Want to make more sales in 2024?
Today we are going to share seven secrets that can help you optimize your sales process!
Entrepreneurs tend to love novelty.
So when you decide that you want to increase sales, it may be tempting to start coming up with all kinds of crazy ideas.
But here’s what we recommend doing first:
And sure, that’s not as exciting as chasing trends and looking for ways to incorporate “blockchain”, “NFTs”, “AI” or whatever else is the latest buzzword into your business….
But it’s the most straightforward way to increase sales!
Our friend Alex Hormozi advises asking yourself this: what’s stopping you from doing 10x more of what’s already working?
After all, if we assume that your conversion rates stay the same as you increase the key input by 10x, then that should result in a corresponding 10x increase in the output (sales).
Of course, you may not be able to scale what’s already working by 10x due to various constraints but it’s a good thought experiment that can help you gain clarity on how to grow your business!
Here are some of the factors that you need to take into consideration when you are thinking about scaling the key input:
If you have a sales team that generates leads via cold calling, then in theory, increasing the number of cold calls by 10x should lead to a corresponding 10x increase in sales, assuming the conversion rates stay the same.
In practice, however, that means that your salespeople will need to spend 10x more time not just on cold calls but also on discovery calls and product demos. Can their current work schedule accommodate that?
Moreover, a 10x increase in sales also means a 10x increase in customer support requests. Can your customer support team handle that?
Finally, a 10x increase in sales also means a 10x increase in infrastructure demands. Can your existing infrastructure withstand that?
Of course, these issues can be addressed by hiring more people and investing in better infrastructure. But do you have money for that?
We recommend playing with the numbers to see what would likely happen if you were to increase the key input by different multiples.
Of course, no model is perfect, forecasting sales is difficult and the downstream effects of scaling the key input can be unexpected.
But the potential problems described above are entirely predictable if you take a moment to think things through!
Once you figure out how much you can realistically scale the key input, we recommend being cautious and scaling it gradually even if everything looks good on paper. Why?
Because the more complex your business workflow, the more likely it is that something will unexpectedly break down during the scaling process.
And even if your workflow is as simple as it gets, you will still probably encounter unexpected problems. Increasing the pressure on the system often reveals the hitherto hidden weaknesses.
Scaling gradually allows you to notice these issues and address them before they get out of hand and everything starts devolving into chaos!
Leads can be divided into two categories:
The term “quality” here refers to the likelihood of converting into a paying customer and isn’t meant as a negative judgment on the person in question.
Improving the targeting of your marketing campaigns can help you attract fewer low-quality leads and more high-quality leads!
Look at your business data.
What do leads that are unlikely to convert into paying customers tend to have in common?
Once you identify those common traits, you want to create a demographic profile of a low-quality lead and then exclude people who fit that profile from your marketing campaigns.
Here’s something to consider:
If a particular demographic is converting into leads but not into paying customers, it’s probably because what you have to offer catches their attention at first but ultimately doesn’t appeal to them.
Consequently, you wouldn’t be doing these people any favors by continuing to target them when you know full well that your products and services simply aren’t a good match for them.
So there’s no need to feel bad for excluding them from your marketing campaigns. There’s probably someone out there that can serve that demographic much better than you can!
Now look at your business data again.
What do high-quality leads that are likely to convert into paying customers tend to have in common?
Once you identify those common traits, you want to create a demographic profile of a high-quality lead and then use that profile to improve the targeting of your marketing campaigns so that you could attract more high-quality leads.
Finally, consider analyzing your sales data to see whether it follows the Pareto distribution where the minority of your customers is bringing the majority of your revenue.
This distribution is named after the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, which states that for many outcomes, around 80% of the consequences come from around 20% of the causes.
The Pareto principle and the Pareto distribution are related but distinct concepts so you may find a Pareto distribution with a ratio other than 80/20.
Regardless of the exact ratio, if you see this distribution in your sales data, you want to figure out what these lucrative customers have in common.
Then, create a demographic profile of a lucrative customer and use that profile to improve the targeting of your marketing campaigns so that you can attract more customers like that!
A sales funnel is a system designed to convert visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers.
The more expensive your product or service, the more trust you will need in order to close the sale. So how can you build that trust?
This is where the Value Ladder sales funnel comes in:
At each stage of this sales funnel, you ask for increasingly more investment and then provide increasingly more value in return, until you build enough trust to pitch your most valuable and most expensive offer.
This approach allows our co-founder Russell Brunson to charge between $50,000/year and $250,000/year for his Inner Circle masterminds.
He doesn’t go around pitching these masterminds to random people who have never heard of him before. They would think that he’s some kind of lunatic!
Instead, he starts off by offering our dream customers various lead magnets in exchange for their email addresses and then guides them through our entire Value Ladder sales funnel.
By the time they reach the top of our Value Ladder, they might be interested in applying to Inner Circle. Yes, it’s application-only!
Do you see how powerful this sales funnel can be?
A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer to the potential customer in exchange for their email address.
We recommend using either a free service or a free digital product as your lead magnet.
The former approach gives you an opportunity to interact with potential customers directly, help them solve a problem that they have, and then pitch them a subscription for that same service, a more expensive service or a complete service package.
Meanwhile, the latter approach doesn’t provide an opportunity to interact with potential customers directly but once you have their email addresses you can pitch them your products or services via automated email sequences. More on that later.
In general, service lead magnets tend to work better for service businesses and digital product lead magnets tend to work better for info product, e-commerce, and software businesses.
The next step is to build a squeeze page funnel for your lead magnet.
We recommend using ClickFunnels for this. Our software includes a proven squeeze page funnel template. All you need to do is customize it!
If you are using a digital product lead magnet, once the potential customer gives you their email address, you want to send them this welcome sequence:
This gives you an opportunity to build more trust before you pitch your paid offer!
Adding downsells, upsells and cross sells to your core offers can help you maximize your average order value (AOV), your customer lifetime value (CLV) and your revenue.
A downsell is an offer that you pitch to the potential customer if they reject your initial offer.
It should be less valuable and less expensive. You can think of it as a downgrade from the original offer.
Note that you need a separate offer for this. Discounting your original offer is a bad idea. It will make you look desperate!
An upsell is an offer that you pitch to the potential customer once they have accepted your initial offer.
It should be more valuable and more expensive. You can think of it as an upgrade on the original offer.
Upsells typically involve offering more of the same but at a better price, the classic example is McDonald’s infamous “Would you like to supersize that?”.
A cross sell is also an offer that you pitch to the potential customer once they have accepted your initial offer.
However, while upsells are upgrades on the original offer, cross sells are products and services that are complementary to it.
The classic example of a cross sell is McDonald’s famous “Would you like fries with that?”.
Digital products have insanely high-profit margins, are relatively easy to produce, and can be delivered to the customer immediately.
That’s why adding digital downsells and cross sells to your sales funnel can be a great way to improve your bottom line.
Say, if someone is about to order a physical product from your e-commerce store and you cross sell a $7 ebook or a video class related to that product, they might add it to their cart because why not, it’s just seven bucks.
But those seven bucks are nothing to scoff at because that cross sell might help you cover your customer acquisition costs!
We recommend adding a downsell, an upsell, and a cross sell to each of your core offers.
The term “social proof” refers to indications that other people trust you.
Direct social proof is related to the specific offer in question, such as customer reviews, testimonials, and case studies.
Indirect social proof can be related to you as a person: your accomplishments, credentials, endorsements from the thought leaders in your niche, etc.
It can also be related to your company as a business: the number of customers you have, the most notable customers, industry awards, media coverage, endorsements from the thought leaders in your niche, etc.
Social proof can help you increase your conversion rates so make sure to provide as much of it as you can all throughout your sales funnel!
The headline is the most important element of any copy. Why?
Because if you fail to grab the attention of your dream customers, then the rest of the copy doesn’t matter because they are not going to read it anyway.
Consequently, when you are writing copy, you should spend most of your time crafting a compelling headline!
Here’s the copywriting framework that we use in all of our copy:
We recommend experimenting with this framework in your own copy. You might be surprised by how effective it can be!
Adding more curiosity to your copy can do wonders for your conversion rates.
You want to give away enough information to intrigue your dream customers but not so much that they think that they have you all figured out and lose interest.
Our co-founder Russell Brunson once helped a friend to:
…by simply adding more curiosity to his landing page headline. Pretty crazy!
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is the most popular conversion rate optimization technique.
The main idea is this: you create two variants of something that are identical except for the one variable that you are testing, drive the same amount of traffic to both variants, and then see which variant converts better.
You should A/B test your:
…across your entire sales funnel.
In general, it’s best to start with the variable that is the most likely to have an impact on the conversion rate and then continue testing other variables in the descending order of likelihood.
For example, as we already discussed, the headline is the most important element of any copy, so if you want to optimize your copy, you should probably start by A/B testing your headlines.
We recommend reading up on the statistics of A/B testing because that will help you design A/B tests and interpret their results.
You don’t need to be able to do the math yourself because A/B testing software will do all that for you.
But it’s important to understand the key concepts such as statistical significance!
Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.
He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?
His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.
This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.
But you can also get it directly from us for free…
All we ask is that you pay for shipping!
So what are you waiting for? 🧐
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