A few years back I “sold” Office 365 leads to mid level telco businesses. We’d set up a campaign and collect a ton of leads and then pass that data over to their sales team.
At first, everyone was happy.
I honestly looked like a rockstar.
Until, months into the process, the marketing and sales managers had a meeting with me.
“We have to break off our project I’m afraid.”
“Why?” I asked. “I gave you everything you wanted and asked for? We delivered something like 10,000 leads last month alone!”
“Yes but none of them are converting…”
I talk a lot about tokens and currencies which, for those who don’t know, is a tangible offer you can make to your audience.
Coaches want clients.
Ecomm websites want high basket value
Authors want book sales.
Sounds obvious, but I see SO MANY marketers trying to sell “innovative marketing strategy that grows your brand”.
Sell something that people want and it’ll make your life much easier.
The offer becomes something like “I help authors launch their next book to a bestseller list and get 1000 sales in their first week, without spending a cent on ads.”
That’s an offer, using a token/currency.
Here’s where people go wrong though.
The idea of “guaranteeing” sales (even though that’s not what you’re doing) scares marketers. So they change the token to something just a valuable, and wanted, but with less risk.
Leads.
“We help dentists get 1000 leads in 30 days with no content creation”.
The problem is that, unless you have a 100% control over your clients sales process, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
This comes from both first hand experience, research and lots and lots of coaching calls with other marketers and funnel builders like you.
The problem with my offer when I sold Office 365 leads was that their sales team were, for lack of a better term, fucking useless.
My offer changed – “Ok, how about this. If I can convert 1000 licences, that pays for everything you’ve paid me so far, is that right?”
“Yes, about that.”
“Right, let me do that and get you your money first. Then we’ll talk about training your sales team.”
I sold 2000 licences in the first 2 hours of calling their leads.
The sales people were pissed. The sales manager was pissed. The marketing manager was pissed.
But I didn’t stop there.
I listened to phone calls. Recordings of the sales pitches. I looked at how quickly they followed up with leads and how often.
It was abysmal.
Essentially, if they called a number and they didn’t pick up and basically buy straight away, they said the lead was dud.
Leads lose all value if the sales process sucks.
So don’t sell leads.
Sell sales.
Sell money.
