Sales Funnel Process

[00:00:00]
>> So let's look at each of those stages in our basic sales funnel. First, is attract attention, we got to grab people's attention, all right? So first we need to identify who we wanna make contact with, right? Who is the audience, okay? And then we need to work out how we're gonna contact them without actually selling to them, right?

[00:00:24]
We're not gonna sell to them because they're not gonna be ready to buy. The chance of us emailing them exactly the moment that they're ready to buy is pretty near zero, which is why cold calling and things like that don't work very well. So instead, we're gonna approach them with another thing in mind but we'll get into that more.

[00:00:43]
Instead, right, what we're gonna do is we're gonna approach them, we're gonna approach people and these will be cold emails. These is where I do personalized one to one emails to certain people. I'm not gonna try and sell them anything. Instead, I'm gonna approach them and say that you want their help, right, because that's not sales email.

[00:01:08]
You don't get emails from sales companies going, can you help us, in a very personal way, it's not like that. We're gonna approach them in a very non threatening way, we're gonna ask them for their help and their feedback for some research that we're carrying out. Then later on, we're gonna introduce them to something we're gonna give them value.

[00:01:31]
It might be a course, it might be a report, it might be a free app, it might be at lots of different things, right? And we're gonna get them involved in the creation process of whatever that thing is. Now I know all of this doesn't make a huge amount of sense right now but we'll get into it more as we go.

[00:01:49]
So what we're doing here is we're gonna build awareness in that group's mind, right? We're gonna make them aware that we exist. And we're gonna do it in such a way that we're going to demonstrate our interest in the sector, our desire to help them and provide them value.

[00:02:12]
And we're also then later on gonna start building further awareness and growing the list further using things like guest blogging, speaking social media and other kinds of stuff. So we're gonna get into all of that in a lot more detail later. So don't worry if it doesn't make an enormous amount of sense right now.

[00:02:33]
This is as much what's on the screen at the moment, is as much for your quick reference later than it is for helping right now. With the building the connection, so we've got people's attention, we're gonna get people's attention by contacting them directly and then through things like guest blogging and social media and all these other things.

[00:02:52]
Once we got their attention, we need to create a connection, right? And so what we're gonna do is we're going to offer people something for free, okay? So this is a marketing terms, is called a lead magnet where you give them something for free in return for get into contact them and build a relationship with them.

[00:03:17]
So maybe you're giving them a course, for example, a free course. And when they access the course, we're also gonna ask them to sign up for a mailing list, right, offering them not to be sold out but more advice on best practice. So let's say you did a course on, well, let's use a real example, Harry Roberts, a friend of mine, he is an expert in performance, okay?

[00:03:41]
So he gives away course material about how to improve the performance of your website, right? And you sign up for his mailing list and he shares more advice about how to improve the performance of your website. So by giving away, by helping people you get the permission that you need to stay in contact with them over the long term.

[00:04:08]
If you are only selling at them, you're not creating value, there's no benefit to them. But if you're helping them, you're giving them advice, you're giving them free stuff, you're being there for them to support them in any way you can, then you got permission to talk to them on an ongoing basis.

[00:04:30]
And of course you got keep them engaged over the long term and that's where my two weekly newsletter comes into it. So once they're on the mailing list we need to keep them engaged and keep providing value otherwise they're going to unsubscribe, right, before potentially they're ready to buy.

[00:04:47]
So but basically the aim of keeping them engaged is to ensure that they remember you when they have a need for your services, right? So the first person that pops into their head is pulled back when they need user experience services or conversion rate optimization services, that's what I'm aiming for, right?

[00:05:10]
And that gets me away from, take the procurement platforms I was talking about, where you're there to make up the numbers. But suddenly you are that preferred supplier and everybody else is the ones making up the numbers, right, hugely different. And then once we got them on the mailing list, we've got them following regularly, we want to get them to contact us, to talk to us, even if they haven't got a job.

[00:05:34]
And the reason that we want to do that is because that builds a relationship, it builds a rapport, right? One of the biggest reasons why somebody hires you over somebody else isn't your skill set, right, there are other people that have got your skill set. The reason someone wants to hire you rather than someone else is because they like you, they like the way you think, the way you behave, your professionalism, your attitude, your personality, all of those things sell, right?

[00:06:05]
And that comes from building trust and the relationship and the communication. So we wanna encourage that as much as we can. So if you're on my mailing list, you'll find that I often say. Look, what I've shared today maybe it's a little bit complicated, maybe you don't get it all, maybe you've got questions, maybe your circumstance is unique, drop me an email, I'm here to help.

[00:06:25]
And I make no judgments about who writes to me. So I don't look at, when someone writes to me and they've got a Gmail address and it's not coming from Virgin or Nike or Pepsi, I don't go, I'm not going to reply to them. I reply to everybody, I help everybody, even people that write to me and say I'm a student, right?

[00:06:53]
Now this is how long term my strategy is, right? Because I know that that student can go and get a job and then they'll recommend me, okay? And I do to this day, now I've been doing this for so long. I get people I honest and this this really, I can never work out whether I want to hug them or hit them when they say this.

[00:07:18]
But they'll say something like, I've always wanted to work with you, man, I listened to your podcast when I was in high school. And it's like kids, and now they're like senior management of Twitter or something and there's but, yeah. And so just build that relationship, get chatting with people, help everybody, right?

[00:07:40]
This is the underpinning principle of everything that we're talking about today, is don't market, don't sell, be helpful, right? So let's recap what we've said so far and then I think it's time to take a break. So, first of all, we wanna grab people's attention, the P, the specific audience we wanna reach, we wanna grab their attention.

[00:08:04]
We wanna then get permission to contact them regularly, we wanna demonstrate value and expertise to them to show that we are worth working with. And then we wanna keep in contact with them until they're ready to make a purchase