The 3 Biggest Mistakes that Business Owners make that Doom their Sales Process

Making sales is the fundamental basis of all business. No sales, no business. Sales come from generating leads, (finding people interested in your offer), and converting those interested prospects into customers by making the sale.

Business owners are masters of their craft, product or service, but often they are less effective in the marketing that generates leads, and converts those leads into sales and customers.

In this article we will look at three of the biggest mistakes business owners make, and what you can do to remedy them.

#3 Cause not Symptom

Being the expert in your field you have a greater understanding than most, of the problems your clients face. Because you understand this problem so thoroughly, you are aware of the underlying cause that lies behind the symptoms that your prospects are concerned with.

It is important to realise the difference between the cause and the symptoms. The cause is the real problem that you need to solve. The symptom is the pain point that the client is feeling.

Using one of my offerings as an example; one of my prospects may feel that their staff are unproductive and need better time management. I know that in this case the real cause is not time management but inefficient meetings. The staff don’t know how to effectively run and contribute to meetings in order to move projects along and get great results.

The mistake that most business owners make at this point is they create a marketing or lead generation piece around the underlying cause.

While it is true that this is what needs to be fixed, the reality is that in most cases your prospect doesn’t even realise it. All they know is the symptom that is a ‘pain’ to them.

Therefore they will overlook your marketing that talks about the underlying cause, as being irrelevant to their needs, but will pounce on anything that addresses the symptoms they are experiencing.

Going back to my example, if I had a headline How to run effective meetings. My ideal prospect will ignore it. But if I had a headline How to significantly improve staff productivity. My ideal prospect is much more likely to want to find out more.

The problem I solve in each case is the same, it is just the second headline addresses the problem the prospect identifies with, and so it is more relevant to them.

It is really important to look through your marketing and identify causes vs. symptoms.

Because when this is done wrong, the business spends a lot on their advertising budget for little or no return. And the business starts to sink.

The Fix

All you need to do is spend a little time thinking about the cause vs symptom for your prospects and clients, and make sure that the initial advertising to prospects focuses on the symptoms rather than the cause.

Update your marketing to then educate the prospect so that they realise that the symptom has an underlying cause and positions your product or service to solve that problem.

In my example under my headline of How to significantly improve staff productivity I would explain how ineffective meetings cost time multiplied by the number of people involved in the meeting and the number of people awaiting outcomes from those meetings.

This is exponentially bigger than individual cases of poor time management, and so if the underlying cause of poor meeting efficiency is addressed it will make a significant impact on the productivity of the entire organisation.
-I have addressed the symptom, and educated the reader on the underlying cause.

#2 Poor Call to Action

So now you have updated your marketing so that it is relevant to your prospects by addressing their concerns with the symptoms or pain points they are experiencing, but your conversion or sales are still low.The second biggest mistake is that your marketing has a poor call to action.

The Call to Action (CTA) is the instruction that you give to your reader at the end of your marketing message. What action do you want them to take as a result of consuming this message?

There are a couple of things to note about an effective CTA:

• It should be clear
• There should only be one CTA per piece
• It must be direct (not wishy washy)

Too often you will see an informative article that ends with “if this is of interest to you either book our course or sign up for our newsletter or call in for a free introductory consultation.”

Pick just one action as the outcome of an article. The next step will have a different call to action.

It must be more direct: “If you are sick of xxxxxx, and are ready to transform your life, then click the button below to schedule your free consultation.”

It is also important that the CTA is appropriate to the piece you are looking at. An article like this for example might have a CTA to download a free report or a short workshop, but it might be a bit of a stretch to ask for someone to purchase high-end personalised coaching for thousands of dollars.

Again this is important to get right, because if your CTA is ineffective, most of the money you spend on advertising is wasted. This is a huge drain on your business which either slows growth or leads to its decline.

The Fix

Go through your advertising and marketing content and ask yourself the following questions:

• Does this piece ask the reader to take an action?
• Is the action appropriate to the level of this piece?
• What is the process or sequence of steps? -Where does this lead, and where does the next piece lead etc?
• Am I being direct or am I pulling back, being soft or hesitant in my Call to Action?
  
  

#1 Lack of Credibility

We are bombarded with hundreds of messages to purchase or consider purchasing goods and services every day. It is such a fact of life that we subconsciously create filters that handle most of these requests without us even being aware of them.

One aspect of these filters is that of credibility. We unconsciously assign a level of credibility to the people we interact with or see online. If you have fixed mistake #3 and are now relevant to the symptoms that the prospect is facing, then you will get past the first filter. The next filter will decide whether you are to be trusted, whether you are worth investing the time in.

This credibility is decided by your subconscious through a variety of factors.

These include:

• The presentation of the material. -Does it look professional?
• Spelling, for written communications, or tone and eloquence for spoken communications.
• Images are are appropriate and professional.
• Video is well produced with good sound quality.
• Vocabulary. -Are the words or phrasing used, those that are used in the industry?
• Endorsement from other credible people
• Positioning of the materials. -The same article on marketing will have more credibility if it is on the front page of Social Media Examiner, than if it is on JoeJones.blogspot.com
• The effectiveness of the information being communicated

It is important to note that the effectiveness of the information shared is very important but it is the last thing on the list. This is because if you don’t get the first things right, the chances are that nobody will read enough to find out the value of your information.

However, if you have valuable information, which people consume, and ideally implement, then you will have a level of credibility assigned to you, so that future communications from you will be more likely to be consumed and acted upon.

The Fix

Look at each piece of content that you are sharing, and consider it from the point of view of credibility.

• Does it look credible?
• What could you include to make it even more credible?
• Are you using the correct vocabulary?
• Who can endorse this through introduction, photo or being mentioned?
• Is the information in this content valuable and actionable to build future credibility?

The Ultimate Hack

There is one method of communication that automatically adds credibility to your information, and that is to share it from the stage. A properly crafted Signature Talk will have all of the elements mentioned in this article.

It will focus on a symptom that the audience is concerned with. It will have a clear call to action. But the mere fact that it is being delivered from stage to an audience gives instant credibility. This credibility is built up further, being introduced by someone important in the industry, being on stage in an important industry event etc.

Chris is speaker coach for TEDx Ruakura and runs workshops on creating signature talks and speaking and presenting effectively. He has a Speaking & Presenting Workshop in Auckland & Hamilton in the coming weeks.

Click  for more information on the Hamilton Speaking & Presenting Workshop

photo credits: 
andyde via Foter.com / CC BY-NC
Defence Images via Foter.com / CC BY-NC
CIFOR via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND