Parallels between sales and marketing

7 weeks ago

Originally Posted by socialentry

Supposing you did do your research, in general marketing are there any parallel to buying signals in sales? or will it always be :"alright here's my pitch... close yourself"?

Your post is asking a lot, and most of it is outside my experience....but here's what I know...

"Buying signals" aren't part of marketing...However, a huge part of marketing is determining who is far more likely to buy than the rest of the market. Generally, that's done by finding out what they bought before...in your niche...That's why buyer lists are hundreds of times more valuable than Inquire lists. And concentrate on the "highly likely buyers" exclusively.

Originally Posted by socialentry

- For a long time, I believed the only way was to validate something was ask them to buy. But I feel that finding something in between would be highly desirable.I know you can have a broken "buy now", but are there any other ways?

Part of marketing is selling something before your main sale. Once the prospect gives you money, even a little...they have now segmented themselves into your group of buyers...now they are used to giving you money...and they are worth all your further marketing and selling efforts.

Originally Posted by socialentry

In marketing, some people just seem to drag the process on and on. In IM, the common wisdom is to build an email funnel with several touches.
Why email? Is it mostly about owning the data but is there a real marketing reason? Can't you just fire it off in one go?

The reason marketing seems to cause sales to drag on is that there is no personal physical contact that jump starts the buying process. It's personal contact that closes sales, at a far higher rate than marketing alone. E-mail is sort of personal contact, if it's really to the one prospect. Mass E-mails don't count. Texts count...sort of...but a phone call? From you? That counts.

Great marketing can make sales, but a personal call (or visit) after all your marketing attempts have failed, will produce more sales that day than all your marketing attempts combined.

And, as a side note....when I studied marketing (copywriting, direct mail, advertising, and offer structure...not general marketing), it improved my sales more than studying any sales book, or working with any sales person.

For whatever reason, sales people never study marketing...and marketers never study selling. And they both greatly strengthen each other.

I know this isn't exactly the answer you were looking for, but it's what I have to offer.

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Jason Kanigan

6 weeks ago

I would look into levels of buyer awareness.

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GordonJ

6 weeks ago

First, shout out to Old Warriors Claude and Jason for offering their valuable opinions, you got gold from these experienced, successful Warriors.

You have followers. You want to make something with it. Can I assume the thing is money? That you would like to turn this traffic into some moolah? If I am wrong, please correct me, fair enough?

You KNOW what these niches are, and you probably know why they follow you. Now you take one of those niches, if they are not related, and ask AI (Google is good enough to start) to tell you everything about people who are interested in the subject matter. And you keep prompting it until you can't think of any other questions.

Ask about what products they may buy, what information they want, how big is the Market or the Niche. This will act as your baseline. To Jason's point, AWARENESS, you already have some insight into what they are aware of (you and your socials) and why they follow you. Your AI query might shed some light on potential products.

Now for the big shortcut...rid your mind of marketing/selling.

My simplistic view is marketing finds you the school of fish, sales gets ONE fish on your hook. You have hundreds swimming around you already, now drop the line in with the right bait on it.

And if you give them what they want, you can make some decent moolah with small numbers especially if you use a recurring payment method (membership type).

Do you have any follow up questions while we're here?

GordonJ

Originally Posted by socialentry

I'm at the point where I have a couple of social accounts. I have maybe 2000 followers in total spread across 2 or 3 niches.
I think I can make something with it.

just wanted to do a sanity check and see how many parallels I can draw between sales (which I am at least a little bit familiar with) and marketing (which I'm not).

So my questions/observations are:
- When tweaking a sales script, you have the attributes you pre-qualified for(that you know of),who you speak to
and what you say.

Supposing you did do your research, in general marketing are there any parallel to buying signals in sales? or will it always be :"alright here's my pitch... close yourself"?

on X.com( and other platforms),it is possible with some elbow grease to track the unfollows: causality could be inferred. But ... even this is not 100% certain: e.g. you can get shadowbanned and so that would skew it. Also people tend not to unfollow nearly as much as they do say "not interested" in cold calling.

- For a long time, I believed the only way was to validate something was ask them to buy. But I feel that finding something in between would be highly desirable.I know you can have a broken "buy now", but are there any other ways?

E.g. When you're building say, a SaaS from scratch, payment implies support.Every new feature means engineering time. So I feel that it's important to get feedback as soon as possible.

I believe that as time goes on, and as Reddit/Facebook/X/Google etc gets overwhelmed by AI content,
people are going to move more and more toward small communities of friend of friends, echo chambers,
On Discord, Facebook, or even fortnite. whathever.These things for better or for worse are mini-cults.
A broken buy button just doesn't seem to me as a great way to build rapport.

- In selling, you typically want the target the guy that's as near as possible to the sale.
Assuming you have all the information, a postponent just meant I screwed up somewhere OR there is a real structural reason like
"I have to get congressional approval before you send PATRIOT missiles to Iraq" (not "I have to think about it/have to talk to my wife/etc").

In marketing, some people just seem to drag the process on and on. In IM, the common wisdom is to build an email funnel with several touches.
Why email? Is it mostly about owning the data but is there a real marketing reason? Can't you just fire it off in one go?

E.g. on X.com, it is possible to reply to yourself, and so you have a built in mechanism to measure click through rate
on a line by line basis (e.g. the first is 100% algorithm, but the second reply will is click through rate).
Everything is already built in, time constraints (I'll send a free XYZ to the first 50 people that replies),are natural. etc.
I suspect it's more tradition and because social media has tons of bots: the conversions gets diluted and email gets inflated,
but I haven't tested so not sure.

Any thoughts?
It may just be a difference in mindset:I never bought off an email list or mail-in ad (but than again, I also never bought off a telemarketer).
So I have trouble getting into the mindset of people that do.

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socialentry

5 weeks ago

Originally Posted by GordonJ

First, shout out to Old Warriors Claude and Jason for offering their valuable opinions, you got gold from these experienced, successful Warriors.

Yeah , thanks everyone. I'm happy that there are still conversations to be had.
I don't think there will ever be another place like the WF offline forum.

You have followers. You want to make something with it. Can I assume the thing is money? That you would like to turn this traffic into some moolah? If I am wrong, please correct me, fair enough?

Yep.

I'm resuming where I left off 11 years ago sales/IM wise. Just with more wisdom (hopefully) and a bit more knowledge. Time to have another real go at the bat.

Now for the big shortcut...rid your mind of marketing/selling.

My simplistic view is marketing finds you the school of fish, sales gets ONE fish on your hook. You have hundreds swimming around you already, now drop the line in with the right bait on it.

And if you give them what they want, you can make some decent moolah with small numbers especially if you use a recurring payment method (membership type).

Do you have any follow up questions while we're here?

GordonJ

Yes I do have questions.

A) Sales is really the only frame of reference so I'm not 100% sure how to forget it.
The way I imagine it is that if I say something during a sales call , and the prospect reacts a certain way, and then I put the same words in writing, I assume the prospect will react the same way. Is this a correct assumption?

For now , my plan was:

Step #0: Write a sales script as if I'm selling on the phone.
Step #1: <=== I am here
No selling...just chilling and vibing.
Can be any kind of content but content just to show I'm part of their tribe. I know their ways of thinking without saying it outright.
Step #2:
Post tentative Pain points/bait.
Step#3: Call to action only on the pain points that show more engagement/fishies swimming around.

In step #3 , instead a "buy now" button, I'll try to get them on the phone with me or a zoom call, or even a stage( there are e.g. tech meetups in my city that are easy to get a spot for as speakers ). And then just do my regular thing.At least in the beginning.

Step#4, Do as I would with a regular sales pitch: modify with respect to feedback and then wash, rince repeat.

For one of the niche, I'm building a SaaS. I have to get feedback early on so I don't waste time on features no one wants. The key idea is quick iteration.

Does that make sense as a plan or is there something that I'm missing? Is it too involved a process?

B) On the outer rims of awareness, should my main focus be on fostering a sense of community from the getgo?

As the old saying goes :"No one gets fired for buying IBM". This is for IBM, but I feel this applies to a whole bunch of organizations.
In the sense that it appeals to people's sense of identity.

When I look at e.g. Dan kennedy, I get the impression that his true blue fans take
his word as gospel and they expect the same from total strangers also. That social proof and pressure is bound to be helpful.

When I was in sales, identity was never far off, but unless they brought it up directly ("oh, I hate it when I'm the one with the least X of Y"), my #1 angle was to pitch the money.

But in this context, I feel if I don't deeply understand my prospect's culture, I'm kinda toast. In a way that a one call close on the phone would not entail because now they can talk to each other and I can't bring them back to the light.

C) Riffing on B, for the call to action, when is it better to get people in a room together instead of a one on one?

I feel that getting people in a room might be easier actually because in certain communities there are already meetups built in into the culture (e.g. tech meetups)
where it is nominally about [insert some polically correct reason here] but it's really about sales or recruiting.

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Jason Kanigan

5 weeks ago

Originally Posted by socialentry

Yeah , thanks everyone. I'm happy that there are still conversations to be had.
I don't think there will ever be another place like the WF offline forum.

Yep.

I'm resuming where I left off 11 years ago sales/IM wise. Just with more wisdom (hopefully) and a bit more knowledge. Time to have another real go at the bat.

Yes I do have questions.

A) Sales is really the only frame of reference so I'm not 100% sure how to forget it.
The way I imagine it is that if I say something during a sales call , and the prospect reacts a certain way, and then I put the same words in writing, I assume the prospect will react the same way. Is this a correct assumption?

For now , my plan was:

Step #0: Write a sales script as if I'm selling on the phone.
Step #1: <=== I am here
No selling...just chilling and vibing.
Can be any kind of content but content just to show I'm part of their tribe. I know their ways of thinking without saying it outright.
Step #2:
Post tentative Pain points/bait.
Step#3: Call to action only on the pain points that show more engagement/fishies swimming around.

In step #3 , instead a "buy now" button, I'll try to get them on the phone with me or a zoom call, or even a stage( there are e.g. tech meetups in my city that are easy to get a spot for as speakers ). And then just do my regular thing.At least in the beginning.

Step#4, Do as I would with a regular sales pitch: modify with respect to feedback and then wash, rince repeat.

For one of the niche, I'm building a SaaS. I have to get feedback early on so I don't waste time on features no one wants. The key idea is quick iteration.

Does that make sense as a plan or is there something that I'm missing? Is it too involved a process?

B) On the outer rims of awareness, should my main focus be on fostering a sense of community from the getgo?

As the old saying goes :"No one gets fired for buying IBM". This is for IBM, but I feel this applies to a whole bunch of organizations.
In the sense that it appeals to people's sense of identity.

When I look at e.g. Dan kennedy, I get the impression that his true blue fans take
his word as gospel and they expect the same from total strangers also. That social proof and pressure is bound to be helpful.

When I was in sales, identity was never far off, but unless they brought it up directly ("oh, I hate it when I'm the one with the least X of Y"), my #1 angle was to pitch the money.

But in this context, I feel if I don't deeply understand my prospect's culture, I'm kinda toast. In a way that a one call close on the phone would not entail because now they can talk to each other and I can't bring them back to the light.

C) Riffing on B, for the call to action, when is it better to get people in a room together instead of a one on one?

I feel that getting people in a room might be easier actually because in certain communities there are already meetups built in into the culture (e.g. tech meetups)
where it is nominally about [insert some polically correct reason here] but it's really about sales or recruiting.

What reasons do they need your solution for? I've written about this many times starting 10+ years ago at my sales & marketing blog. In the mid 2000s I worked for a boutique IT firm that had an offer which was a product AND a SaaS. It could be sold either way. People bought, I found, for four main reasons. But the funny thing was this:

They only bought for ONE of those reasons. And it was different every time. You couldn't predict, just know it'd be one of those four. And the other three would be "nice but irrelevant" to them.

Six months later the customer would call me back, saying, "We really like this thing! It does the function we bought it for perfectly! ... By the way, can it do x?" with X being one of the other three reasons people bought it.

This is why demos fail to sell. They go over features and benefits THIS customer doesn't care about yet...and that's what makes eyes glaze over and interest fade.

I would have the pleasure of telling them the thing they'd bought already did what they now wanted it to do.

I did not say that I'd told them this at time of purchase.

Again, look into levels of buyer awareness. It will do more for your marketing than anything else.

Trying to sell your SaaS to a buyer who is unaware they have the problem it solves will be fruitless.

Trying to sell your SaaS to a buyer who generally knows the problem but doesn't know competitors, cost-benefit analysis, essentially "where this solution gets them, really" will be a whole lot different than trying to sell your SaaS to a fully informed and probably experienced buyer who has likely used a competing solution, knows the market and competitors, and is laser focused on what they're going to get at what price.

You find out what level of awareness either the main segment of your market is at, or multiple segments if there isn't a clear 80/20 winner...and then send your marketing out to intercept them at the level of awareness and pain points they are at.

From experience I can tell you SaaS buyers want to see the price up front. If you hide it to reveal only on a live call, they'll get pissed off and never schedule. So you'd better have price anchoring, cost-benefit, maybe even a competitor comparison (though that comes with its own potential bugbears especially if you're not clearly leagues ahead of them) to show them why that price is justified.

A final note: in B2B purchasing, it's often not about which solution is best.
I know that sounds crazy, but how it really often is...is...Which Solution Is Safest.
Which can I buy and justify to my bosses.
You said nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM (or McKinsey or similar). That's that.

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Claude Whitacre

5 weeks ago

Originally Posted by Jason Kanigan

What reasons do they need your solution for? I've written about this many times starting 10+ years ago at my sales & marketing blog. In the mid 2000s I worked for a boutique IT firm that had an offer which was a product AND a SaaS. It could be sold either way. People bought, I found, for four main reasons. But the funny thing was this:

They only bought for ONE of those reasons. And it was different every time. You couldn't predict, just know it'd be one of those four. And the other three would be "nice but irrelevant" to them.

This is really for Socialentry.

That's key. And you want to find out, before you show your offer, and recommend a solution, which appeal is their main reason to buy.
I mean which one do they see themselves as the reason to buy...

And then you concentrate one that one reason. And it better be enough, on it's own, to justify buying.

When I sold vacuum cleaners in people's homes (give me a minute, this applies), I made a list of every single feature on that machine, then I made a list of reasons why each feature was a real advantage to them. I made these lists before I went out selling, and just once.

Then I made a list(out of those reasons to buy) of benefits that would more than pay for the investment...alone. It took the better part of a day to write this all out.

Then....When I asked the probing questions at the beginning, I'd just mention the features that would fit perfectly what they wanted...what they thought was important.

In that way, their perception was that the machine was created just for them, a perfect fit.

Essentially, I knew 100 more reasons for them to buy than they knew to not buy.

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Princess Balestra 4 weeks ago

Originally Posted by Claude Whitacre

And then you concentrate one that one reason.

Like you take a step.

We are, howevah we may convince usselves othahwise, always colludin' with Hubblivion. Or Nervbanana.

"Our Next" vs "It's What?"

Thing is tho, evrywan gets singularity of purpose, evry step forwid.

From morons an' whores to the forgiven an' the 'ssentially up their owin ass.

So if'n there nothin' buyyond now 'ceptin' all stuffs we gaht, you would mebbe wanna always take an informed leap steada jus bein' parlyzzz-zzzd, or sum kinda kickout beest.

A step that is a step that is a step, kinda thing.

Deliberately toed.

Gorgeously heeled.

Arches immaculate in the flow.

Like you would git dressed up simply to breathe good of all air.

It is fine to git meandsywandah this way, I bullieve.

No stride. No fall. No fear.

Our steps are ours.

Blind wishes, in their way.

An' when once --

or forevah --

we take 'em,

still

we so stoopidly

here.

Like Hubblivion or Nervbanana

dowint evin make no sense.

As a natchrl Sagittarius, I would wish always for a fyootyoore gonna inclood muh ass with plezzyoores most desirabyool to Moi ...

kinda incloods evrywan else too.

Delisho Misho.

So I will step out inta it --

like there is a view.

Could be crazy,

could be

I cannot imagine

impossibility

of noo.

Why would you?
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GordonJ

5 weeks ago

Thanks for asking some great follow up questions, and it is also great that experienced Warriors have provided some insights, makes WF seem useful today.

I like the advice given, nothing more to add. I would like you to consider doing it without as much slop and mess involved in the process.

Maybe, and this is just a top of mind thought...maybe you can find those ideal buyers via a MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT. What is the SasS best solution it offers? To whom?

Is there a way to test that with minimum ad spend to locate those willing to raise their hands and say, I NEED/WANT that? My thinking is if you have a solution to a big problem for the tribe, it can be used as the lead generator, and maybe it is the PULL of the product and allows it to do the selling for you??

I have often bought the "rest of the solution", after some marketer has given or sold at a very low cost, a singular solution to a part of the problem.

WAY way back, I think Don Alm sold a floppy disk that had some of the solution, but the rest of it was locked on the disk and you needed a key (for a cost) to unlock it all.

That is just an out of the box thinking...maybe as you develop your SaaS, you offer cheaper BETA TESTS or something to build your list.

Just trying to think of ways to simplify your process, but maybe what you are selling requires all those steps you laid out. Good luck with it.

GordonJ

Originally Posted by socialentry

Yeah , thanks everyone. I'm happy that there are still conversations to be had.
I don't think there will ever be another place like the WF offline forum.

Yep.

I'm resuming where I left off 11 years ago sales/IM wise. Just with more wisdom (hopefully) and a bit more knowledge. Time to have another real go at the bat.

Yes I do have questions.

A) Sales is really the only frame of reference so I'm not 100% sure how to forget it.
The way I imagine it is that if I say something during a sales call , and the prospect reacts a certain way, and then I put the same words in writing, I assume the prospect will react the same way. Is this a correct assumption?

For now , my plan was:

Step #0: Write a sales script as if I'm selling on the phone.
Step #1: <=== I am here
No selling...just chilling and vibing.
Can be any kind of content but content just to show I'm part of their tribe. I know their ways of thinking without saying it outright.
Step #2:
Post tentative Pain points/bait.
Step#3: Call to action only on the pain points that show more engagement/fishies swimming around.

In step #3 , instead a "buy now" button, I'll try to get them on the phone with me or a zoom call, or even a stage( there are e.g. tech meetups in my city that are easy to get a spot for as speakers ). And then just do my regular thing.At least in the beginning.

Step#4, Do as I would with a regular sales pitch: modify with respect to feedback and then wash, rince repeat.

For one of the niche, I'm building a SaaS. I have to get feedback early on so I don't waste time on features no one wants. The key idea is quick iteration.

Does that make sense as a plan or is there something that I'm missing? Is it too involved a process?

B) On the outer rims of awareness, should my main focus be on fostering a sense of community from the getgo?

As the old saying goes :"No one gets fired for buying IBM". This is for IBM, but I feel this applies to a whole bunch of organizations.
In the sense that it appeals to people's sense of identity.

When I look at e.g. Dan kennedy, I get the impression that his true blue fans take
his word as gospel and they expect the same from total strangers also. That social proof and pressure is bound to be helpful.

When I was in sales, identity was never far off, but unless they brought it up directly ("oh, I hate it when I'm the one with the least X of Y"), my #1 angle was to pitch the money.

But in this context, I feel if I don't deeply understand my prospect's culture, I'm kinda toast. In a way that a one call close on the phone would not entail because now they can talk to each other and I can't bring them back to the light.

C) Riffing on B, for the call to action, when is it better to get people in a room together instead of a one on one?

I feel that getting people in a room might be easier actually because in certain communities there are already meetups built in into the culture (e.g. tech meetups)
where it is nominally about [insert some polically correct reason here] but it's really about sales or recruiting.

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Princess Balestra

5 weeks ago

Originally Posted by socialentry

I believe that as time goes on, and as Reddit/Facebook/X/Google etc gets overwhelmed by AI content, people are going to move more and more toward small communities of friend of friends, echo chambers, ... hubbuhdabubbudah ...

Janno, I so HUGGREE.

Hearda Titsy Kumquats Inc.?

They speshlise in twixtyfroots for the porno movie accessory markit.

You cain't AI that without doublin' up on repetitive dipthongs.

Anyways, turns out targittin' the Vit C deficient community is now an ishoo.

Which is why they been prosercuted for abusin' drug usahs, the lemon-averse, an' jus' any evident maniacs.

"It is almost unbelievable now how you can't trust what you read, or read what you trust, without screaming FFS who was that friend of a friend who recommended THIS REALITY? From which I may ultimately DIE?"

That's Suzie from Boston -- before she evin dated ORLANDO.

So I get it:

Visibyool, Breathabyool, Touch-close, MMMpurthetic ... worthy of yr Fs.

Othawise: Towtwill wastea yadda.

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wallpanelsworld

4 weeks ago

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Princess Balestra 4 weeks ago

Originally Posted by wallpanelsworld

Marketing brings people in and creates interest, while sales is what converts that interest into a real customer.

So ... how many "people" sign up to be the "a real customer"?

Sign up now for the Excloosive Princess Balestra "Parse my Half Rhyme Ass" service to discovah how you may be makin' yusself sound like evin more of a moron than ACSHSWLLY MOI.
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Parallels between sales and marketing

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