Getting Prospects to Say: "I Want to Buy"

Show Notes

• Your goal when working with a prospective customer is to engage them in conversation so they can make a buying decision.
• You need to warm up the prospect before they will make a buying decision.
• Your goal should be to move someone from a person on an email list to a conversation over the phone or in person.
• If you have permission to text someone, you are much more likely to get them engaged in a conversation than you would through an email.
• After sending a text, your goal is to get the prospect on the phone where they can ask clarifying questions and gain a better understanding of your product or service.
• You can send an SMS or MMS that may include a video or an image.
• Ask a question in your text, so they will be prompted to respond which will encourage a back and forth conversation with someone on your team.
• A conversation starter text message helps you to identify who is ready to talk to someone and learn more about what you have to offer.
• Typically you will want to reach out via text several times during a sale cycle.
• If you get in the habit of using conversation starters in your emails and texts, you will experience more sales.
• Identify the strategy you are using, determine when it would be best to send your conversation text messages, and then track the results.
• Conversation starters will help you to identify your most likely customers.

Transcription of Episode

[00:00:00] Today we're going to talk about conversation starters in our podcast. Now when we talk about conversation starters in business, we're referring to a specific tactic that we use. This is part of our overall marketing sales strategy, and the goal that we have when we're working with the prospect is engage them in conversation to make a buying decision.

Now, a lot of times when we get a new lead from one of our lead sources, the lead is still kind of hesitant to talk to anybody. They're testing the waters, they're trying to figure out, is this something I'm really interested in talking to somebody about. And so, initially we deliver a lot of our content and our marketing and sales funnels through email, text message, using videos, using PDF reports. The goal here is to get them warmed up enough to where they are open and willing to talk to somebody.

Along the way, and some of your sales strategies are different, some of your marketing strategies are different. In this case, I'm referring to a sales funnel where you don't [00:01:00] go straight for the sale. It may be a two to three call close, and sometimes you got to warm up the prospect a little bit before they can get to a buying decision.

There's some products and services that just don't make sense to try and do a two or three call close. A lot of times, it's a online sale and you don't talk to anybody. Other times, it's a one call close. This strategy I'm going to talk about, this tactic can work with both one call closes or two or three called closes, but the point is that we're trying to get prospects and customers into conversation to either buy or buy more.

And so today we're talking about conversation starters. When I'm referring to that, what I'm referring to is getting someone from an email or from a text to a phone call so I can start a conversation with them.

One of our tactics that we use is that we use text messaging as part of our follow-up medium. It's one of the mediums we chose because email does work, it is effective in some [00:02:00] cases, but we found that if we have permission to text somebody, we are much more likely to get them to engage in conversation starting from text and starting from email. So here's the tactic: as part of our follow-up strategy, we have multiple touches by email, by phone, by text and one of those messages will be a text message asking a probing question.

Now the goal with this text message is to engage the prospect of the customer in conversation by text message and then take it from text message once you got enough clarity or enough of their questions answered in text, to ask questions that would naturally lead to a phone call. And so the goal here obviously is to get them on the phone where we can resolve any concerns, continue to clarify what the products and service is that we're offering, get them sold on the benefit to them of working with us, and then, from there, get them to make a buying decision.

So let [00:03:00] me give you a few examples of how we use these text messages. Sometimes we use just a simple text, 160 characters, other times we'll use a MMS, which is a multimedia text message. So that includes video or includes images, and with a MMS, you can send a larger body of text. So with SMS, which is the simple messaging, that the carrier's allow 160 characters, you have that limit.

With MMS, you can go up to 1600 characters with many carriers and even more. But we limit to 1600 characters. Again, we're not trying to write a book here. We're trying to engage in conversations. So we might have a little more content, maybe an image and a link to a video that we want them to watch. The goal here is to get the person to consume some content by way of the video that we're having and watch and ask a question that would get them to respond.

When they respond to that automated message that went out [00:04:00] through text message, we use systems that allow us to now engage in conversation back and forth. So with these back and forth conversations we're able to now have a sales rep or a support rep chat back and forth through text messaging with the prospect in a way that allows us to get them to now move to a phone call to resolve the rest of the concerns or answering any other questions or explain or do a demo of the product or service.

We've relied on this strategy heavily in several of our businesses and the conversation starter text message has been very effective because it identifies those who are ready to say, yes, I want to talk to somebody or hey, I've got more questions because as we're drifting out text messages and they're responding, they're showing that they have interest. It's an easy way for them to raise their hand and say, yes, I'm interested, contact me now. We don't do this every day, we don't do it [00:05:00] 50 times to a prospect. These might just be a few text messages over the course of the sale cycle.

If your sale cycle is a 30 day sale cycle, you'll want to drip out one a week or every few days. If your sale cycle is a year, you might want to do it once a quarter or every few months. If your sale cycle is three days, you might want to do it every day for three days. So just depending on your product or service you're offering, you want to consider at what point in time would it be appropriate to send out some content or a video link via text message, and also ask a question that would lead to a conversation by phone or by text.

I'm okay with having a text message conversation going back and forth and answering questions and chatting with someone via text message, but the goal really is to take that from a text message conversation to a phone conversation. And in that way, our sales team or support team can provide a better experience for the person that's interested in learning more about our product of service.

Now, if you take this this tactic [00:06:00] of using conversation starters not only in text message but also on your email and any other follow-up mediums you use, you'll see a better conversion of a prospect buying or a customer buying more or buying another product again, and so keep in mind that the goal here with sales and marketing is to engage the customer prospect into a conversation whether that be automated through some videos you have and they're making them think and ask questions of themselves or in this case where we have a salesperson or support person that once they've done the phone with the prospect, asks questions that will engage with the person to get them to a phone call to finish the sale cycle.

Now, we've used this in businesses where we sell a software, like the softwares that we offer on our site here, and we've also done it where we have created high-end product that includes training materials on how to start a [00:07:00] specific business and specific niche and I'll talk about that in a podcast in a few days here, but the goal that we have in all these situations, all these cases, is identify, what is the strategy we're using and where in the strategies can we incorporate this tactic of a conversation starter. Is it more appropriate right away at the beginning or is it appropriate a day or two later after leads come in, seen some content, watch some videos, read a report, at what point in time would it be appropriate to start sending out these conversation text messages.

Once you've got this into your sales cycle, begin to track and see the results. Obviously, we've got to track results beforehand in order to notice an improvement after you incorporate this, but I guarantee you that if you incorporate some conversation starters into your sales cycle, you're going to be able to identify quicker your hottest prospects to spend the most time with those who are ready to engage in a conversation with the sales rep or assessments report person in order to get them to take the next action in the buying [00:08:00] process or repeat purchase process.

So incorporate that in your business, test it, try it out, and give us your feedback. What'd you experience? What'd you like about it? And what have you noticed as far as the good and the bad? The only bad that I've ever noticed is that some people will tell us hey, I'm not interested right away and then we take him out of our marketing list. Because it's easy for people to respond to text message. Much easier than picking up the phone calling and say hey, I'm not interested. They will respond to a text message say, not interested. It makes it super easy for our team to eliminate those who are not interested in product or service and to focus solely on those who are good match for what we are offering.