The number one (with no contest) sales issue I see showing up for my clients (and the “I can’t afford you right now potentials) is a VOLUME issue. They quite simply have not put their product or service in front of nearly enough people and asked them to buy. So often it’s easy to feel like you are selling and marketing your business ALL the time and yet you don’t feel like you are getting anywhere. This comes down to the fuzziness around what SALES actually is. Online marketing “gurus” and our own perception can trick us into thinking that every time we post online or show up in a networking meeting we can check the box “yup I did selling today” but that is simply not the way it works. Below I’m going to break down the differences between sales, lead generation, and nurturing your market. Understanding the key differences between these activities (regardless of if these are the precise terms you use to describe them) will clarify for you exactly where you need to spend your time in order to get to where you want to go.
Lead Generation
This is the part in the movie where you meet people and figure out if they are potentially a good fit to work with you. In funnel-speak, these are the people coming into the top of your funnels. Lead generation can show up in many different forms but commonly these are activities like networking, driving traffic to your website through content marketing or advertising, cold calling, activities that actively grow your social media following, etc. Lead gen is all about fresh prospects finding out you exist. In a closed sales process, not only do they know you exist but you know they exist and you can drive the sales cycle forward. [Aside: Closed Sales process means you know everyone who is in the sales cycle for example in Networking when you have been introduced. Open Sales Cycle you typically don’t know the names/info on leads until they have bought (or very close) like when you run a Facebook ad.] Lead Generation is essentially your market learning your name and entering your sales cycle.
Nurturing
This is the good bit, this is the part where people who could become customers move from cold to warm. Nurturing is the process by which leads learn more about you. They get a feel for your personality and perspective. They learn about your expertise and approach. This is the part where you need to get potential clients to walk the path towards knowing, liking, and trusting you. The nurturing process can take many forms it might be a one-on-one meeting over coffee (or several), it might happen on social media where they can see what you are about, it might happen through them reading, listening to, or watching your content. It might be some combination. Through this step you some people will leave your sales process and that is as it should be. Good nurturing is as effective at weeding out the people who aren’t a good fit as it is effective at building a relationship with the people who are perfect customers. It is just as important for the WRONG people to select out as it is key to help the RIGHT people walk the path closer to where you can actually help them.
Sales
This is the part where you can actually help them. Yes, the nurturing process might have given them some breakthroughs, hot tips, or how-tos, but it is in Sales that we really really get the chance to change people’s lives. Sales is quite simply getting someone’s permission to help them. How do you sell? You ASK. If there isn’t a direct ask or invitation, then you weren’t selling. It really is that simple. You can prime for the sale, set up for the sale, get yourself all worked about salesiness (and other sales anxieties), and still not have actually done SALES. A direct ask, in person, email, or however, is the culmination of the Sales Cycle. The yeses actually get to have you help them! (YAY!) and the no’s either move on or are invited back into nurturing to be sold another day when they are more ready or the offer is better for them (and no sweat for us).
And the Cycle continues with more people coming in as leads, self-selecting out during nurturing, and arriving at a direct ask where they have the opportunity to invest in whatever wonderful thing you are selling.
So How Does This Play Out in the Real World?
A couple of examples for you. In Networking, the lead gen is the meeting where you pitch and meet new people, the nurturing is in the follow-up email and one-on-one meeting, and the sales comes either in the meeting or in a subsequent sales email. In Content Marketing, the lead gen happens when they stumble upon (or have shared with them) your content, the content itself, and other pieces of content nurture them, and the sales can actually happen within the content itself or a sales page it links to, or by nature of the lead reaching out to you and a sales conversation from there. [Note how Content can be any or ALL the pieces of a sales cycle. That is why I’m mildly obsessed with it. More on that here]. In Speaking and “Guesting,” the lead is introduced to you at the event or on the podcast (or wherever you are a guest), you nurture them primarily through the talk but also by inviting them to check out wherever you plan to nurture them (e.g. your content, your social media accounts, a newsletter list), and the sale comes through direct ask in content, social media, or through a sales page you have directed them to following the event. Keep in mind also that these paths intersect. I may meet someone in Networking who declines a one-on-one meeting but follows me on social media gets nurtured there, attends an event I am speaking at and proceeds to buy a program I invite the attendees to. People can easily jump from path to path and it is perfectly fine as long as all roads lead to a completed sales cycle.
The trouble with many, Many, MANY entrepreneur’s sales cycles is that they have a missing link somewhere and it is nearly impossible to identify if you aren’t looking for the leak. Over and over sales is taught in incomplete or overcomplicated ways with funnels, gimmicks, and contradicting information. It is no wonder that most people I talk to have one or more paths in their business where the sales cycle is incomplete. Perhaps they are great at getting people on their email list and nurturing them but never directly ask for a sale. Maybe they are great at lead gen and great at sales but don’t have a nurturing process that primes people for the sale (keeping in mind that nurturing doesn’t have to be a long process it just has to happen). And no amount of amazing sales copy or authentic nurturing will help you if you don’t have a conveyor belt of leads entering your sales process. Find the whole in your sales process and fill it. My personal favorite way to fill nearly any gap is with a content marketing strategy, so more on that is to come in my next blog post.