You ever feel like you’re missing sales for your funnels? Like there is a magical part of your business or formula that’s neglecting transactions and income?
Recently, our project sales had taken a dip and we weren’t closing as many marketing funnels as we needed. A few months before and we were on fire. This last few months haven’t seen as many projects close.
I was scratching my head, racking my brains as to why.
We had more people signing up. Traffic was up. More conversions. More splinter sales.
But our main projects just seemed to slip away. I couldn’t figure it out.
I took a few days off to focus on other things, take my mind of it. Then it hit me like a pile of bricks. Taking my mind of it, to focus on other things, was precisely the reason I was missing sales.
It wasn’t the content, it wasn’t the blog posts or traffic.
It was me.
I wasn’t following up with leads and customers.
I looked over my CRM and viewed all customers that I had spoken to, but hadn’t closed.
They had either had a proposal, or we had a consultation, and I just hadn’t called them back.
CRM numbers can’t lie
List subscribers: 1494
Subscribers under 3 months: 93
Engaged subscribers: 253 (open at least one email a week)
Outbound communications from me, to engaged subscribers: 0
So people are engaging with our content. They clearly love what we have to say BUT…I’m doing nothing but hoping they contact us? Borderline reckless.
Inbound enquiries from leads: ~3 a week
Deals at consultation stage: 74
Deals at proposal stage: 11
Notice there is a massive problem there! 11 proposals from 74 consultations? Sure, some might have been qualified out. But it’s unlikely. I needed to start getting proposals to those consultation customers.
Deals closed from proposal stage: 3
3 out of 11 proposals closed?!
Let’s look at the communications sent after a proposal.
Emails sent to proposal stage leads: 9
Phone calls made: 0
Further emails made: 0
Questions asked as why they didn’t buy: 0
At no point did I call, email or ask why they didn’t buy. Can you imagine if I called up and the only reason they hadn’t bought, is because they lost the original email with the details?
Actually – that happened. They just lost the details and couldn’t be bothered to look for them. So I called them up and they bought THAT DAY.
I couldn’t think of one good reason why I wasn’t following up with leads and customers. Not one. In fact I was pretty disappointed in myself. I was so focused on the content, top of funnel, webinars and videos that I had neglected to actually SELL anything.
Fixing it
So what was I going to do? I had a fire lit under my ass and I wasn’t going to quit now. I had LITERALLY seen list of data showing that I was neglecting people.
I honestly believe that my marketing funnels and services are the most important purchase my customers can make. They helps businesses grow. They help people attract more income and drive more sales. They give time back to owners and support new staff hires.
By NOT following up and asking how I could help, why they hadn’t bought or what I could do next, I was doing those businesses a huge disservice. I was neglecting to help the very people I wanted to help.
No time like the present
I had to start making calls. That list of customers and leads, needed to be followed up with.
I only had to ask one of three questions
- Why didn’t you buy?
- Would you like some help?
- Can we book another call?
I wasn’t going to spend time setting up automation or faffing around. I wanted to talk to people right now.
Do you have a list of people that you should really REALLY talk to? Don’t worry about nerves, appearing rude or pushy. Don’t think about that yet.
Do you have a list of people that you should call?
Follow up with the closest
We needed to close those proposals. We closed 27% of them. GARBAGE.
Not good enough.
What really got me riled up though. Is that there weren’t even reasons WHY they hadn’t closed.
Too expensive, changed scope, didn’t trust me or my team, didn’t like the font. Whatever it was, I needed to know.
Who’s CLOSEST to your closing stage that you should follow up with?
I totally understand not appearing desperate. I really do. But I don’t see it like that.
I see my funnels as the most important thing a course based business can buy. It’s the ONLY thing that’s going to help them reach their goals. If I neglect to follow them up, what kind a message am I sending?
All we’re looking to do is ask why they haven’t bought.
Then, if they’re at the proposal stage – SEND THEM A PROPOSAL.
Head over to betterproposals.io and get a FREE proposal account. They’ve got a ton of templates AND you can use our Marketing Funnel Proposal Template below.
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Who’s BEFORE the proposal? Have you got leads who you should be consulting? Or getting on a call?
Work backwards from those closest to the sale. Even if it’s ONE person, you should still be following up.
Have a plan of calling
So who are you going to follow up and when? You need to have a clear plan of who you’re going to reach out to.
Imagine knowing that each person in your list, CRM or network could be moved to a next stage. No automation or technology, you could do it today.
We found $50K in customers from 4 days of follow up calls. It wasn’t even that many.
Use our Follow Up Chart here (no optin) to list out and identify who you need to follow up with.
List out who has been sent a proposal and hasn’t bought.
If you don’t know why they haven’t bought, then you need to call them. If they give you a reason WHY they aren’t going to buy – follow up with them in a few months.
List out who has been talked to and consulted and hasn’t bought – or, who hasn’t got a proposal.
Find your notes, write up the below and head to betterproposals.io and SEND THEM A PROPOSAL.
Finally, list out who is in your list and network, who is engaging with you, but you’re not talking to them. Send them an email reaching out and start having conversations!
Dedicate time
This was killer for us. We’ve decided that Wednesday is our outreach day. Booking calls, coaching, conversations. Wednesday is when we try to find customers.
You need a dedicated timeslot to do all this.
The big lesson we’ve learned is that we need to hire someone to do this…
Stop it happening again
What was the process we went though? Hint: It looks exactly like blog post you’re reading.
We’re now going to be hiring two people, for one day a week to go through our CRM list and start talking to people.
I just want more conversations and more people asking my customers “would you like some help with that?”
At it’s core, all I want to do is keep asking people “would you like some help with that?”
Every call, conversation and email needs to end with “would you like some help with that?”
Yes? Let me send over a proposal. Let’s get on a coaching call. Let’s get you in our membership. Let’s build you a funnel.
Have a call script
We’ve got a epic long blog post here which has a ton of optin-free worksheets. It talks about how to sell monthly retainers to customers.
If you’re reading this and thinking “shit. That’s a lot to do and I have NO idea how”. Check out that post. It’ll walk you through how to book calls, how to set up meetings and how to sell large projects to clients.
It’s also worth noting that we do WEEKLY training on selling marketing funnels to customers. Our coaching program here has weekly live calls, worksheets, courses and webinars on running a successful and profitable funnel business.
The results
So after all that, in one week, what did we find?
2 x $25k sales for a consultation program. Neither had approached us before and both knew us for a long time.
10 maintenance plan sign ups. At least at $100 a month and over. Nothing huge, but not to be sniffed at. All of them had considered buying before, they just needed a little push.
Someone beat me to it. I discovered that one of our leads had bought a competitor’s product. Why?
Because that competitor beat me to the call. They called first and I didn’t. Simple as that.
My favorite part of this exercise is discovering the hidden gold. I wanted to talk to everyone as soon as I saw the stages they were at.
Are you missing sales? Are you hiding projects that could close? Who is on your list that you should talk to? Let me know in the comments below.
