Robert BlyAccording to an article in eCommerce, 95% of all businesses fear recession.
The problem is that when you are selling from a position of fear, you are selling from a position of weakness.
Your prospects can “smell” the “stink” of that fear on you, which weakens you, making you less effective as a seller and marketer.
The good news is that there are four proven tactics for combating both perceived and real weakness.
They can empower you to once again sell effectively from a position of strength, with confidence, and by doing so, improve your sales and marketing ROI.
No. 1: The Silver Rule of Marketing.
The Silver Rule of Marketing is that it is better for your prospects to come to you, rather than for you to go to them.
Why is it better?
When prospects come to you, they are ostensibly more qualified.
Just by virtue of having sought you out, the prospects have already, to some degree, shown they have a real problem they want to solve.
And also by coming to you, they have additionally indicated some level of preference or inclination to get that solution from you.
Content marketing is one of today’s biggest go-to Silver Rule strategies. You know how it works:
The prospects reads your content … become convinced that you know what you are talking about … and then inquiries about how you can help them implement the ideas in your article or paper.
No. 2: The Busy Dr. Syndrome.
For a medical appointment, it can be frustrating to walk into an overly crowded waiting room — but it can be even more off-putting to walk into an empty waiting room.
Why? Because absence of patients makes you question whether the doctor can be any good at what she does.
The Busy Dr. Syndrome simply says that customers would rather do business with vendors who seems busy and successful — rather than those who seem needy and desperate.
So even if you are worried by recession to the point where you sometimes feel a desperation to close a sale — don’t let it show. Ever.
Always say you are busy and successful. Follow the old age: “Never let them see you sweat.”
No. 3: The Double Pipeline.
Another way to never be or feel needy is to NOT actually need to make the sale.
That’s where the “Double Pipeline” can give you this advantage. Here’s how and why it works:
Most business owners make the mistake of doing just enough marketing to keep their lead pipeline full — producing enough leads to keep the business afloat—but no more than that.
However, when some of your leads don’t close, you then don’t have the level of work, orders, and income you really wanted or need.
The Double Pipeline says you should do TWICE as much marketing as you think you need to keep your lead pipeline full.
That way, even if half of the opportunities go south, you STILL have the volume of orders and deals you need to stay solvent and profitable.
No. 4: The Takeaway Close.
When a prospect keeps pushing back as you are trying to close the deal, do a sudden turnaround and say:
“You know what? Perhaps this isn’t really for you.” And close your laptop and get up from the table to end the call.
You will have just instantly shifted from making your product easy to get to making it hard to get.
This is called the “takeaway close.”
It works for this odd reason: once you tell people they can’t have something, they instantly want it more.
Strange but true!
