. It's like in order to have a successful business, we have to look at all the components within the business that are slowing it down. And you can thank marketing for always bringing those problems to the surface. But like I said right at the start, we want to improve these pieces in the business either first or in tandem with your marketing. If you jump both feet in back and doing more marketing, investing your time, resources, energy, all of it, and you haven't addressed these things, you're gonna double your frustration levels. And it could be a setback why even those leads don't convert when you double down on your marketing as well. So there's no one way about it. You have to address these issues, whether you do it first or you do it with your marketing. But there's no point that you won't even get to being able to do it on the back burner in most cases. So, action steps for today. What I want you to do is out of those seven, whether it's those seven or other ones, I want you to list three problems impacting your sales. So take some time to think about your business and what's actually going on when it comes to those leads coming into your business. I've given you seven, but they could be some different ones. But for each of those three that you write down, what are three solutions? So problem one, three solutions. Problem two, three more solutions. Problem three, three more solutions. So you have nine solutions to work off. That's gonna help you to not only see where the sales are right under your nose, but it's gonna give you the steps to actually take in order to move that business forward. So, super, what would we call this episode? Very instructional, I guess. Very instructional, very all about the details and doing the things. So I hope you do the things with this episode as well as any of the others that you listen to. If you have any questions, always reach out. You can send me a message on LinkedIn, or if you want to have a call and have a chat with me. I do complimentary consultations, one for every business. So you can visit shannonstone.com.au forward slash consult and we can book a complimentary consultation. There we can have a look at your business, see what you're doing, and see how we can improve it. I'll leave it at that for today. I hope you have an amazing week and we'll talk soon. Hey, thanks for listening. If you found this episode useful, I'd love for you to send it to a friend. The best podcasts I have found have all been recommended to me. If you can spread the word by sharing this episode, I can spend more time helping you by creating episodes just like this one. Send it, text it, tell somebody about it, whatever you need to do. The more you spread the word, the more I can focus on creating needle moving episodes to help you and your friends.