Since my last post and a couple of comments happened, I’ll scribble my basic lead gen/followup methodology down. This changes all the time, and it’s the part of what I do that’s grinding/belly to belly/phone banging based. That part gets me 35-45% of my business. Another 35-45% comes from referrals/social media. Roughly 10% is “pure” PPC/internet marketing stuff.
There are fuzzy lines everywhere–how do you categorize someone that was referred in by Greg Swann? What of the person that opted in 16 months ago to a different product? Anyway.
The excuse to call: I am resuming my webinars that teach my bareknuckle brand of internet marketing/salesmanship. I invite people to these, for free. They are low key, soft selling events that have what I know. At the end, I simply offer to “do it for your business for X.” These have done well for me in the past, and will do well for me again. Twice a month is about as much as I can handle, and still be “on.” I generally invite people here, or offer up one of my other contacts as a way to connect. “I have 1500 people on my fb….feel free to ask for an introduction to anyone.”
GenuineChris Axiom: My efficiency at cold calling literally doubled when I stopped allowing anyone to try and buy on the first call. “Oh, you’re a lead? Great, gotta go, call ya later.” “Almost leads” talk your ear off on the initial call, but they never buy. People that buy do so quickly.
The Next Part of The Equation- Your Goal: Your goal is not to convince a singular person to do ANYTHING on the first call. I don’t set appointments. I don’t troubleshoot. I only wish to identify need. If they have a need for us, THEY WILL SAY SO. “Do you have anything broken about your $thing_you_sell?” You’re working the list. “Hey, we’ll see if I can help–mind if I call you back this afternoon?” Why are you doing this?
Because you want to work your list. Getting through your list is where the value is. You have a lead. Act like you’ve been in the endzone before. You’ve got someone to call back. (There are scripts for this). Your goal is to get through your list. Contact 20 people, 3 need something. Call the 3 back later and put them in a different (e.g. no longer cold calling) category.
Another thing: When you don’t oversell on the first call, you keep control of the relationship and they don’t treat you as a beggar. You’re asking for zilch. You’re not one of those Google Bot Monkeys that calls from the 425 area codes 3x daily, you’re the real deal.
More methods:
My Facebook is 1500 people. Try to hit 2x yearly. 750/half = 375/quarter. 60 working days in an average quarter. 6.25 contacts/day. That’s enough for any friggin’ agent to sell 30 homes. And you don’t have to harass, you’re just lookin’ for info. No biggie, just info. You’re cool and calm and it’s not a big deal, and you’re patently NOT selling.
I call people in about the following order:
- People that Express an immediate need: Search.Twitter.Com “Know anyone + keywords,” “Need+ keywords, Recommend + keywords, help me +keywords” produces 4-5 good leads daily.
- Friends/business contacts: I call people who know me. Like in the above paragraph.
- Targeted Likely: For PC, political consultants are golden. For FRB, it’s social media coaches. Looking for killer “one-to-many” relationships. These folks can send 2-3 sites/quarterly and I have several performing like clockwork. Those are my “best customers,” generally.
Now, I do this in excel, and an assistant dumps everything into HEAP, firing the appropriate activity series. I don’t do this because it distracts me. I am only to be using the spreadsheet with callto links& skpye.
More methodology: I have my FB contacts in an excel spreadsheet. Of my 1506 contacts, 1191 have phone #’s listed, and we have phone #’s on another 100+. This brings the calls/month down. I separate the FB tabs, and I got it started over a month by adding a letter of the alphabet each day. Icky work, to be sure, but it was done once. I average 50 randoms/monthly, so they get CRM’d a little more aggressively (those that I add, I don’t send an autoresponder to).
That’s the system. More complex than necessary. I have more complexity than this, but I’m draining my systems of complexity. I want to be selling 3 hours a day. We will get there.
Janie Coffey says:
I LOVE this Chris, I am going to a) look into heap b/c I am tired of TP and need simply something that will allow me to create action plans for my SOI. I also heavily rely on GIST to keep up with my contacts to keep my finger on their pulse and GIST sycnhs with Googl. and b) put this into motion. Thank you for detailing it out. I have saved, bookmarked and shared!.
August 30, 2010 — 4:47 am
Jeff says:
I agree with your post, hard to tell sometimes where the lead/client came from. I am a big believer in the 80/20 rule and that is that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your friends, past clients and referrals. If you believe in that then Gofaceit might be a marketing tool for your personal Facebook page. It allows you to market your products, goods and services to your friends on Facebook. In additions for those individuals whose sales are dependent on their customers obtaining financing it comes with a totally brand able state of the art credit management platform where you can invite past, present or future clients into a state of the art credit management platform.
August 30, 2010 — 6:08 am
Chris Johnson says:
Jeff- the one to many people are whom I focus on.
August 30, 2010 — 7:01 am
Brian Brady says:
Six figure income agents use LinkedIn and Facebook for prospecting. Their pages are mostly business and they look, look, look for opportunities to call in their online network.
When I went back into production, in 2005, I used this strategy on LinkedIn and it built a large, engaged database.
August 30, 2010 — 8:47 am
Jeff Brown says:
Chris — You plow the fields, plant seeds, maintain the fields, and harvest — all at the right time. That’s the lesson between the lines of almost all your posts. If readers will just look at how you’re always tweakin’ things to become more efficient at those tasks, and applied that and your timing to their prospecting, they’d be living a new life pretty quickly.
August 30, 2010 — 8:48 am
Genuine Chris Johnson says:
Yeah, it works pretty well. Opportunities to help others/connect others/let others meet. When you sell and exist as a conduit, when you wanna help other people, you’ll be earning a darn nice living.
August 30, 2010 — 10:50 am
Julie K. says:
Very inspiring! And I thought I was being effective. But I guess there’s always space for learning new things and learning to think in different ways.
August 30, 2010 — 2:29 pm
Alex Cortez says:
Interesting post. I haven’t heard of anybody tackling their SM database in such a methodological way.
August 30, 2010 — 5:19 pm
Dawn Sadler says:
Great post. I love the methodology of this – it’s very strong. Thanks for sharing it!
August 31, 2010 — 1:20 pm