Principle One – Getting people to Know, Like & Trust You is the foundation of a sale.

You’ve probably heard this sales terminology before, and it’s an extremely important step in making a sale. There’s simply no better way to get someone to know, like and trust you than to teach them something that helps them to get a desired result. Email is perfect for this! They get to see you, hear you, and get to experience the results you share.

Some way’s to get them to…

Know You: It’s clear that people don’t just buy based on the facts and figures. There is a lot of emotion involved in a purchase, especially as the price gets higher. Your story is actually important to WHY you’re selling what you’re selling – if you or your product can connect on a personal level with the customer, you win.

Like You: Don’t be afraid to show a little humor. We’re naturally drawn to the right kind of humor, and it never hurts to keep things entertaining while you’re teaching. Also, sharing personal stories that you can wrap into the teaching, is a perfect way to find a common ground with your audience.

Trust You: Don’t be afraid to share your successes. If you’d rather have others share them for you, video testimonials are a fantastic way to do this.

Note: challenge and convert are the last two steps… more on that later.

If you accomplish this by the end of the first set of email follow up, or each individual email for that matter, you’re halfway to the sale. The second half is the most important, and often not given enough attention in the sales process.

Action Item: When you put together a marketing piece, ask yourself, “Am I providing any information that would draw my customer closer to my brand or myself?”

Principle Two – Challenge And Convert.

Harvard Business Review did a study of top sales reps, and they found out something interesting. You might think the best of the best are those who have a close personal relationship with the customer. Logically it makes sense that the better the relationship we have with the customer, the more likely we are to make a sale. While this is true to a certain point, they found that the best of the best are those who CHALLENGE their prospects perspective on the problem, and offered an alternative problem and solution to the REAL problem.

Resource:

For example, let’s say you want to hire someone to build a website for your business. You have a pretty good idea of what you want on your website, a home page with a mission statement, an about page, a contact page – you know, all the traditional pages you see on business websites. You talk to a few vendors who tell you some price points, and their impeccable record with customers.

Ok great, they’re on the list of possible hires. Then someone comes in and says; “You don’t need a website, you need an online lead generation funnel!”. They go on to teach you what a lead generation funnel is, how it works, and how it can add X amount of leads per month to your business, increasing potential revenues $Y amount per month. You see, you thought you needed a traditional website, and the “solution” providers catered to what you thought you needed, where as the “challenger” actually taught you what you really needed and sold you the results.

We need to be the last vendor, challenging leads on what they THINK they need, and selling them the right solution to the right problem. This mindset change is called a “eureka moment,” and almost always results in a closed deal.

Action Item: When you put together a marketing piece, ask yourself, am I challenging my customer to think differently about their problem?

Want a template and examples of a “know like trust challenge convert” email sequence? Get it for free here…

Principle Three – Sell Insights, Not Solutions – “The Benefit of The Benefit”

This builds on the challenge and convert principle. As noted above, customers are generally wrong with what they think they need. Our job as a “solutions provider” is to convince them that our product or service is actually what they need. Once we’ve challenged them on what they think, and provided a eureka moment, it’s time to close the deal with the ‘benefit of the benefit’.

Going back to the “lead generation funnel” sales vendor example above, he first provided an alternative path to the results the business actually needs. They don’t need a home, about, or contact website – they need a website that generates real leads. Then he explained the benefits, more leads and revenue for the business. We can take this one step further with ‘the benefit of the benefit’.

Infomercials do this almost comically: “Tired of being rejected at the bar because of your bad hairline!? It’s time you got the attention you deserved by buying XYZ hair growing product!”. The benefit of the benefit here, is stopping rejection at the bar. They’re not selling a hair product, they’re selling a confidence product. Answer this question: What are you really selling? Sell that, not your solution.

We don’t have to be so over the top – but back to our example – all the vendor has to do now, is plant the idea of what extra leads could do for a business and the owner. You don’t have to say, “Imagine having more leads so that you could have more money and more time to spend with your family.” The customer’s imagination will do that for you, all by saying a few magic words – “Imagine what more leads could mean for you and your business.”

“Teach to Transform to Transact.”

Our email series is riddled with these subtle imagination triggers, whether it’s through testimonials sharing their results and the results of those results, or directly asking people to imagine the results, we draw our audience into an emotional state that’s going to help close the deal. People don’t buy because of facts and figures, they buy because of emotion.

How to apply these principles in your business.

You may not go and build a seven figure, four video launch sequence for your product or service, but you can take these principles and apply them into your sales presentations, your pitches, and your online marketing. If you add these principles into your sales pages, emails, and videos you will see an increase in conversions.

Armed with this knowledge, go look at what sales tools you currently have in your business. Chances are most of them are missing elements of the above principles.

Want a template and examples of a “know like trust challenge convert” email sequence? Get it for free here…