Knowing what you’re selling.

Many companies don’t know what they are selling.

They think they’re selling products or services that magically turn into revenue and light up your accounting software with lots of green, shiny graphs.

Until you know what you’re selling, sales leads won’t help. Getting more sales leads, increasing your Adwords spend, buying more Facebook ads, doing more networking events, printing more t-shirts and producing more ‘content’ for your blog will not help.

You’re not getting enough leads or closing the leads you have because you’re not sure what you’re selling.

Are you selling to humans?

Go and Google ten company websites. Pick any ten.

You’ll notice one thing: more than half the websites don’t sound like they are selling to humans.

There’s no human language, very little content created by the people that work at the company, zero compassion and not a lot of humility.

Most websites are designed to sell to robots that can’t stop looking at their smartphone. That’s not us. We’re human despite our phones changing the way we live.

Humans look for thoughtful businesses.
Humans look for solutions to problems that are not being solved.
Humans like a business to stand for something human.

How you sell matters.

Selling like you’re in the office with The Wolf Of Wall Street Jordan Belfort will not help you sell.

How you sell matters just as much as what you sell.

The process you put a client through has to be simple, thoughtful and in their best interests (not yours).

That last point is crucial. Many businesses exist to serve the board or shareholders, but they do very little to help people like you and I live a better life and do our best work.

The values of your company and what you stand for effect the leads. Before anyone ever becomes a lead in your sales funnel they are a person or a group of persons (a business) with a problem.

Many people never make it into your sales funnel because how you sell what you do is wrong.

Paying for more leads is not nearly as powerful as changing how you sell to the leads you have.

Loving the people who do the selling.

Leads are only half the puzzle.

The bigger question is who is selling to the leads? Does your business treat those people who call your leads well? Do the people who call your leads even care or are they after nothing more than a pay cheque?

These are the unanswered questions that get lost in conversations about why your business needs more leads.

More leads won’t help if your salespeople burn them or don’t know how to convert each lead into a customer that becomes a raving fan and introduces more people (leads) for free.

Treat one lead really well.

I had a sales guy that used to work for me. He treated one lead in Queensland, Australia really well. He spoke to him every day. He knew a lot about the persons family. He even went to the leads barbecue.

That lead was so impressed that he referred several hundred (that we could track) leads to our business. Treating one lead really well is far more powerful than buying more leads who don’t care about what you do.

Digital marketing has become a drug that every business thinks they need.

If only the business world knew the power of one lead.

The good cause factor.

Your business may do something simple like mow lawns.

That may not sound like a life-changing business that can take this lead advice I’m giving onboard. “My business is simple,” you say to me.

Well, I’d challenge that. Any business can have what I call the ‘Good Cause Factor.”

Let be give you an example. The local butcher down the road from me has a BBQ every Saturday afternoon where they invite the community to come and eat some food for free. Everyone is welcome including the few homeless people in the area that never buy any meat from their business.

People stand out the front of that butcher and talk about things that are happening in the community. This Saturday ritual has become a place where business ideas have flourished, homeless issues have been discussed and people who were lonely and possibly suicidal, decided to live for a bit longer.

The last part is the most interesting. In my community here in suburban Melbourne, there is a large group of people that suffer from mental illness. When I went through my own battle with mental illness, I went to the local town hall where people gathered who suffered from the same condition.

It was that event every Wednesday that helped me become a different person.The loneliness and the isolation I felt were cured by the simple act of connecting with other people and having the guts to talk about the demons I was facing.

These same people go to our local butcher on Saturday and eat at the free BBQ. The butcher is thoughtful and they know that they are doing something far more important than selling meat; they’re selling connection to the community, and a possible solution for isolation and loneliness that leads to mental illness.

So back to the point of this post, the community butcher is selling a good cause — an X Factor as some people would call it.

What your business does with its resources to help a worthy cause that affects humans like you and I is just as important as sales funnels, lead generation and your product roadmap.

Link your business to a worthy cause no matter how simple it is.

Lead quality.

I lose my mind when people talk about lead quality.

The quality of leads comes down to the quality of people talking to those leads and what you have to offer. Even the coldest lead can buy from you if you know how to find their problem — which they may not know they have — and use your product or service to enhance their life.

Quality of leads is a myth. All leads are equal.

No matter what stage of the sales funnel someone is in, they can be converted by the right business, with the right message and the right intentions to serve rather than take.