Have you ever heard the old adage, “It’s easier to sell again to an existing customer than it is to generate a new customer?”
It’s absolutely true, particularly if you know what you’re doing.
Here’s the problem. Most people don’t.
If you’ve taken my email marketing course, you’ve learned all about the importance of segmenting your email list – breaking it down into smaller, more targeted sub-segments that allow you to tailor promotions to specific people.
For most people, this is unfortunately often limited to two lists – a buyers list, and a non-buyers list.
And hey, this can work well. If you have a clear path that you want people to take, you can set up a system with your email marketing service to move people towards a given set of actions, moving them deeper and deeper into a sales funnel until hopefully you land a few big ticket sales.
However, if you truly want to maximize your income, you must pursue every single person on your list with the belief that you can get them to buy every single product that you offer.
In order for that to happen, you have to get very personalized, and very organized.
Quit Relying Solely On Your System
I love automation. I absolutely love it. I love that my autoresponder sequence is set up to sell my courses completely on their own, and these promotions are being sent to new sets of people every single day. It’s awesome, and one of the only reasons my online income is so consistent.
However, if you rely solely on your system, you’ll find that there will be lots of people who never go on to buy. You can tweak and test things to minimize that percentage, but in the end, there is money being missed out on.
If you truly believe in your products and you know that they can help people, then you should have the belief that your product can and should be purchased by that subscriber. Every subscriber has the financial capability to do so, and every subscriber needs the product. Therefore, there is no reason you can not sell it to them.
As you move higher and higher up in price, people will become increasingly reluctant to pull the trigger and buy whatever it is you’re asking. Objections and doubts arise, and these are often unique to the individual’s situation.
However, if you rely solely on your system, you’re never going to be able to solve these objections that the buyer is concerned about. How could you? You don’t know what they are. You can make changes to your system as time goes on to handle the most common ones, but in the end, you’re never going to get all of them.
The thing is that often these objections are quite small and the buyer just needs reassurance that their concerns will not be a problem. Once they are assured that the value is there and the product will solve their problem, closing is dead simple.
But you have to know what’s on the buyer’s mind, and to do that, you have to engage in two-way conversation.
Start Sending Out Those Emails…
When you use an email marketing service to deliver a promotion, the communication tends to be a one-way thing. You send out your message, and people technically can reply, but they often don’t. They know they’re on a list with lots of other people, and that message was not unique to them.
However, when you actually email somebody personally, everything changes.
Often times this is done most effectively when you have some ground to work with – perhaps you know them from somewhere else, or they’ve reached out to you.
For example, here’s a very brief email conversation that led to nearly $200 in sales, for less than 10 minutes of extra work. I’ve cut out pieces of it to keep it brief, but it went very similar to what I’m about to share with you.
Subscriber:
“Hi James! I just wanted to say thank you for your traffic building eCourse. I originally signed up because I’m having a hard time building my email list and I’ve come to find out that there’s a lot more that goes into it then people make it seem. I’m looking forward to hearing more from you in the future.”
Ding ding ding! A problem! And I just so happen to have a product that offers a solution…
Me:
“Hi Charles! Thank you so much for reaching out to me, and I’m glad that you’ve found the eCourse helpful. If you don’t mind me asking, how many subscribers do you have now, and what’s your long-term goal for your business? What got you interested in email marketing?
Looking forward to hearing from you!”
Getting the buyer talking is a great way to identify additional problems, desires, wishes, and identify selling points when you go on to pitch them your product.
Subscriber:
“Hi James, thank you for taking time out of your day to respond. I’m embarrassed to admit that I only have about 200 subscribers right now. I’d love to see accelerating growth but I’m having a hard time getting more than a few subscribers a day. My dream is to do this as my full-time job and work from home by this time next year.
New problem! The real problem is he wants to work from home and pursue entrepreneurship full time. He feels that more subscribers will be the solution to that problem.
Me:
“200 subscribers isn’t anything to be embarrassed about! In fact, it’s very possible to make a decent living even with an email list of that size, especially if as you said you are at least getting a few new subscribers each day. This is one of the great myths of email marketing – people think you need a huge list to prosper, but that really isn’t true at all. What you do with that list is far more important than how large it is.
I have actually come out with a course solely on email marketing that I think would be a good fit for you. Not only will it help you increase the number of new people that sign up, but it will really help you make the most out of every subscriber. I can’t promise it will allow you to quit your job tomorrow, but I assure you it will put you on the right path, and get you closer to where you want to be much faster.
You can find out more information by clicking here.
I know you’re the type of person who is going to take what’s inside and really make the most of it, otherwise you wouldn’t have reached out to me. I’m really looking forward to having you as one of my students. If you have any questions or there’s anything I can help you with, please let me know!”
From there, a couple more brief emails were exchanged answering questions, handling basic objections, and finally, closing the deal. The emails took me less than 10 minutes in total to send out, and I ended up selling him both my email marketing and my blogging course as well. $200 for 10 minutes of work really isn’t that bad of a return, now is it? So I’ve got to wonder, why aren’t more bloggers doing this?
It’s because they’re placing the importance on the system rather than what the system is meant to do – build connections.
How Bloggers Can Use A CRM To Maximize Sales
How many bloggers use a CRM to keep track of contacts and leads? Not many. And if you have multiple products to sell, not using a CRM is a huge mistake.
If you’ve never a heard of a CRM, it stands for customer relationship management, and it’s a piece of software that allows you to keep track of information regarding customers and their place in the sales process.
I personally went for a long time without using a CRM. However, as your pipeline gets fuller and you’re exchanging more and more emails with more sets of people each day, you’re no longer going to have a choice. If you do not use some sort of system to keep people’s information organized, you’re going to forget important details or mix people up.
Right now I am using a CRM called Insightly to manage this information. Bear in mind, I’m not familiar with all of the major CRMs on the market, and I may change this if I find a better option. However, right now I am using Insightly to carry out tasks such as:
- Keep track of people’s information, websites, email addresses, and so on.
- Write down what’s important to them, what they value, what problems they have.
- Keep track of what products they’ve already bought, and where they are in the sales process for other products.
- Set automated reminders to follow up with them, with the goal of moving closer to the close.
- Stay organized, and keep everything I’ve learned about a person in one place. This is vital to selling effectively.
With this data, I can make personalized recommendations for further purchases, ensuring higher conversions while also keeping a good connection with the customer at the same time.
Is it additional work? Absolutely. Is it worth it? Absolutely.
Because once again, it is far easier to sell again to an existing customer than it is to generate a new customer. And this means you really don’t need as many subscribers as you may think to make a good amount of money if you really make the most out of each subscriber.
– James McAllister
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