Why People Buy? What key factors determine they would do business with you?

Podcast EP07 Show Notes: Today I have Startup Consultant Ashish Pandey with me on the show. And we are talking about “Why people buy” – what makes them buy from a certain brand and how you can use these insights to boost your sales. Next Step: Trust & User expereince is what makes people buy […]

Podcast EP07

Show Notes:


    Today I have Startup Consultant Ashish Pandey with me on the show. And we are talking about “Why people buy” – what makes them buy from a certain brand and how you can use these insights to boost your sales.



Next Step:

Trust & User expereince is what makes people buy a product or service. If you’re struggling in your business to grow sales then it might be you have problems in these two areas. Ashish is an expert on these matters. You can book a free 1on1 consulting session with him. In which he will take you through a series of questions to find out the problem and give you the right path & plan you need to follow for the success. You can find a time to talk with him here.

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Inbound Marketing – Perfect For People Who Hate Selling

Many business owners and marketing professionals have a secret that they usually keep to themselves: they actually hate selling. The fact is, not that many people are naturally good at sales. For the rest of us, it’s a necessary evil, something we only do when we think it’s essential for our livelihood. The good news […]

  • Many business owners and marketing professionals have a secret that they usually keep to themselves: they actually hate selling. The fact is, not that many people are naturally good at sales. For the rest of us, it’s a necessary evil, something we only do when we think it’s essential for our livelihood.


    The good news is that the traditional approach to sales is rapidly becoming obsolete. The current generation tends to dislike the sales approach. So what’s the alternative? Inbound marketing, when done the right way, is not about selling, at least not in the way most of us think about it. It’s more about providing useful information and guiding customers to find products that actually benefit them.

The Problems With Selling and Outbound Marketing

Selling has long been an essential business skill. It’s also the approach that’s closely associated with traditional outbound marketing strategies such as direct mail (better known as junk mail) TV, radio and print advertising. Certain online marketing tactics are also outbound. Banner ads, telemarketing, and unsolicited emails (aka spam) fall into this category. All of these marketing tactics involve an aggressive, heavy-handed approach. Younger people, in particular, dislike this type of advertising. One study found that 84 percent of millennials distrust traditional advertising. This is a wakeup call to everyone in the business world.

Some of the characteristics of traditional selling and outbound marketing include:


  • Broad, untargeted approach. The typical TV commercial, spam email or print ad is designed to reach a broad audience. There’s little or no customization, targeting, or segmenting.

  • One-way communication. Selling is mostly about the salesperson or ad telling the customer why he or she needs the product. Sophisticated sales people are trained to respond to common questions and objections but the focus is on persuasion rather than genuine two-way communication.

  • Costly and resource-intensive. Because of the broad approach, outbound marketing tactics require a large budget and lots of time. If you’re going to send out unsolicited direct mail or emails, you’ll have to send out a very large number of them. Traditional print and TV ads are very expensive.

  • Low response rate. Outbound marketing has always suffered from low response rates. This is only getting worse as younger audiences have less and less patience for this type of marketing. This makes the process even more costly and time-consuming.

Inbound Marketing: an Alternative to Traditional Selling

For business owners and marketing professionals who don’t like selling, inbound marketing is a viable alternative. Happily, this is also the approach that your customers increasingly prefer. Inbound marketing reverses the typical qualities of selling.


  • Highly targeted. With inbound marketing, you tailor your message to a laser-targeted audience. Ideally, you segment your audience into as many groups as possible by criteria such as gender, age, geography, interests, and buying history. The point is that you’re not trying to reach everyone; only people who can truly benefit from your product or service.

  • An educational approach. Rather than simply listing the features and benefits of your product, you strive to educate your audience. That’s why content marketing, whether with articles, blog posts, videos, or other content, is such a strong component of inbound. The best content isn’t directly selling but rather informing.

  • Interactive. Whereas traditional selling is mostly about telling people why your product is so great, the inbound approach invites communication. You interact with customers via email, social media, webinars, your blog, and other platforms.

  • Economical. An added benefit of inbound marketing tactics is that they’re cheaper to implement than outbound methods. Since you’re targeting your message more precisely, you don’t have to broadcast it as widely. This approach also tends to give you a better ROI, further reducing your marketing costs.

With inbound marketing, you can put aside many of the qualities normally associated with selling. You can forget about cold-calling, spamming, and writing cheesy copy full of hype. With this more educational, targeted, and toned-down approach, you connect with your customers in a more straightforward manner. This is better for both you and your customers.

To find out how we can convert your business ideas into money-making machines, contact us.

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The Worst Advice We’ve Ever Heard About Sales

There is some great direction, brilliant minds and creative thinkers in the world of business. These are sources we draw from, rely on and often use for inspiration, guidance and planning. Yet, like almost everything else, there are also two sides to this coin as well. For with good information, insight and assistance success is […]

  • There is some great direction, brilliant minds and creative thinkers in the world of business. These are sources we draw from, rely on and often use for inspiration, guidance and planning.

    Yet, like almost everything else, there are also two sides to this coin as well. For with good information, insight and assistance success is inevitable, while following misguided and just plain bad advice certainly leads to failure.

  • This holds a deeper and more meaningful message for the sales industry. Sales is not only one of the oldest vocations, it is also one of the most personal. This industry is defined by people, shaped by people and that includes years of crafting the trade. That also equates to countless years of advice, both good and bad.

    Now that we have this piece of information, this advice, what then?…

  • We know it is important to be a good decision-maker, right?

    We also recognize that this is because those decisions guide and ultimately determine our success. Part of that decision-making process is being able to discern the difference between that good intel versus that awful advice.

    Some of that bad advice may not be so easily recognized. Some bad advice is clearly obvious. Either way, this is here to help you recognize the smoke before you get too close to the fire.


The Worst Advice We’ve Ever Heard About Sales

1. It’s Not the Quality, It’s the Quantity:

Ever get those calls that come in at random and usually very inconvenient hours?

Dinner time or as you are ready to leave for work (technology has done a great job at minimizing and reducing these spam calls today) – that person on the other end either acting like a robot reading a script or sounding like your best friend for years.

That sound familiar?

Those are companies and outbound call centers aimed to make as many contacts per hour, per minute as possible. The oft-quoted Zig Ziglar said it this way:


“The top salesperson in the organization probably missed more sales than 90% of the sales people on the team, but they also made more calls than the others made.”

This may be a good strategy for people selling one-time items or not looking to build long-term business relationships. For most businesses, however, the goal is to win customers and build mutually beneficial relationships for both the company and the client.



2. Push Past Objections

Potentially the most harmful advice given, this is an old theology designed to overcome buyer objections and resistance. Many salespeople have been taught that consumers want to buy and that they often need a push in that direction.


The problem with this technique in today’s social media and internet influenced arena, is the risk of alienating customers and causing them to feel unheard. With a more personal emphasis on the buyer today, more care is given to their concerns and more effort is made to provide solutions.

There is a stronger “how can I help you” mentality today and less of a “buy this” pressure.



3. Don’t Pre-Qualify Your Leads:

Here is some bad advice that might look like good advice, because this sounds like it has some rhyme and reason to it, right?

That’s because it does.

When taken to the most literal interpretation it was meant to inform the representative to avoid making any assumptions about the “likelihood” of the contact being inclined to buy.

Every call was an assumed sale. There really isn’t anything about this sales ideology that doesn’t work,

but…

This is where the technological impact has shifted the landscape. With smarter data and data management combined with new and organic inbound lead generation (i.e. Social Media), things have changed – a little.

Technology has enabled us to create

  • enough leads (Quantity),
  • build relationships as opposed to using pressure sales (Push Past Objections) and then
  • prioritize not pre-qualify – based on customer-driven data.
Smart, right?


Don’t expend the greatest amount of your efforts on generating leads or qualifying customers. The answer to finding the best marketing strategy for your business is balance – then prioritize.

Contact us to get more information on finding that balance, developing that strategy or even some good advice – and we already know where that leads.



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How to Use Conversion Content to Turn Site Visitors into Qualified Leads

If you own a small business, trying to boost sales of your products using content marketing, you know it can be hard to get traction. You spend a lot of time (and money) struggling to generate leads with the content you create, but aren’t seeing the results you’re hoping for. Fortunately, there’s a simple formula […]

  • If you own a small business, trying to boost sales of your products using content marketing, you know it can be hard to get traction. You spend a lot of time (and money) struggling to generate leads with the content you create, but aren’t seeing the results you’re hoping for. Fortunately, there’s a simple formula to increase leads using content.

Consumers Want Content

According to a Hubspot survey, consumers on average will read between 3 and 5 pieces of content before they’ll speak with a sales representative. Said differently, offering valuable, relevant and informative content is critical to the buying process. Unfortunately, most marketers, including those who allocate substantial resources to content marketing, don’t know if their content marketing efforts lead to increased sales, and many don’t even have a formal plan for their content marketing campaigns.


In that same survey, B2B marketers report allocating almost 30% of their total marketing budget to content marketing, but more than half say they don’t know what content marketing success would look like. Only 30% felt their content marketing efforts were effective, and only 32% have a documented content marketing strategy.



Translation: Most Marketers Don’t Understand Why They Push Content

This isn’t to say that marketers are flying completely blind—certainly most are careful to link their content to specific marketing objectives, and many create buyer personas and target content to different market segments. What most don’t do is tie their content to specific stages of the buyer journey, from prospect to lead to qualified lead and, finally, to buying customer.



What Is Conversion Content And Why Do You Need It?

The goal of conversion content is to convert a window shopper into a buying customer—in other words, a visitor to your website into a qualified lead, actively considering buying your products or services. Certainly, not all conversion content appears on your website—some will appear in social media posts, for example, that link back to your site.


But once someone is on your site—whether what got them there is organic search results or sponsored adds or social media posts—you need to create a conversion path that moves site visitors from prospects to qualified leads. The first step on the path is a content offer, one sufficiently engaging that site visitors will click on a call to action to get it. That takes them to a customized landing page where you ask them to complete a form in exchange for the content. You then allow them to download the content.



How Conversion Content Is Crafted

Earlier you read that there’s a simple formula to generate qualified leads with your content. Here’s that formula, in 4 critical steps:

  • Create Your Content Offer: The content you choose must be appealing to the market segment you’re trying to convert—for example, if your goal is to sell accounting software to small business owners, you might choose a blog about new tax deductions for small businesses. Your content could be a white paper, case study, video, or eBook. In some cases, that content will already exist. At other times, you’ll need to brainstorm new content ideas. The bottom line is that however your content is created, it must be sufficiently engaging to make prospective customers want it.

  • Create an Action-Oriented Call to Action: The words you use in your call to action should be action-oriented and attention-grabbing, include keywords which match what’s in your content, and appealing enough that site visitors will want to click on it. For example, the seller of accounting software might have a call to action like, Read Our Blog to Get the 5 Small Business Tax Deductions You Don’t Even Know About.

  • Create a Customized Landing Page: The sole purpose of the landing page is to collect visitors’ contact information by persuading them to fill out a form. The landing page should be customized to a specific market segment (or buyer persona) as well as to where prospects are in the buying cycle.

  • Create the Form Which Gates Your Content: If you’re new to creating forms, you can get help from online forms tools resources. Using these tools, select your form. Choose fields for your form—in general, limit the number of fields to a maximum of 4 or 5 (prospects are reluctant to fill out excessively long forms), including first name, last name and email address.


Conclusion: It’s a Win-Win

In creating conversion content and an effective conversion path, you’ve demonstrated the reason inbound marketing is so effective—you’ve pulled customers to you by giving them something they want and need—and everyone’s a winner. Visitors to your website get information that helps them in their businesses, and you get the contact information you need to continue the conversation and move the buying process one step further. In the process, you establish trust and authority.

You need to ensure that your website is helping you achieve all of your business goals, from generating qualified leads to nurturing those leads to closing sales. To learn more about the ways we can improve your sales process and make your website work for you, contact us today.

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$100 website vs a $10,000 website? What’s the difference?

Internet marketing is the most effective way to advertise today and will be the most effective method of advertising in the future. Any savvy business owner knows this. In order to position your company for the most conversions and the most sales, you have to develop a sales funnel website filled with all the bells […]

Internet marketing is the most effective way to advertise today and will be the most effective method of advertising in the future. Any savvy business owner knows this. In order to position your company for the most conversions and the most sales, you have to develop a sales funnel website filled with all the bells and whistles to capture and convert the internet shopper.

  • ROI is the take-away with a sales funnel website.

    These are not inexpensive websites, rather they are aggressive sales machines that work for you non-stop. Creating and launching a “salesperson” website indicates that you are serious about business and the competition you face. The website will work for you ceaselessly, through holidays and weekends to further your business ambitions.

  • Not just pretty pictures, an interactive sales tool.

    We are all aware of the “brochure-type” web site; lots of pretty pictures with little content and no reason for anyone to spend more than two seconds looking before they move on. Cheap websites are the enemy when it comes to an internet marketing campaign. The internet is filled with these types of websites, they are not good for business and are essentially, background clutter. The sales funnel web site incorporates images with pertinent and current content designed to educate and engage the shopper. When they become engaged they want more information, from you.

The sales funnel website, what is it?

The characteristics of an excellent sales website are as follows:
  • It must be well designed. Your company website must be designed enough to be pleasing to the eye. Keeping aesthetics in mind, it also has to be simple in format to allow easy reading and logical layout. The easier it is for potential customers to navigate through your website, the more likely they are to convert. Striking the balance between ease of use and eye appeal is an art.
  • Optimized for SEO. Search engine optimization is the backbone of all internet marketing campaigns. Keywords and content on your business website need to be optimally placed and structured so the web crawlers get to your page first. It goes further than that: Search engine crawl and index, page load time, building domain authority– all these concepts must be enhanced and monitored 24/7/365 to ensure that your website is the front-runner for people searching for your products online. These aspects of the dynamic sales website are complex and require experts to set up. These are “live systems” in that they constantly analyze and assess terabytes of information to best position the site for online searchers.
  • Ready for mobile yet? The use of mobile phones as P2P devices for shopping is expanding exponentially. The sales funnel website will incorporate all of the platforms and applications necessary for your website to be accessed through mobile devices effortlessly, all the while initiating a “mobile-specific” SEO designed to draw mobile searchers in.
  • Clear calls to action and contact information throughout the website. A call to action simply means a phrase or sentence that encourages the searcher to either purchase, or get more information. These calls are set up to further engage the visitor. The more accurate information you can give someone, the more likely they are to buy your product. Including contact information throughout your website is another way to ensure loyalty and enhance interest. If they get confused, you are a phone call away. That is reassuring for visitors.

In conclusion:

The business world today is fast-paced, aggressive and packed with competition. Any advantage you can take is important. Internet marketing is an essential to companies that want to stay on top. Within that marketing umbrella, the sales funnel website is the vanguard toward generating serious interest and conversions. We have only covered a small percentage of the aspects of an excellent website, there are many more. A website of the sales caliber is not a cheap outlay, but your return on investment is significant. When you are ready for more information please contact us.

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