Month: February 2014

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Traffic and Conversions: Doubled In 90 Days with Neil Patel

Posted on by Jason Kanigan

Traffic and ConversionsTraffic and Conversions: Neil Patel is an expert on these topics. He's also one of the legit and truly giving people in the SEO world. And yes, SEO remains relevant for getting you traffic. In today's Quicksprout entry, Neil is giving away two great resources...and a challenge for you.

No sales plan is complete without traffic. And whether you're getting that traffic from making prospecting calls, referrals or inbound online leads, you should be building your traffic levels. Neil is sharing just how to do that with two guides.

Two FREE Guides for Doubling Your Traffic AND Conversions

These resource guides are usually $79, but they're free here today.

First, download Double Your Traffic In 30 Days.

Second, download Double Your Conversions In 30 Days. Wow! What a pair of powerful toolkits!

Neil's Traffic and Conversions Challenge to You

Third, the challenge. Neil is challenging you to Double Your Traffic in 90 Days. 90! That's 3X as long as the guide titles say it'll take--and challenges motivate you to take action. In fact, Neil wants you to publicly commit to this very achievable goal by going here.

There's a kind of mini-forum for discussing how to reach your traffic goal with other people doing the same thing.

Here's your challenge, and an example of what you're going to write down:

"Between X Date and Y Date,
I will bring 2500 unique visitors to MySite.com"

Obviously you will fill in the dates and # of visitors relevant to you and your site.

Interview with Neil Patel On Traffic and Conversions

In a previous post, I shared another download from Neil. Also included was my interview with Neil that included some suprising data on the effectiveness of infographics. For my interview with Neil, click here.

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Your Sales Numbers: Do You Know Them?

Posted on by Jason Kanigan

Your Sales Numbers - David BrockYour sales numbers--do you know them? Let's start with that. Many small business owners I speak with don't have a revenue target at all, and so have no idea how they'd get there.

In larger companies we usually have a more "hired gun" sales management style. They are focused on sales quotas. Meeting the quota every quarter is the focus.

Having a target is good. But, as Partners In EXCELLENCE president David Brock points out, focusing entirely on monthly, quarterly and annual quotas alone is a bad idea.

Why Quotas Alone Bad for Managing Your Sales Numbers

Why? Because quotas are a lagging measure. They're driving by looking in your rear view mirror.

If, as Brock shares, you have a 90 day sales cycle, it is going to take a very long time to:

  • find what the problem in your sales process is
  • make adjustments
  • see the results of those adjustments.

Too long.

What we want instead is a leading measure. Leading metrics allow you to make changes in time to see results in your major lagging measures.

What Are Some Leading Measures to Track Your Sales Numbers?

What are we doing today, this week, this month? And how do those activities tie in to our larger business measures? Dials and customer meetings, for instance, are leading measures. We can make changes to them today.

However, as David Brock tells us, we can't just increase the number of dials and expect good results if our techniques are lousy. Having more bad conversations with prospects is not going to help.

Brock suggests we can track strategic initiatives and organizational performance numbers.

Strategic initiatives include customer retention, new customer acquisition, product mix, win/loss, and channel performance.

Organizational performance numbers include Reps making Quota, Cost Per Order Dollar (CPOD), and expenses.

Start with individual performance tracking, and then build up to your organization-wide numbers. You don't need a supercomputer to figure these out: Excel will do just fine. Then you'll understand your sales numbers, and be able to do something about them.

Read David Brock's article. It's well worth your time. And I highly recommend subscribing to his blog. He's put out three really great entries in the past couple weeks.

>> Jason Kanigan is a sales force developer. Did you find this info helpful? Please Like, Share or Comment to let others know! <<

1

Winning People Over

Posted on by Jason Kanigan

Winning People Over"Winning People Over is a horrible sales strategy," writes sales trainer Bill Caskey. And I agree.

"After 22 years in the sales training business, I conclude that strategy is hopeless," he continues.

Why?

Are we not frequently taught to:

* win them over with our personality
* develop rapport to get them to like us
* treat the prospect like a king or queen, bending over backwards in the hope that they'll appreciate us enough to buy?

The Problems With Winning People Over

"If I can just get in front of a prospect, I'll get them to like me." I don't know how many times I've heard this from business owners. Sure. Do you have any stats to back that assertion up?

Let's look at what the strategy of winning people over does to you and your sales process.

1. You are no longer looking for the "right fit"; you're trying to win them over.

2. You aren't speaking from a position of strength or as an equal; you're trying to win them over.

3. You aren't showing that your solution is valuable; you're trying to win them over.

There's more, but we'll stop here for now. Let's review what happens when we're winning people over instead of qualifying and then selling.

What Winning People Over Does to Your Sales Process

1. Your sales process is out of control. YOU are no longer the one in charge of the choice of whether to work with this prospect or not; they are.

2. Your pandering approach is a repellant turn-off to people with real power, ie. decision makers, business owners. They don't want to deal with weaklings--unless they have some sort of dominance issue...and in that case do you want them as a client?

3. Your solution has now become a commodity, because the differentiating factor you've tried to push into the situation is your personality.

Does this sound like the selling situation you want to be in?

Stop trying to win people over.

>> Jason Kanigan is a sales force developer. Did you find this info helpful? Please Like, Share or Comment to let us know! Also, you can Follow us with the big red button in the bottom right <<