5 Buckets of the Sales Process (Part 2)

How to Increase Sales with the 5 Bucket Sales Process using Online Technology

Last week we defined the 5 Bucket Sales Process.  This week we explain how to use online technology and tools to increase sales by building a long term client relationship understanding your clients buying desires so that you can deliver greater value to your clients than your clients are spending in time and money.

As we defined in last week’s blog post, there are five important stages or buckets that clients evolve through as they identify that you offer them value and your relationship builds;

1. Prospect
2. Subscriber
3. Trial Product
4. Core Product
5. Vertical Product

In this week’s post we show you how to use technology to offer value, education and communication to your clients so that your relationship grows over time.

1. Prospect
Using Social Media Marketing Channels helps to increase the reach of your message and brand.

Social Media Marketing Channels such as Facebook allow targeted demographic marketing to your ideal prospect cutting the fat off of traditional marketing channels.  The cost of Facebook advertisement is typically under $1 per lead whereas Google Adwords marketing is closer to $10 per lead.  Google Adwords was considered one of the best marketing bang for the buck only 5 to 10 years ago.  Other traditional marketing channels such as print advertising is typically $40 per lead or greater.  As you can see the numbers jump quickly as the power of targeted demographics diminishes.

Also Social Media Marketing Channels allows and facilitates referrals from your current clients and prospects.  The organic viral reach is much stronger as the connections are stronger in Social Media Marketing Channels.

The drawback of Social Media Marketing Channels such as Facebook though is that you are not able to communicate on your terms with your clients.  Facebook, for example, uses an algorithm that decides whether or not to deliver your message to your followers based on what Facebook deems as relevant.

2. Subscribers
In order to reduce barriers between communicating value to your clients you need to offer them a subscription service such as a periodic eNewsletter on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.  This can be done by creating a WordPress Blog or a MailChimp or Constant Contact eNewsletter.

There are certainly many different subscription solutions but these are some of the most inexpensive, dynamic and easy to use tools currently.

A WordPress Blog is valuable however it requires that clients come to you each time you are creating valuable information.  Whereas a eNewsletter is delivered conveniently to them as soon as it is available making it also more timely.  It is critical that these messages are giving value for the readers time is valuable.  It can have marketing around it but the message itself should not be promotional.

3. Trial Product
A trial product needs to be prominent in all advertising and promotion.  It needs to be a solid representation of your brand. Even though it is free the quality of it must show the full value of your product and services.  It is the opportunity to show value and build trust.

Build trust and confidence that the client will gain more in value than the cost of the clients time and money. Free 30 day trials of your full service or product is a good example.  A free book, ebook or webinar are good examples also if quality time and effort is put into the content.

4. Core Product or Service
Once a customer tries your product and sees the value in it then they will be ready and willing to buy your main product or service.  They see the value and see that it is worth their time and money.

Here is where having a product catalog and eCommerce site are valuable as it is able to allow you to show your products and services at every stage of the sales process from Social Media Channels to ads on your eNewsletter to ads on your trial product.

A client is able to make a buying decision when THEY are ready and see the value of your product or service.

5. Vertical products or services
Finally and most importantly is the offering of value added services, accessories, add-ons, options and customizations to the main product.

If the pricing of the main product is designed well it will be a valuable product yet will be offered as inexpensive as possible on the idea that the client will choose what options best fit them and whether the price of the additional option or accessory is worth the cost.

The mistake that some businesses make is that they add too many options to the main product and therefore add cost that may not fit all their clients desires.  A well designed sales process offers a solid base product with a lot of optional services or accessories that can be customized to meet the varying demands of their individual clients.  These products and services have a much higher profit margin since the cost to sell these items is much lower since it is targeted to meet the needs of clients who have had a good buying experience in the main product.

A business with a successful sales process designs their technology to build value with clients over the long term.  It uses social media marketing channels to inexpensively target the ideal clients.  It builds value and educates its clients with a subscription service such as a weekly eNewsletter.  Then a business with a successful sales process offers a quality free trial or sample of either their main product or a representation of their main product.  This will show the real value of the main product and that the value is greater than the clients cost of time and money.  If this entire process is done well then customers will be long term clients who purchase additional products and services confident that the brand meets their value demands and is worth their time and money.

Next week we will show how to use your website to connect your customer relationship management system with your subscription based blog or eNewsletter system to automate the process and cut the cost of managing multiple databases.  

Also how to use your database to determine purchasing behavior and offer additional products that your clients will most likely find interesting and valuable.