Loading summary
Transcript11 lines
- [00:01]
A
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name youe Price Tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states welcome to the Candy Valentino show, the podcast for founders, investors and entrepreneurs where we have honest conversations about what it takes to grow your business, build more wealth and create financial freedom.
- [00:56]
B
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the show. Thanks for tuning in with me today as we talk about a topic that I believe if everyone knew a little bit more about and knew and understood how to implement it, that's the key. We don't really need more ideas, we need to understand how to implement it and how it applies to our business. I think this would really help everyone drive business growth, maximize revenue, and even capitalize on more profitability. So let's go ahead and get into it. We're going to start with a stat because I found it shocking to know that 79% of all marketing leads overall fail to convert into a successful deal. That is like bleeding money. And all the while marketing will bring your business visibility. Having a sales strategy or a sales team to capitalize on those leads is really the missing piece to achieving long term growth and ultimate profitability. So in today's episode I want to talk about not just the importance of a sales team and a sales strategy, but how to structure it and what actionable steps that you can take, regardless of the industry that you are in, in order to implement this and to start seeing results. So why does having this even matter? Well, first off, we know that businesses with a sales team and a successful sales strategy in place will typically see 10 to 15% higher revenue growth overall, even if it's a bad strategy than those businesses that don't have one at all. So by having a sales team or a sales strategy in place, it will add value to your business because you'll be able to convert those marketing leads and build long term customer relationships. Without it, you're risking losing 79% of those leads due to that lack of dedicated follow up. And this is costing businesses endless money. I have seen this in my own businesses. I have seen this in other people's businesses. So it's a really important topic. And a study by HubSpot found the that the synergy between sales and marketing often leads to a 3.6 time increase in lead conversions. So a sales team doesn't just generate revenue, they really optimize your marketing, your marketing ROI by providing feedback on customer needs. And with a sales team in place, being able to handle customer outreach and inbound requests, you as the founder, the owner, the entrepreneur, can focus on the vision, the growth or the innovation of the company. So how do we do this? I'm going to give you five steps that are very actionable as well as some examples for specific industries and stats for each step so that you can get some context. Because I know there may be people listening, thinking, well, this doesn't apply to my business. Like I market on social media and the phone rings like that is not a sales strategy. And if you are getting leads from your marketing and you don't have this in place, again, industry stats show that almost 8 out of every 10 lead isn't getting converted. So can we be more strategic in our approach so that we can convert those leads more easily, which is going to save you on your customer acquisition cost? And anytime we can lower our customer acquisition costs and we can convert leads more easily, it's going to make us more profitable. So how do we do this? Number one, we need to make sure that we are first at least setting clear sales goals and developing the strategy around that. So what is the difference between inbound and outbound sales? Inbound sales is when the customer reaches out to you, the business, through either an online channel, Google content, whatever it may be. These are typically warm because they already have interest or they've shown interest in your product, your service, your business, your location, so they're reaching out to you. Obviously these are a lot easier to convert, but this is not necessarily a strategy. Of course you can be posting on social, but if you don't have the strategy in place to take that person from a browser to a buyer, then you are leaving a lot to chance. Now, outbound sales is the other side of this coin. That is when someone on the team initiates contact with a potential customer who may or may not be aware of you, your product or services. This could be cold calling, cold emailing, direct mail, online ads, or direct DMs. Inbound and outbound sales are effective strategies for growing revenue and the ultimate the best strategy depends on a variety of factors. The nature of your business, your deal size, the level of awareness your customers have. And we know that companies with both inbound and outbound strategies will see on average 30% higher close rates, according to marketing pros. What makes a leader? It's a tough question, but one thing's for Sure, a true leader leads by example and a true leader takes risks too. They plunge into life with determination. For those who lead by example and who approach life with a palpable passion, there's the Range Rover Sport. Each Range Rover Sport model offers a dynamic, sophisticated take on sporting love luxury. The Range Rover Sport offers focused on road performance and world renowned off road capability with industry leading features like adaptive off road cruise control that monitors ground condition and acclimates to the present terrain. Agility, control and composure are achieved with dynamic air suspension and adaptive dynamics. Reduces unwanted body movements to deliver smooth and composed handling, true sophistication and excellent maneuverability all in a seriously stylish package. Sophisticated refinement meets Visco visceral power in the Range Rover Sport. A new dimension of sporting luxury Build your Range Rover sport@land roverusa.com this episode.
- [06:36]
A
Is brought to you by Progressive Insurance do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [07:01]
B
So regardless of the industry you're in, having both of these is stacking the odds in your favor to close more deals and to increase your revenue. For example, an E commerce company may rely on inbound sales to follow up on website visitors, while a B2B SaaS startup may benefit from outbound sales to reach out to the high level decision makers who would be buying their products. The key for you is to identify what sales strategies you already have in place and if there are areas that you either need to develop or adjust in order to pick up these odds in your favor. The second step is to make sure that when you are doing outbound sales and you're hiring a salesperson or a sales team that you're really looking for the right skills and industry knowledge. It's really easy to find a salesperson. It's really hard to make sure that you have one that has empathy and problem solving skills and industry knowledge within what your business industry is. If you are an E commerce business or an education business and you are hiring somebody with SaaS experience in sales, that's going to be a little bit tricky because there's going to be a longer learning curve and training period in order to get them up to speed on your industry specifics. Those sales reps that come in with your industry experience, they have a one and a half higher close rate and this is according to A study done done over thousands of sales reps from sales insights.com so let's say you have a real estate company hiring a sales rep overseas that's a VA may not be the best fit. If your real estate projects are within one specific city, one state or one region, it might be a lot easier to close sales in this instance. If you have somebody local to that area that understands the property, the regions and can speak about the area, this will increase credibility and trust with clients more easily, which will then close leads more quickly. Quickly. Step three is making sure that you have the right sales training and technology. And typically this is going to require some sort of investment, but by investing in sales training it will actually produce the productivity and close rate by 50%. So making sure that you have the right CRM tools for lead tracking and lead generation for inbound and outbound sales is critical. When you streamline your processes, this will improve your lead follow up and will really help your team focus on converting those 79% of leads that are typically going to go unconverted without the proper attention. So obviously there are many CRM tools that can do this for you, Salesforce and HubSpot. But if you want one that you don't need a full time person to manage or that isn't as confusing, then obviously I have to recommend mine which is ProfitNow IO. This is a SaaS product, a CRM that me and my business partner developed that really is helping people keep track of their leads, offer customer support and do it far easier and cheaper than Salesforce and HubSpot. And you don't need a degree to figure out how to use it. If you want more information on that, you can go to profitnow IO. But that brings us to step four is making sure that you have structure and accountability in your sales strategy. The more processes and systems that you have, whether it's scripts, email templates, KPIs that the team manages and make sure that they're aligned and productive, the easier this process is going to be. So the planning portion of your sales team or your sales strategy is going to be as critical as running it, if not more critical because you can save yourself a lot of time and headaches by having the process and the structure in place first. And we know that teams that have a defined sales process will see 18 to 21% higher revenue growth in their first 12 months. Again, another study from Vantage Point. So as an example, if you're a SaaS company, like our SaaS company profit now, you might want to create Email templates and check ins for outbound sales reps to improve consistency, follow up and performance. And of course we baked all of this in into profit now. So you have a lot of these examples of templates and SMS that you can actually send out texts for right from the program and you can make calls right from the program and you can record these calls that your sales rep makes so that you can review them and make sure that they're positioning you in the correct way and offer any feedback. So once you have the structure in place, the last step number five is to monitor and measure the effort using metrics like conversion rates and average deal size and gauging the effectiveness is the way that you're going to know if you you need to adapt your strategy or your approach. Listening to customer feedback, knowing what conversion rates are standard for your specific industry and then adjust as needed. And that adjustment may be your follow up sequence, it may be your sales rep, it may be your positioning, it may be how many times you're following up and really understanding how long it takes a client from when they first come into your ecosystem and understand who you are, what you offer in order for them to close. Is that sales cycle two weeks? Is it six months? Is it two years? Depending on your deal size and your industry will determine what's typical for you.
- [12:10]
A
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us we brought in a reverse auctioneer which is apparently a.
- [12:21]
B
Thing Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium Wireless 3030.
- [12:24]
A
Bid to get 30 get 202020 better get 20 20. I better get 151515 15.
- [12:28]
B
Just 15 bu month.
- [12:30]
A
So give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch $45 upfront payment equivalent to 15 per month. New customers on first 3 month plan only taxes and fees, extra speed slower above 40 gigabytes detail.
- [12:40]
B
But one of the common mistakes I see so many especially early stage entrepreneurs or smaller businesses even under doing under 3 million is they are really focused on this marketing only mindset. Now marketing is really important for visibility. If nobody knows about you and you're new marketing is critically important. But like I always say, what got you into business and got you to this level in business is not going to get you to the next level of business. So doing all of those marketing initiatives and running ads and getting all this traffic, understanding that without that sales cycle 79% of those leads will not convert it shows the importance of yes, marketing is critical, but being able to take those people and convert them into revenue. That's why marketing alone fall short. Without a dedicated sales strategy, you will continually bleed money out of your bottom line and you'll always be on this perpetual hamster wheel of trying to attract and drive new leads, which is the most expensive way to get new customers. Having a sales team or a system in place is really going to help you consistently follow up, which will allow your business to capture and convert all those leads that you got from those marketing efforts. I always say people want to go viral today. It's like the worst thing that could do is go viral right now. Without a defined sales strategy in place, without all of your offers in place, without exactly what your customer avatar looks like, without understanding the sales cycle of how long it takes. Because so often people think that they just want that exposure. But that exposure, if not capitalized on, will actually create bigger problems in your business. Because imagine having a million eyeballs on your business and you don't actually attract or convert any customers out of that. How frustrating would that be? So having the marketing strategy in place, having a sales strategy or a team that aligns with your long term growth, that is when you know that you are primly positioned to increase revenue and make it sustainable. Companies that do this, both of these things, sales and marketing, will often see a 20% faster revenue growth in 12 months than those who rely just on marketing alone. And because sales and marketing, and marketing and branding always tend to get confused, I actually just want to give you a little example of how to break these down easily with something that everybody knows. So think of your favorite drink. Whether it's a sparkling water or a sports drink, a soda, iced coffee, whatever it may be, think about that drink. Branding is about creating that unique identity for the drink. It's the value, it's the personality, it's the promises that are associated with it, right? Whether it's organic or it's performance boosting, that's the brand. Brand of the drink. Marketing is the strategic purpose, the research, the identity, the target audience that consumes the drink. Figuring out if it's active people from 21 to 30 who drink it, or if it's 45 to 55. Where are these customers most? Active social media, sporting events in their mailbox, right? That's all of the marketing tactics. Then you've got advertising. Advertising is the act of promoting that drink to the public. Whether that's paid media for increasing the brand awareness or purchasing, whether that's running ads on Instagram or YouTube. But advertising puts that product directly in front of that target audience that will influence them to buy. Then you've got promotion, right? Promotion is just a short term tactic used to boost the interest or create urgency for them to buy that product. And then sales is the direct efforts that convert potential customers into buyers. This focuses on closing the deals or the transactions. The sales is what generates revenue by bringing that product to the purchaser, assuring it's available and making it accessible. So recapping it. Branding creates the identity. Marketing identifies and targets who's going to purchase it, the purchasers. Advertising communicates that benefit to them. Promotion offers the immediate way to try it, and sales is what brings the product to the customer and closes the deals. And often I see entrepreneurs focusing on creating an identity, understanding who's going to buy their product and even advertising it through paid ads or traffic, not having the sales strategy in place that gets them to follow up over and over, and not understanding the sales cycle of how long it takes for that browser or that visitor to become a buyer or a customer. So I want to give you an implementation challenge of everything that we talked about in this episode. What is one thing that you can do, one small step in order to start to solve or improve or increase the results of your sales strategy or your sales team? Do you need to hire a sales rep? Do you need to set better sales targets? Do you need to explore better CRM tools and give yourself a week? So whenever you heard this episode, if you heard it right when it came out, give yourself a week from today and say, okay, I'm going to do this one thing. I'm going to identify better KPIs, I'm going to look at the metrics, I'm going to understand the sales cycle and when our customers are really looking for our products so that we can convert them more easily. Whatever it is for you, this is such an important step and I think oftentimes entrepreneurs skip it because it's not as sexy as learning the latest marketing tactic or the newest algorithm, but it's really what's going to give you greater revenue and the ability to maximize your profit. So what's your one thing? Let me know in the comments or share this episode with someone who needs to hear it and tell us what you're going to implement in the next seven days. Okay guys, thanks so much for tuning in and spending this time with me today. If you find value in the show and what we are bringing to you for business and finance, please subscribe wherever you listen to and we would be honored if you would leave us a five star review over on Apple so that more people can hear about how they can grow their revenue, increase their profit and create more freedom in their life. And if you want more free information like this delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Edge, our newsletter. Who's peeling back the curtain on the finance and business topics going on in the world and how they apply to you, your business and your family? You can sign up by going to Candivalentino.com Newsletter thanks again for tuning in with me today. We'll see you next time. Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to this episode and if there was something that you loved or you had a specific takeaway, share it and tag me at Candy Valentino. And if you haven't already, grab a copy of my latest book, the 9 9% Edge Life Changing Secrets to create more revenue for your business and more freedom for yourself. You can pick it up anywhere books are sold, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or your local independent store. And once you do, head over to 9% edge.com and claim $1500 in pre order bonuses, including a chance to join me on this very show. Thanks so much for tuning in and spending this time with me today guys. We'll see you next.
- [19:55]
A
Former Navy SEAL Sean Ryan shares real stories from real people from all walks of life on the Shawn Ryan Show. Former US Navy Admiral Tim Gallaudet how did you get involved in this whole UFO thing? One day I get this email on the Navy Secret Network. If any of you know what these are, tell me ASAP. F18 pilots captured video of this UAP zorching over the water. Just a little round sphere and so I knew right there that was something not ours. The Sean ryan Show on YouTube or wherever you listen.