sales process Archives - Excellerate Associates

The Advantage of Reverse Engineering Your Sales Process

March 16, 2017 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

Have you ever skipped a flat rock across the water?

As the rock skims the water, notice how the water ripples. After a moment, each ripple flows effortlessly into the other.

The same concept applies when you take a systems approach. Each system in your business should lead to greater connections and business growth.

When you integrate systems properly, you’ll notice how momentum begins to build and the pieces come together. Like the ripples on the pond, each ripple begins to incorporate into one another and, at the same time, the blending is harmonious. You start to build momentum and get noticed for your unique lineup of products and services naturally and spontaneously.

One of the biggest breakthroughs my clients get out of the Wake Up Profitable Boot Camp for Business Owners is to see how all of their systems interconnect. One of the common problems first-time attendees bring to the boot camp is that they create a service line that does not yield the results they were expecting.

It’s a common trap business owners fall into. They get lured into the belief that if you build it, people will come. The truth is you need to determine how the service fits into your overall strategy as well as your sales and marketing channel.

For example, a business owner was attracted to implementing a member-based service. Unfortunately, she created it without knowing if her preferred client wanted it and without identifying how it fit into her line up of products and services. We started by clearly identifying her Preferred Client Profile. We identified their wants and needs.

Once we reverse engineered her sales process, she realized that this particular service option was not a main offering but rather an add-on offering. By moving a service offering to later in her sales process, she had this add-on option that provided value that her clients wanted for their team and recurring income for her business.

To be successful, implementing any program, product or service is not about just implementing random systems or programs to gain momentum or revenue for your business. The trick is to think through how one element influences your entire business system so that you create that effortless blending.

To learn more about how the systems approach can influence your profitability, join us for one of these introductory events:

Online Profitability Lab: Introduction March 30 & 31
On site Profitability Lab: Introduction Grand Rapids, Michigan on Tuesday, April 11
On site Profitability Lab: Introduction Canton, Michigan Thursday, April 13.

How to Enroll Your Preferred Prospects Faster

February 18, 2016 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

Years ago, the formula to convert prospects to clients involved a lot of networking and countless meetings with a prospect. You would chase after your prospect with endless follow up calls that went nowhere. Months, even years passed between your first meeting and enrolling them as a client into your programs, products, or services.

With each passing day, you find yourself in pursuit mode rather than having your prospects choose you. If you’re feeling this way today, there are two major reasons this is happening:

1. You spend too much time talking with people who are not your ideal client; and
2. Your sales process has no leverage.

First, make sure you’re networking in the places you find your ideal client. Remember, if you’re saying, “I work with anyone who…” those five words kills a sale or referral every time.

Why?

People can’t wrap their hands around vagueness. When you say that you work with anybody, they can’t get the image of exactly who you work with so it’s hard for them to send you referrals or even see themselves in your description. When you are exact in describing your prospects, it paints the picture in your referral source’s mind on exactly the right referral to send your way.

Second, the one thing hasn’t changed in enrolling a prospect to a client is building relationships and trust. What has changed is that automation can help you to build relationships and cultivate trust.

When automation is implemented at just the right times in your sales process, you can reverse the sales process so your clients choose you instead of you chasing them. As you engage with your prospects, learn more about them, and educate them, they will begin to see what’s possible for them by working with you.

The other benefit to having your system educating and keeping in touch with your prospects is that you are top of mind when they are ready.

If you resist systems or even the mention of it gives you chills, join me for my webinar on your natural wiring – Power Up! People, Performance, and Profitability on:

February 24, 2016
February 25, 2016 or
March 10, 2016

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THIS FREE WEBINAR .

(Your reaction to creating systems can be tied to your wiring!)

Sales: It’s Not What You Do. It’s Who You Be.

October 9, 2014 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

What feelings or image does the word sales conjure up for you?

For many entrepreneurs, the word sales conjures up an image of a pushy used car salesman. When you combine that image with a self-limiting thought, like “I’m not good at sales” you will fail before you even talk to your prospect.

If you do nothing to change your thoughts and view on the sales process, you’ll continue to be frustrated about missing your sales goals. If you want to continue to do the work you love to do that means you will need to change your mindset about sales.

Sales is not a dirty word. Think of it this way: sales starts with s and so does service. So, sales is about how you can serve your ideal customers. How can you be of service?

Sales is simply about being. Being:

1. A good listener. Find out what’s most important to your client or customer by asking open-ended questions. Seek to understand what they want to achieve or resolve. It’s not about you, it’s about serving them.

2. Unattached to their decision. If you are desperate to close a sale, you won’t close the sale. Desperation is a negative energy that shuts down that reciprocity (or give and take flow) in your conversation with your prospect. Attract your prospect by being unattached, allowing space, and have them make the choice. This produces an empowering scenario.

3. Of service. When you give choices in the way your prospect can do business with you, it shifts the decision from yes or no and go to which choice will I choose in working with you. There are usually pros and cons of each option and it’s up to you to educate them in what is the best choice for them. This is where being a good listener helps you to empower them to make the most optimal decision based on what they wish to accomplish when working with you.

Sales is about being your authentic self, not someone you think you need to be to close the sale. It’s simply about being who you are and being of service.

How Not Testing Your Assumptions Is Costing You Serious Business

February 21, 2013 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

Every day, entrepreneurs act on their assumptions. Making assumptions is a part of doing business. Assumptions are often based on our experiences and are not often questioned. It’s part of our system of beliefs. If our beliefs are not sound, our assumptions are not sound.

These assumptions can serve you or they can deter you from getting your products and services out into the world in a big way. If limiting, they get in the way of creating and selling products or closing on more sales.

When you test your own norms, the possibilities can be endless. As an example, let’s take the bottled water industry. In the 1960s, who would have thought that people could make a profit off of something that that was readily available and was as close as the nearest water fountain? Years later, someone tested their belief. Today, you can’t enter a supermarket or gas station without a wall filled with brands of water to choose from and mixes to put in them.

You might think that testing assumptions is risky. Take the risk any way. By not testing assumptions, there is risk. In this fast-changing world, what worked yesterday, may not work today. Yet, many people approach their sales and marketing with assumptions about certain techniques that worked in the past will work the same way today, despite the changes in technology and human behavior.

Assumptions can work for you or limit you. Testing your beliefs and notions creates possibilities. Without challenging our beliefs, you may be resisting possibilities. Because of how one of my clients was innate hardwired, she assumed everyone wanted to receive a lot of information before they made their decisions. She found herself giving away a lot of useful content during her initial consultations with prospects, but frustrated because she was not converting them into clients.

In working through the Entrepreneurial Edge System^TM, she discovered two very important assumptions:

She gave information the way she wanted to receive it. She was delivering her information methodically with long descriptions. However, many of her prospective clients wanted to receive it very differently. They wanted to receive their information in quick, short, concise bullet points.
She was offering only one way for them to work with her. Her prospects liked choices. After a few adjustments in her delivery and service offerings, she went from sales failure to sales superstar now closing on up to an average of 98% of her prospects.

In your daily interactions, ask yourself:

What assumptions am I making?
What are the possibilities (ones that will get me closer to my vision)?

The moment you start limiting yourself with an excuse or telling yourself something can’t happen – stop yourself. Ask yourself these two questions. Then, watch how many possibilities are created just by checking just one assumption. [Tweet This]

Are You Asking Your Prospect to Marry You on the First Date?

October 11, 2012 by Lisa Mininni 9 Comments

Recently, I had a member of my community write in to tell me that his biggest frustration was that he feels that he is overwhelming his prospects a bit too early in the enrollment/sales process.

If you feel this way or you feel you’re giving away your valuable advice for free, you might be trying too hard and too early to convert a prospect to a client. This happens frequently when you don’t have your sales flow mapped out.

It’s humbling to watch entrepreneurs make the same mistakes I used to when I got my business started. Asking someone to do business with you the very first time you meet them is like asking someone to marry you on the first date. Getting the “yes” answer to your proposal often requires more than just one touch point before someone decides to do business with you.

To get the “yes” answer, many consultants or coaches make the mistake of giving more information in their one-on-one meetings, often overwhelming their prospect. The problem isn’t more information. The reason there is a lack of conversion is often attributed to:

Prematurely setting up meetings with prospects
Having no way to pre-educate your prospects, and
Having no systematic way to keep in touch

One of my Entrepreneurial Edge System Alumni who is a consultant experienced the same problem. When she learned how to systematize her pre-qualification process, she immediately recognized a savings and converted more of her prospects to clients. Once we mapped out her sales flow, there were two important changes she implemented to her sales process:

First, she pre-qualified her prospects before scheduling a meeting with them. She discovered she wasn’t using all of her marketing assets, including her website. Rather than waiting for a face-to-face meeting, she answered her prospects frequently asked questions on her website. She also offered her prospects a free downloadable eBook that gave her prospects the ability to assess their situation before meeting with her. When they scheduled their meeting with her, the information they worked through in the eBook would then be reviewed. Her prospects appreciated the framework to immediately sort through their main concerns and individual situation. Because she shifted the way she worked, she freed up her schedule so she could take on more clients.

Second, she automated her follow up process. With an automated follow up process, her prospects received messages that engaged them and continued to pre-educate them. If you’re thinking that automation can’t possibly nurture a relationship, think again. The magic happens in the way your messages are written. A carefully written message can make the best of automation, engage your prospect, and provide continuous value to your prospect when done right. Automation does the heavy lifting yet still provides the flexibility for you to respond directly with your prospect.

Not only did my client save approximately three hours per prospect by pre-educating them, she increased her conversions over 50% in just 30 days, and more than quadrupled her income in just one year.

If you feel like you’re overwhelming your prospect, consider breaking apart the information you provide in smaller digestible pieces and giving value to your prospect over time. Remember to make their next step in doing business with you clear to them. A systematic approach might be just the ticket to simplify your sales process, making it super simple for your prospects to do business with you.

You have a lot going on in your business, but are all of your marketing pieces connected? If you’re wondering how to automate your marketing, automatically bring in pre-qualified prospects and turn them into invested clients 98% of the time, then get started today with the Entrepreneurial Edge System^TM Implementation Program. In this step-by-step, comprehensive program, you will discover:

How to automatically bring in pre-qualified prospects
How to reverse the sales process so your prospects choose you instead of you chasing them
Systems that easily automate your marketing and bring in multiple income streams
How to set up your Business Blueprint^TM so you put all of the pieces of your business together so you Wake Up Profitable.

Find out why high-achieving influential entrepreneurs, like you, attend my LIVE Wake Up Profitable Event every year. Click here to learn more, and get your BONUS Ticket to my 2013 Wake Up Profitable Event.

Get Your Free eBook: Elevate and Expand Your Brand

Get Your Free eBook:
Elevate and Expand Your Brand