There are many metrics for measuring success in business. The metrics could be Return on Investment (ROI), conversion rate, number of signups, increased customer base, increased customer retention or any other type of metric. These have all become very important in measuring the success (or lack of it) of any business. In actual fact, if you are directly responsible for the sales of your company, the security of your job might depend on how these numbers stack up for you.
I have seen so many people get it wrong with so many things in their sales efforts.
I have many subscribers but very few sales. I feel like I’m marketing to the wrong set of people. I keep sending emails to these people, yet they won’t buy.
Here are 6 reasons why you might not be generating as many sales leads as you need to scale your business.
1. It’s necessary to think small sometimes. You may be targeting an overly broad audience.
Do you have to offer as many services as possible before you make any reasonable profit? No. You have to be known as an authority in a market before people start to trust you with their money. You can’t be a master of all trades. You can’t go out there and claim to be a pro in mortgages and at the same time claim to be the go-to guy for content development. You have to be known for something specific. CNN is known for news, not electronics while the guys at BMW are known to churn out automobiles, not news.
Take stock of your activities to find out which ones are absolutely essential to your success (those bringing in the highest returns and those that are showing the greatest potential for growth). When you get these listed, discard the others. Your business will be better for it.
2. You’re not listening and now you have Product-To-Audience mismatch.
A product-audience mismatch occurs when you are offering a product to the wrong audience or vice versa. This problem is usually more pronounced when you serve a broad audience as I stated in the first point. It is easy and tempting to offer an all-in-one blueprint that will serve every single category of visitor you get on your website, but as you will see in the next point, you will only be short-changing yourself by doing this.
Do some thorough research and find out what exactly your target audience wants. Do they want to watch videos or do they want eBooks? Are they mostly women or are they mostly millennials? What job is a typical visitor on your blog likely to be doing? Who are the most likely people to buy from you? Will webinars work for your audience, or will they prefer infographics? Ask questions like these and develop your customer avatar based on the questions you answer. Avatars will help you separate your entire pool of visitors into segments and it will help you better target each group with relevant products. You can find out more about creating buyer personas here.
3. You’re leaving too much on the table.
When you try to offer the same thing to everyone in your audience, you are short-changing yourself. Imagine you come across an article on your favorite blog. It states that it is 100,000 words long because it has to address every single known issue on a given subject. Would you read it? Now imagine you are faced with the problem of a drop in subscriber rate and you come across a 900 word cheat sheet that will succinctly give you exactly what you need to overcome that problem. Brevity and focus win. Don’t try to be an authority to everyone. Don’t leave too much on the table. Instead, find an audience you can serve exceptionally well and provide great value to them. Before you know it, you’ll be an authority in your own right.
4. You Have A Leaky Sales Funnel (Or None At All)
A funnel is a set of steps you put in place that will take potential customers and convert them into paying customers. It is okay that people drop off along the way. That’s inevitable, but a leaky sales funnel is a big problem. This is important consideration because you are dealing with actual sales here. This is not a stage where you are just trying to get visitors to your website. You have them already, and they are not only visitors. They’ve become leads. They are interested in what you have to offer and they are willing to give it a go. To lose a lead in your sales funnel is to lose money.
You have to learn about building effective funnels. If you don’t have any funnel whatsoever for your business, I really don’t know what else to say than, “Start building one today!” If you are interested in learning how to build effective funnels (especially using Social Media), I have a free video for you. You should make it a point of order to check it out.
5. You Throw In The Towel Too Early
I won’t dwell on this because it is obvious. The disheartening thing is that people, many people, are guilty of this. Are you getting across to your leads less than four times before leaving them? Are you quitting because results are not coming as quickly as you want them to?
I implore you to stick with what works. If you have seen that a marketing campaign brings in 10 sales (when you wanted fifty) why not multiply your spend by five. You can then have fifty! The trick is in finding out what works and scaling it up.
6. You Have The Wrong Attitude
Some people will tell you that attitude is everything. That’s almost absolutely true. You can have the right product and be in the right market, and yet you could struggle to make sales. Why? Because your attitude is wrong, and your audience will smell it. It isn’t so difficult to notice someone that is only interested in making more money and that cares nothing about the success of his audience. It isn’t difficult. You may succeed in providing paltry value the first time. People won’t be fooled into buying the second time.
So, What Should You Do?
You should make it your top priority to learn about funnels, how to build them, maintain them, plug them, and get the most out of them. I can help with that.
