What are your Sales Channels?

salesIt is common to be talking to people about business and hear them say they are not selling enough even though they are marketing all the time.

It inspired me to write this post because I see simple mistakes that entrepreneurs make when selling that impacts a lot how much money they could be bringing in.

 

  • 1. Marketing and selling are not the same thing. When you are posting on social media sites like Facebook and Linkedin several times a day you are marketing not selling. You need specific sales actions- actions that make people purchase something.

If you post something with link offering some value that would lead to a sale, then it is another story.

 

  • For example: You create a report on one topic where you have a specific call to action for them to acquire a service and you offer this free report to your list – will generate sales.

When you have some specific sales actions, they need to be reliable, you need to be sure they can generate sales. Branding yourself in social media sites is good for, well, branding, but it is not a reliable way to make sales.

So the key point here is to ask yourself every time if it is a reliable sales method, if it is something you can track conversion.

Maybe you are like me, I’m not into numbers. I’m a creator. Checking numbers and tracking how my sales efforts are converting is not something I used to enjoy. But it is crucial if I want to succeed.

 

  • Tradtional media is easier to track but it does not mean you cannot track sales efforts online. Even on webinars today you can do AB split testing sending participants to different sales letters. It may be a bit more work but it will open your eyes on what is working and what is not.

 

  • You need to know what your sales channels are. I see a lot of people that have no idea and again they think everything they do in marketing leads to sales.

 

  • Follow up, follow up, follow up. I talk to online and offline businesses everyday and am really impressed at the percentage that does not have a proper follow up strategy. Around 90% my friend. Some have some auto-responder messages in place which is good. The bad part is that they think this is all they should be doing when it comes to follow up.  You can increase your conversion by 50% just by doing proper follow-up.

 

  • People that bought from you before are the ones that are more likely to purchase again from you. They already know you and trust you. Stop the madness of always going after new leads and create a process to generate specific offers to those that haven’t purchased anything from you in the last 6 months. Here we call the Wake the Zombies campaign.

 

  • Make a goal to sell something everyday. It doesn’t matter the price point. What matters is the habit. It is very easy to get lost in marketing, because it can be fun and gives you the sense of being busy than to make specific efforts on selling.

 

  • Make a goal to send some ships every day. At the end of the day here at BuzzBooster we ask each other: How many ships have you sent? This means, what have you done to generate sales today or tomorrow. The idea behind this is that in order to have fish on their tables, fishermen have to send the ships out to sea. No ships, no fish. Got it?

Here you find a chart of what I take as sales channels and that we use to get ideas on the ships we send.

Online sales  Offiline sales
optiin- report-sales direct mail
opt-in video sale eddm
ppc networking
facebook ads speaking gigs
FB promoted posts workshops and presentations
banner to sales cold call
webinars- teleseminars cold calls
e-mail marketing referral program with existing clents
Private hangouts campaign for inactive customers
affiliates postcards to neighborhood
jvs Newspaper ads
clickbank magazine ads
launches radio ads
Amazon- kindle, products and audio live events
telesumits
PPC on specific sites like Plenty of fish
newsletter ads
Blog

Do you have any others?