A strategy that increased sales & appointments by 400-500%

by 39 replies
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Hey everyone,

This is my first post in here but I wanted to share with you a sales strategy that can really help anyone that is directly selling to small businesses.

I call this the "Health Score Strategy" and the goal here is to uncover marketing problems a small business may have, score them, and then present a way to raise their score.

Here's an example health score I made for a small business.



The main goal is to show a small business how they COMPARE to their competitors as there is nothing a business owner hates to hear more than they are losing customers to the shop down the street.

Is this something you can see yourself using? Any feedback?

Thanks!
#offline marketing #appointments #increased #sales #strategy
  • I freakin' LOVE this idea!

    You've got my mind racing with about a dozen ways to use this..

    ..most of them will be totally useless..

    ..Will be back when I have something of value to contribute to this idea.
  • It's pretty damn useful.. and it's just a great conversation starter.

    For example instead of calling a business and saying HEY DO YOU WANT MY PRODUCT?

    You start by building trust and curiosity to get the appointment.

    For example...

    “Hello, I’ve been doing some market research on businesses in your area and have some interesting information about your business compared to your competition.

    Do you have 15-minutes to discuss?”
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  • Andrew, this is great. I have but one suggestion; go beyond just showing the results by learning how to grow each one of those fields and offer your services to do so, maybe you can even get away with training/educating the business owner on how they can accomplish it themselves, could be enough.
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    • That could be a good idea... but most small businesses owners do not understand marketing enough to do it themselves. Which is why it's our job as local marketers to help them understand HOW we're going to improve their marketing.
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  • Nice work! That is awesome. Easy way for non-digital people to understand where they stand in marketing.
  • This is a fantastic idea! Would definitely use and recommend this. It's so simple and easy to understand for the client. Will keep my ears perked for more info!
  • This is pretty smart and nicely presented.
    It creates pain points for the target business and sparks curiosity.
  • We created an automated way to build these sorts of "Health Score" cards if you will.

    You can check out the platform here: http://www.biznesshealth.com -- it's $99/month per user but if you sign up just PM your email and I'll mark your account free forever for some feedback!

    And also a longer presentation on how to use them here but it's related to using this strategy to sell mobile apps to small businseses: https://resources.biznessapps.com/h/...small-business
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  • Also here's a quick tutorial on how you can use Bizness Health: https://vimeo.com/184915296

    Generates the health score cards pretty fast with any leads you generate.

    Let me know if anyone wants the PSDs or Word Docs as well!
  • I love this idea. I've always found being the transparent salesman is far more effective in establishing rapport (and of course, monetisation).

    Most local SMB's I've dealt with in the hospitality, fashion and retail space have a slight clue to what they should do, but it's far more effective if it's laid out to them where their priorities should lie.

    You should also check out website grading tools like these. I've starred my favourites:

    ***- website.grader.com (IIRC, this is by HubSpot)
    ***- nibbler.silktide.com (easy, readable report - gives good ideas to propose to clients)
    ***- claritygrader.com (Good for content readability)
    - PeekHQ
    - grader.hootsuite.com (Good for Twitter)
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    • Nice finds!

      It's a proven sales tactic for sure.

      For SMBs especially, sometimes they only take action when you show them some problems, which creates pain.

      And allows you to sell a pain pill, rather than a vitamin!
  • It's a great idea that will get a biz owners attention. I also looked at your software tool for doing this and would like to make a suggestion that I think is important for offline marketers like us. My suggestion is for your tool to be able to automatically email the business with the health score report.
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    • That would be pretty nice but unfortunately you'll likely end up in spam boxes. You want to also personalize your emails as much as possible.

      Here's a template I'd use as a starter...

      "Hi (Businses Owner),

      It's (Your Name) from (Your Company Name).

      Why am I reaching out to you?*

      Our team has researched, evaluated your online presence, and found some ways we can help you out market your local competition. This is where we come in. We help you get found, get social, and get customers.

      What are we sending you right now?

      We have put together and attached a comprehensive overview of where you are right now. Review it. Questions come up and myself and our team are here as your resource. Our goal is to partner with businesses and people who share our excitement and passion about growing their business.

      Let's set up a time to chat for 15-minutes to beat out your competition.

      How does Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday at 2pm work for you?

      Best,
      (Your Name)
      (Your Company Name)"

      ... but make no mistake, personalization is key in sales! I recommend compliments!
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  • What's also really cool to do is use this strategy to compare businesses against each other.

    See below as an example. This can be created within Bizness Health.



    The above image shows you how you can customize a Health Score card like this really easily. Feel free to send along any feedback anyone may have!

    And if you create an account let me know and I'll market it as free forever!
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    • Hi,
      I really like this tool

      i've created an account and can you possibly make it forever? please?
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  • Yes, did you create the grading scale? Did you charge them for this service?
  • Just signed up and the is the most fantastic tool I've seen. a lead Monster with great ammunition for getting business.
    Please mark my account free forever.
    Thank you again this will be my lead tool forever.
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    Not much of this type of generosity around here, lately. This is better than a lot of stuff you find in the War Room. Kudos, sir!

    Cheers. - Frank
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  • What an excellent idea, perfect for providing value right away. Played around with it...

    - very easy to use, and I LOVE that it generates the leads for you along with all their social media data.

    - being able to list their real competitors with THEIR good grades in the footer is genius

    - would love if it could detect presence of an opt-in box (or some attempt at customer engagement)

    - would have to test the print quality but these would work great for (very targeted) direct mail pieces

    Thanks for forever access!

    Sharon
  • Wow Andrew, this is a really useful and interesting tool. I just sign up. Please mark my account free forever.
    Thanks a mill
  • Hey Andrew, I just signed up and sent you a pm to get my account set up for free. I can tell others that I bought into a private program just like this (though not as nice and polished) and thought the idea was fantastic. The seller disappeared on me and I never got to really use it. So seeing this shared here was a welcomed surprise and I'm in!

    As a small business guy myself, I know that many are very caught up in comparing themselves to others. Competition makes people anxious about where they stand. Like you said, this can bring the pain point up without much work and give you an angle to take right from the beginning.
  • Fantastic idea. It is about standing out from the crowd and differentiating yourself to get noticed.
  • Hi! I just created an account, can you pls make it free forever? Thx! Greetings from Argentina!
  • Thanks Andrew for giving up some of your valuable time to post and reply to people on this forum.

    I'm curious as to how the tool has increased business for your company.

    Being recognised as #91 of the 5000 fastest growing companies by INC magazine is a significant achievement.

    Is the tool you've developed helping you drive more app sales for the business?

    What future developments have you got planned to expand the business and how do businesses who sell marketing to other businesses fit into your growth plans?

    Do you intend to develop systems outside of the marketing area as in the CRM type applications? - I note that you express "simplicity" in some of your promotional videos.

    I'd love to hear some of your other insights.

    Best regards,

    Ozi
  • I can't imagine why my comment was deleted. I came back to see if the OP replied and it was gone. So, I'll post again. If a mod wants to remove it, let me know why and what rules that something like this could possibly be breaking.

    I signed up for this and would love the free account. I once purchased a product that did something like this but that was a private deal, and it disappeared, along with the seller. It was strictly for reputation scoring, not nearly as advanced as this. It was a great idea then, and an even better one here. So I'm glad that you made this available and thank you.

    As a small business owner myself, I think that something like this is a great lead generator. There's a lot of competition in any space and small business owners really feel bad if they see that others in their industry are doing something that they aren't. This is great.

    Now, if anyone has a problem with such an outrageous post, please let me know why.
  • I never thought comparing was beneficial on any platform. There will always be some type of bias towards any type of business comparison. One business could have more financial power, however the business with less capital has a better product but because the advertising power of the business with more money is able to reach more people and in turn be able to maximize the market. This means that when they compare with each other, the business with more reach will probably outscore the business with less.
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    • Why not? People are always comparing themselves. Works best if you know your client to know who they're likely to use as measuring stick.

      If they aim to be #1 in their market, they compare themselves to the current #1, so all you have to do is understand what their market is.

      If they don't aim so high, you have to figure out where, roughly, they fall, and compare them against those a couple of spots higher.

      Some guy might want to sell the most home insurance policies in Miami. Some guy might want to sell the most home insurance policies to in the Lithuanian community of Miami.
      Some other insurance seller wants to be the one to have sold the most policies on houses located between X street and Y street in Miami.

      Of course, some have a more personal reason when they choose who their main competitor is, like the person they worked for who mistreated them and, thus, got them to go into business for themselves just to prove to the person they worked for something.

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  • Of course it's hard to compare apples to apples exactly, but those companies with less often want to be those companies with more, and showing them places where they're lacking the marketing juice needed can motivate them to adopt positive changes. Comparison is the thief of joy, but most marketing is comparison on some level designed to make people want something. Can you not see how such comparisons by using something like this tool can help show business owners where they're falling short and could use some help? I would guess that most people aren't going to compare the mechanic with one shop to the major national company anyway, but rather someone more on his level that is still doing more than he is.
  • A good strategy to find out one's shortcomings in the business because it lays out all the factors in simple terms in front of you. Especially, if you have a role of an analyst in a company then infographic like this clearly functions as a good way to present your analysis in short and simple terms. But how would you put the solutions for these problems in front of the startup team? I would love to know your way of constructing that in a presentable way.

    James
  • This is a definite foot in the door product, a conversation starter , so to speak. I like it, I like it a lot.
  • As far as automation goes, it would be nice to be able to choose which things to list. For example, some marketers don't do anything with mobile or Yelp. Listing things that they don't do as a comparison item, may lead to misunderstandings.

    Mark
  • Hello guys
    I'm mpendulo from South Africa. I'm new in CPA Marketing i'm really interested in this business. This business is not popular in my country. The person who showed me this business is not easy to get hold of him, he just shared a few things but he was held up by few things could not continue to enlighten us about this business. So now I'm doing my own research about this business. I would like to have someone to mentor me
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  • Good work! That is awesome..
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