Sales Funnel Automation

1. The danger of losing access to social media accounts and
2. The Amy Porterfield course I completed last month!

Let’s go back to the issue of social media accounts. The last time I spoke about this was last October when Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all went down for several hours!

Much consternation!!! If your business relies on any of these platforms to drive sales then I am sure you noticed? It certainly ought to be something you consider when you are looking at the threats to your business – which we also talked about a little while back.

The issue that has perturbed me more recently is a friend who had her account closed by Facebook – with NO recourse. It had been hacked, and unsavoury material posted – and so it was closed before you could say “Meta” – and there is nothing she can do. Luckily she didn’t have any business pages or groups – it was solely for personal use – but it could have taken a business down.

You cannot build your house on rented land.

You have no contract with these platforms and therefore they can simply terminate you and you have no legal way to argue with them.

So – building a list is the thing! But you need to do it strategically!

You may be in the fortunate position of having more work than you can handle right now – but I just want to remind you of two things:

• Can you guarantee that you will be saying the same in three months
• Are they the RIGHT customers – I am talking to a lot of people who are busy but it’s not with the most profitable (in all senses of the word) customers.

So – keeping a steady flow of the RIGHT people coming your way makes sense! And – if you get too busy (with the right customers) then you have choices.

Also – we talked a few weeks ago about side hustles – how about building a funnel for the ideal avatar for that!? A funnel or a pipeline is the mechanism you have – or should have – for managing the flow of leads into your business.

So firstly you need to identify the ideal customer you want to target – and niche down as much as possible. I understand that you *can* service a wide variety of clients, but for the purposes of attracting the best quality leads, you need to be much more specific.

Sales automation (filling your sales pipeline usually consists of a Lead Magnet – a document, video or course – to get their email address. This is followed by a nurture sequence – a series of emails designed to weed out the ones who aren’t and deliver a stream of those that are – ideal customers.

A Lead Magnet is a piece of content that is valuable enough for people to give you their email address – but not too valuable because you have to remember that is all they are giving you – no money! What you want to do is to demonstrate your expertise and get them to like and trust you.

Remember as well that you JUST want their email address (and maybe a name) – but don’t ask for any more personal details cos you won’t get them – and you won’t “get” them at all! They don’t know you or trust you yet – why would they give you lots of personal information, or even information about their company. They especially are unlikely at this stage to give you their phone number – and if they do it is likely to be garbage. Nobody wants the annoying sales calls – at this stage.

The next step is to use a mail program like Mailchimp (others are available) to send content to those who sign up – after delivering the Lead Magnet of course. Note – send your piece of content by email rather just a download link from the landing page – it gets them used to receiving and opening emails from you.

The next stage is the nurture sequence where you continue to deliver value and build the relationship – and at points offer them an opportunity to buy from you.

It’s really important that you understand WHO the customer is and WHAT they need. You need to be sending them information that will help them to

• Learn more about their problem and the solution
• Learn more about you and how you help people
• Start to learn more about exactly what you can do for them.

There is a lot of talk about how often you need to send to them.  And I am afraid I can’t tell you!  It depends on so much.

You have probably signed up for one of these yourself in the past – Amy Porterfield (more on her later), Denise Duffield-Thomas and many more very successful businesses RELY on their lists to build their businesses and keep a steady flow of new customers coming.

They send almost EVERY day! If you send something that people WANT then they won’t unsubscribe. If you send to the right people, they won’t unsubscribe. IF they unsubscribe then they either weren’t the right people, or you didn’t send them content of value.

Once you have a list you can sell your wares (it is not quite as simple as that – don’t hit them with the sales messagin right away). Always make sure if you have more than one lead magnet that you can tell which one(s) your lead signed up for then you can send what they need.

The nurture sequence can run for as long as you like – you can keep adding new content to it – and you can set it up so that people just start with email 1 and keep going. (The other alternative is just to add them to a list – and send them whatever is going out to that list that day/week).

Any questions – give me a shout! I’d be happy to help you develop your future sales pipeline!

If you would like to talk more then please do Get in touch.