The House
of Sales Ideas


Welcome to where the magic happens. Every project, class, system and process I have ever implemented started with a blog post RIGHT HERE. So dig in, there is gold in these electrons.

Do You REALLY Know Your Customers?

I am reading the book Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard. The authors, Dan & Chip Heath pose a great question/analogy. There is 1 particular choice that people across our country make everyday that COMPLETELY alters everything in their life. They volunteer to change EVERYTHING about their present mode of living including, but not limited to:

  • fracturing their sleep into 3-4 hour chunks of time
  • how they spend their free time
  • what they do with any spare money
  • eating habits and much, much more

That 1 choice is parenthood. Why would people volunteer for such massive change? Anybody who has children already knows the answer to the question.

Now think about this in terms of your customers:

  • Why would they make a change in their current situation?
  • What would compel them to make a decision to move out of their comfort zone.
  • What could possibly make them spend hours researching multiple options then spend the next few weeks to months of their lives meeting with, at minimum, 3 salespeople and telling their story over and over?
  • All this just to take a chance and make a decision that could ruin their career with their company.

That is OUR magic question. THE question we must answer to A) educate our suspects/prospects/customers and B) sell them our products and services. The answer is, of course, to know and understand our potential customers by establishing REAL relationships.

So how do we begin a REAL relationship with people that we don’t know, but need to know to be a success? Lead generation of course, but how does a real relationship with potential customers start? It should be no surprise that it begins and ends in hard work, this is sales after all, but let me be much more specific.

L.T.L.R.

Learn To Love  Research! (you all know I love my acronyms). I don’t care if it is online, at the library or experientially, you must research your potential market. You need to know what affects them on a daily basis, what situations (regulatory, legal, market based etc.) could change their business for the positive AND negative. You need to know the titles of your contacts and what those titles actually do. You need to know what their location geography means to their business. In short, you need to be an expert on your potential customers all BEFORE you send out 1 ‘touch’ from 1 lead generation campaign and this is just the beginning of the process.

Before They Are Customers

Before they are customers they are either suspects or  prospects. I teach my clients to characterize status based on  ACTIVE and DORMANT needs. Simply put, if a potential  customer does not recognize they have a need, then  DORMANT would be the classification and  they’re what I call  suspects. If recognition is present, they will have an ACTIVE  need and they could be prospects. 1 caveat, this is the  simplest description of suspects and prospects. There is more  complexity to these definitions but for the sake of today’s  discussion it is more than sufficient.

The BIG 3

Once your research is completed you need to develop your Touch Matrix. This consists of all the different type of touches you will be using to nurture the relationships with your clients. Some of the components to consider are letters, emails, social media, whitepapers, articles, 3rd party case studies, webinars and more.

The design, type and, most importantly, content  of touches, that will be used, are dependent on the recently completed research AND the BIG 3:

  1. Relevancy
  2. Consistency
  3. Timing

All your content MUST be RELEVANT to your suspect/prospect/customer, their organization or best of all BOTH. It could be industry specific, job specific or personal specific, but it can’t be about YOU or your company. Remember relevance is like beauty, it is always in the eye of the beholder. So forget ‘special’ price lists, coupons or product announcements.

Once you start your S.I.T. Lead Generation System you can’t stop. You need to be CONSISTENT with your touches. If you are doing a good job getting your folks impactful content they will become addicted to it. If, for whatever reason, you stop ‘touching’ your folks they will reach out to find OTHER (see competition) sources for the same information. All your work thus far will be shot to pieces with the interesting side effect of degrading your reputation for reliability/customer service for good measure.

“TIMING is everything.” I am sure you have heard that before. It is every bit as true with your S.I.T. System. You need to know when your folks like to receive information and what events coincide with a touch from you. This is the art of appearing to be ‘coincidental’ on purpose. Mix up the releases of your info based on your research/experience and always keep your ears -eyes open for trigger events and potential tweaks to the system. The goal is being the person who is always on the tip of their tongue when they are talking to their associates or their superiors.

Personalize and Monetize

2 crucial mistakes that many people make when constructing their first S.I.T. System, is forgetting to PERSONALIZE and MONETIZE. Each piece has to be constructed from design to content to delivery system the way that will make the biggest IMPACT with individual PERSON who is our suspect/prospect/customer. It doesn’t matter what you like, it matters what they like. Don’t substitute something that you think “looks cool”  if it contradicts all the research, experience and time you have invested.

“This is show business not show friends” said the character ‘Bob Sugar’ in Jerry Maguire. We must remember that everytime we touch our suspect/prospect/customers with needs to ring the ‘money bell.’ The people we contact don’t want fluff for fluff’s sake. They want something that will help them do their job better, something that will get them noticed by the boss or even improve a system at their facility. Always err on the side of getting people information that can be MONETIZED for real value at their job.

All righty then, that’s all for today. Next time we will continue to lay out the S.I.T Lead Generation System giving you more ideas to grow your business….

In the meantime, remember you can either make sales or make excuses but you can’t do both!

I am outta of here…..

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