For many people, the scariest part of running a business is marketing and sales. Rejection is built into the process, and the thought of it – even just the THOUGHT of it – is a stressor that makes it hard to present a strong, confident pitch. Today we are going to talk about a mindset shift that will help fix this: remembering that marketing is a numbers game.
I find that especially early on in business, marketers court a low number of prospects. With so few people entering into your marketing funnel, it puts extraordinary pressure on each lead. Pressure that you will feel. Pressure that they will hear in your voice and see in your words. It’s tough to be successful from this position.
Sales is about percentages. A percentage of cold contacts will respond. A percentage of those will respond with interest. A percentage of those who are interested will eventually turn into a closed sale. And I’ll tell you the honest truth – none of those percentages is 100%. Even for interested leads turning into closed sales.
Sales is about percentages. #business #biztips #smallbiz #smb #smallbusiness Share on XIn the nonprofit world, it’s often said that a direct mail campaign to your donor list is successful if it yielded donations from 2% to 3% of your audience. This is a warm audience, mind you.
Planning a webinar? Expect about 30% of your registrants to show up on average. Planning a fundraising event? There will be no shows, and a lot of times couples who attend together bid as one.
When you start to think about the numbers game of it all, it can be sobering. What does it mean for you? Make sure you have a higher volume of leads in your marketing funnel. (Not sure what I mean when I mention your marketing funnel? Read here!)
I remember a day years ago when I learned an important sales lesson on a street corner. On an afternoon walk on a busy street full of pedestrians, I walked by a man who was standing in the road. As I got closer to him, he called out to me, “Hey, beautiful! Nice hair! Want to talk?” I promptly ignored him. This type of proposition makes me angry. Once he was a bit behind me, I heard him call out to someone else. Later that day, I told a friend about the incident. “Who does things like that? What a terrible way to get a woman’s attention!” And my friend told me, “Well, if just 1 out of 30 women are okay with it, he’s got a date.”
Food for thought. He was playing a numbers game. He was probably successful eventually.
Although I don’t strive to be that man, he showed me an important principle of marketing that has absolutely applied to my business and many of my clients’ businesses. You need a high volume of leads entering your marketing funnel if you have a chance of closing the number of sales you want in the end.
This is why keeping real statistics of your customers’ behavior is so beneficial to you down the road. Once you start looking at business growth or meeting sales goals, you need to know how many prospects to cultivate, how many clients to court, how many people need to walk into your shop, how many people need to click through to an offer to yield the desired results.
Even if your business sells on the value of prestige, this is the case. When rarity and the “wining and dining” method of lead cultivation means you need to be very focused on just a few clients at a time, this rule ultimately still applies. Because in order to find those great leads, you likely need to sort through a number of warm leads on the front end that will ultimately not be the right fit.
Rather than scare you with this talk about volume and marketing being a numbers game, I want this to encourage you to move forward. If rejections hit you hard, this is a great way to reframe them. Only a small percentage of the people you talk to are going to be your customers, and you are on the hunt for them. So build a little more volume into the front end so you know the right people are in there somewhere.
Only a small percentage of the people you talk to are going to be your customers. #smb #business Share on XOf course, when I say that marketing is a numbers game, I don’t mean to imply that you can sacrifice customer service because eventually the numbers will work out. You still have to put your best foot forward. And I truly believe it is easier to do that when there is less pressure on each conversation.
So, when you think about your business, when you think about the structure of your marketing funnel, when you think about your sales process, how does it change if I tell you that only 1% of the leads you bring in will turn into customers? Lean into it. Start approaching more leads. Stretch yourself to get more prospects in your pipeline.
If you do this, you will find it easier to focus on the successes!