If you’re like most business owners, you’re always busy doing the sales and marketing strategy thing. You’re posting, running ads, networking, and following up. And if you’re not always busy doing this, you know you probably should be. Regardless, you’re spending money on marketing that often seems to be ineffective because you’re not getting the customers you want.
Unfortunately, most of the advice out there tells you to just do more of what you’re already doing. How is doing more of what’s not working supposed to work?
The thought behind this advice is that you’re just not reaching enough people. That it’s just a numbers game.
So, you create more content and buy more ads, which means you’re spending more. Then you try another channel, and the whole marketing-spend game continues.
This is completely wrong. If something isn’t working on even a small scale, why would doing more of it be a good thing?
Seventy-three percent of small businesses worldwide aren’t sure their current sales and marketing strategy is working. They’re genuinely unsure and not just saying it could be better. And most of them choose to spend more and try harder to fix things.
That doesn’t work!
A sales and marketing strategy that consistently converts for a small business requires a solid process before increasing volume and spend.
Why Isn’t Your Sales and Marketing Strategy Working?
First, 60% of small business owners say their biggest marketing challenge is finding leads. So they assume the way to solve this is to get in front of more people, to generate more interest, and fill the top of the funnel.
What this means for most business owners is reactive marketing. They chase whatever feels urgent, copy what a competitor is doing, or respond to an unsolicited pitch to improve their marketing.
Reactive tactics without a strategy make marketing harder than it needs to be. You’re just flinging things out there, including money, hoping something sticks.
I recently looked at a home services contractor’s online presence, and it took me less than 30 seconds to thoroughly diagnose what was happening.
His website and social media were professional and detailed. They let people know exactly what he does and how he does it. Most would consider his presence solid.
Although the quality of his content was solid, I had a problem with the underlying assumption.
Everything assumed that the people looking at his online presence already knew exactly what they needed. Someone needed to show up with enough knowledge to know he could solve their problem.
When I asked him about it, he admitted that his customers were almost entirely people who already understood enough about his type of service to recognize he knew what he was talking about. Or they knew so little that they went with whoever answered the phone.
This is not a growth strategy. It’s a filter that immediately eliminates most of his potential market from the first moment they see his content.
Most business owners I work with are doing something similar. They’re having trouble moving someone from “I’m curious” to “I want to become a customer.”
There’s a Process Behind Every Sale Made
Every successful sales, marketing, and advertising interaction follows the same four steps. And if you skip one or more of the steps, you’re getting in your own way and significantly decreasing the likelihood of a sale.
Few companies know the four steps. I know this because companies spend $1 on conversion optimization for every $92 spent on customer acquisition.
Most of the money small businesses spend on sales and marketing goes to getting in front of people, and almost nothing is spent on understanding why these people don’t convert.
A sales and marketing strategy that consistently converts requires implementing the right process in the right order.
What Are the 4 Steps That Make a Sales and Marketing Strategy Work?
These four steps apply everywhere. Everywhere includes a cold email, a follow-up call, a paid ad, a website homepage, a networking conversation, a sales proposal, and a meeting with the C-suite. The method of delivery may change, the audience may change, but the process doesn’t.
1. Captivate
Captivate is about getting your ideal client’s attention. You do this by demonstrating you understand exactly what they’re dealing with. This causes them to stop.
If you don’t do this well, they’ll ignore you.
The home services contractor’s online presence was missing this first step. The only people who stayed were the ones who knew exactly what they wanted.
2. Fascinate
Fascinate is about having people want more because you’re creating desire. It takes the problem you’ve surfaced in the first step and introduces the possibility of a solution.
This is a step that business owners and their sales and marketing teams commonly skip. Instead of talking about the possibility of a solution, they start talking about what they offer.
Prospects need to know that you understand what their problem is and that you have the solution they need before they care about what you’re selling.
Fascinate builds the bridge between “this person understands my problem” and “I want to know exactly how they can solve it.”
3. Educate
Educate is where you demonstrate you can actually solve the problem. It’s also where you explain why what you’re offering is better than everything else out there.
Unfortunately, this is the step most owners mistakenly start with. They focus too quickly on why they’re qualified and push their prospects away.
This is what the home services contractor was doing.
4. Close
This is the offer. It should feel like the natural next step because the previous 3 have been done well.
The other thing about close is that it doesn’t have to be a sales transaction. It’s just the obvious next step you want your audience to take.
When closing feels hard, it’s usually a sign that something didn’t go well earlier in the process.
But before these steps can work, you’ve got to know exactly who you’re talking to. You’ve got to know what their problems are, what the solutions are that they desperately need.
You might be talking to your ideal client, your next hire, or an existing customer you want to retain or upsell.
Once you know who you’re trying to reach, you can better focus on understanding what their problem is and what they need well enough so that you can position your solution as the obvious answer.
Without this level of understanding, captivate and fascinate are just expensive guesses. The home services contractor is the perfect example. He knows his service really well. But he didn’t know his audience well enough to connect with them.
I Learned This the Hard Way
After leaving corporate America, my first foray into entrepreneurship was as a divorce coach. I spent the first few years of my coaching practice doing the first 2 of these steps really well.
As a divorce coach who had been divorced, I could connect with people at a very deep level. I knew what they were going through. I was able to write about it and talk about it with them during our initial consultation. So many of them told me they felt seen, heard, and understood.
That’s captivate.
Then, whether I was blogging or coaching, I could paint a picture of what was possible for them after they’d made it through their unsettled situation and major life change.
That’s fascinate.
And then things didn’t go much further because I didn’t know how to educate or close. I thought educating them about me was too much like sales, and I certainly didn’t want to be seen as a salesperson!
So, I spent years doing the first 2 steps well. Then I’d lose them because I had no idea that I needed the last 2.
I also spent a lot of money buying way too many unsolicited pitches to improve my marketing.
Then I was offered the chance to write for a new online magazine. For a very small fee, they allowed me to write as often as I wanted. They edited my work before they published it. And their edits taught me a lot about what I was missing in all my communication about my work.
When I finally got this better dialed in, a lot of good things happened. People who read my work already knew they wanted to work with me before scheduling a consultation. Many of my articles were syndicated on well-known platforms. And, eventually, I had my own weekly column.
All of this happened because I figured out the 4 steps.
Does This Sequence Work the Same Way in Every Sales and Marketing Interaction?
Yes. And that’s what makes it a strategy rather than a tactic. A strategy is a series of steps that, when implemented in the same order again and again, produce the same results.
When I shared the sequence with the home services contractor, he immediately saw that he wasn’t using all four steps. Although he wasn’t exactly sure which ones he wasn’t doing well.
As we dove deeper with my tools, he projected a 50% increase in revenue from implementing this strategy across his sales and marketing.
Once you understand these 4 steps, you can apply them anywhere. A cold email either captivates and fascinates the recipient with the subject line, or it doesn’t. A sales conversation either builds through all four steps, or it stalls out somewhere in the middle. A website either earns the visitor’s trust in the first few seconds or they leave.
Knowing the Sequence Isn’t Enough
As with almost everything that comes with building a business, knowing is just the first step. Even knowing which steps you’re skipping and when is rarely enough. This is also why savvy folks who understand their marketing and sales can still get stuck.
If you’re now looking at your sales and marketing through a different lens, the lens of this 4-step sequence, and starting to see where it’s going off-track, that’s fantastic! Awareness is always the first step of change.
If you’re ready to explore all the places where your sales and marketing strategy is losing people, schedule a 15-minute call, and we can begin the process of finding them together.
