Lately I've been seeing a bunch of questions on the forum that have led me to ponder the entire process of making a sale. I don't think most people really think through their sales process from beginning to end. I've been thinking about it a lot, and I think I may have some valuable insights to offer.

First of all, just what is a sales process?

The sales process is the step-by-step series of actions through which your customer goes in order to buy from you. It could look like this:

Google AdWords ad --> vendor's sales page (direct linking)

     or like this

Google AdWords ad --> your landing page --> vendor's sales page

     or like this

Article on EzineArticles.com --> your blog --> vendor's sales page

     or like this

Article --> your blog --> your email list --> your autoresponder email sequence with affiliate links to various vendors' sales pages over time

And of course there are many more.

Each of these sales processes is a bit different. Some are very simple (direct linking) and some get considerably more complicated (the last one with the list and autoresponder sequence). But they all have one goal in common - to get you sales. I think many folks are making a few critical mistakes as they build their sales process which prevent them from getting all the sales they could. The most glaring mistake I see is ...

... a lack of FOCUS.

The best sales processes have a tight focus from the very beginning of the process all the way through to the end. So, for example, if you are promoting (using our good ole stand-by example) sausages, you'll have far more success promoting a very specific type of sausage, say Italian spicy sausage. So your sales process might begin with an article about Italian spicy sausages. And in the biobox you would have a link leading to a very specific page on your website with content about Italian spicy sausages.

This is where many sales processes break down. I see so many links in AdWords ads or articles about a specific topic. But when I click through the link I'm lead to a very general page or, worse yet, the home page of a website. I'm expecting to continue down the road toward buying some good Italian spicy sauage and suddenly I'm faced with a website about every kind of sausage under the sun. That's way too overwhelming. I'm likely to browse until I'm dizzy or simply abandon the search altogether.

However, if I see an ad for Italian spicy sausage, click it, go to a link telling me about the very best Italian spicy sausage in the world with a link to the vendor from which I can buy it, I've just been led right down the path to getting exactly what I want. And I'm far far more likely to make that purchase.

The modern world is all about more choices, more options, more things to try, blah blah blah.

Marketing in such a world is all about targeting your sales process and making it as straight and short as possible for your customer. This acutally means protecting your customer from distraction. As counterintuitive as it may seems, offering your customer FEWER choices is very likely to result in more sales.

So if you've been trying the shotgun approach to selling by offering your customers a ton of options, try the sniper method for a while and see if you don't get more of the results we all want - more PROFIT!

Best,

Iggy, The Sexy Iguana

Tag it:

?