Show notes
David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will continue our discussion about the AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales. This is episode three in our series, and it's about upselling, sales funnels, and your CRM.
David: Welcome back, Jay.
Jay: Thank you, David. This has been fascinating for me as I look at what AI recommends.
And even just apply some of those basics to my own business but also realizing that these are kind of general, and figuring out how to apply them to everybody's individual circumstances is no easy feat.
David: Exactly. And one of the things that I've really liked about this series is having the opportunity to talk about the "how" of a lot of this stuff, because as business owners, as salespeople, we've heard these recommendations forever.
But the question is always, "well, how do you go about doing it?" And so what I've been trying to do in this series is to say, okay, here's the general what you ought to do, but then there's the, how do you go about doing it? And this is exactly what we help our clients with. So it's been really fun for me to be able to go through these and say, okay, there are probably lots of ways to do these things, but this is how we do it.
Because our goal is to simplify it for our clients. So you don't have to say, Oh, well, should I do this? Should I do that? Should I do this? It's like, okay. Implement this, gauge the results, see how it goes, report back, if we need to tweak it, if we need to do something different, we can, but you have an instant starting point, and that allows you to get actions taken, get results back quickly, and then be able to adapt as you go.
Jay: Yeah, I love that, that you're able to kind of cut through all of the noise out there because there's so much noise, and help them identify for their individual situation what they need because they may have asked AI and we have some of those lists here and items from AI, but again, it's just a starting point.
David: Exactly. So let's take a look at the things that we already discussed in the previous episodes. And once again, what we're doing here is we asked AI, what are the things that will allow us to multiply our sales? It came back with number one, define your target audience. Number two, develop a compelling value proposition.
Number three, optimize your marketing channels. We covered that in previous episodes. Number four was enhance your customer experience. Number five was implement a referral program. Number six was leverage and the power of content marketing.
So now in this episode, we're going to tackle numbers seven, eight, and nine, which is upselling, sales funnels, and your CRM.
So let's get to number seven.
7. Utilize upselling and cross selling strategies: Offer complementary products or services to increase the average transactional value and maximize customer value.
What do you think?
Jay: Yeah. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. I will tell you this was much easier to grasp in my mind when I was in the restaurant business, right? It's like, you want fries with that? You know, let's make it a value meal. Let's make it a, you know, a combo, whatever.
I will tell you, we've spent a lot of time in my current business identifying what are the other things, other products that we can offer that our customers will want, not things that we can shove down their throat, but what other things can we add that they may be looking for because they came to us?
David: Yes, exactly. And I think people hear about upselling and cross selling and they're like, Oh yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Most people are familiar with the restaurant, the McDonald's example, "want fries with that." So it makes sense, but it's like, okay, how do I apply that to my business?
And one of the ways that we help our clients do that is to identify, okay, well, what does this mean? What is upselling versus cross selling and all that sort of thing? And in a nutshell, the way that I view it, upselling is when you're selling them a better version of the thing that they're considering buying or a more expensive version of the thing that they're considering buying.
Cross selling is the idea of "want fries with that." It's okay. You're already getting this. This goes with it. Would you like to do that as well? In the promotional products industry, where I do a lot of my work, cross selling is, "ah, you're buying t shirts, want sweatshirts with that." Or if you're buying sweatshirts, want sweatpants with that, right?
Want caps with that. Shirts and caps go together, that type of thing. So, It's pretty simple when we boil it down, and it's even better and it's even easier when we turn it into a process so that everybody knows the words you say when someone is ordering a particular type of product.
Jay: Yeah. So I think that there's two steps, right?
Identifying what those things are based upon your industry. And I think the key to that, honestly, for me is just listening. Right? I'm on the phone with these people every single day and over time I'm starting to sense, wait a minute, there's an opportunity here that we can fill. But then there is the implementation of that process, right?
If you don't make it a process, if you don't identify it, define it, implement it, and track it, then it's probably not going to happen, or it's not going to be as successful as you would hope.
David: Absolutely. I think that a lot of people know that they need to be doing these things, but once again, they're not quite sure exactly how, they don't get a system in place, and as a result, it doesn't happen.
And that's going to really apply to all the different points that we're talking about here.
Jay: Yeah, I totally agree with you.
David: So the next one...
8. Analyze and Optimize Your Sales Funnel: Continuously monitor and analyze your sales funnel to identify areas for improvement and optimize the conversion rates at each stage.
That sounds a little complicated. I don't know how you could possibly get more buzzwords into one sentence than that..
Jay: That's what AI likes to do. They like to cram all these big words in there, and you kind of sit back and roll your eyes like, okay, how
David: You're really smart. I don't know what you just said, but you sound really, really smart.
Jay: Yeah, and how on earth am I going to do that?
I will tell you, we've spent almost a year on this, and I don't think we're even close, David. I don't think we're even scratching the surface on this.
David: Yeah, and I think you're really not alone. Most people, when they think in terms of optimizing their sales funnel, they immediately think in terms of the tech.
Right? What does the tech need to do? What do I need to have the tech do? And, once again, we're all about simplifying things. So when I'm doing work with clients, we first look at, okay, what needs to happen from a human standpoint? What words need to be said to which people at which times? At which intervals?
And once you've identified that and you get something in place, you can test it out and see how it works. It's not like you put something in place and it's immediately perfect. But I'll go back to one of the mantras that I say over and over again to prospects and clients all the time. Done is better than perfect.
You are far better off getting something reasonably good in place today than something perfect six months from now. Because that's six months worth of missed opportunities and so many people do that and don't even realize they're doing it.
Jay: Yeah, I love that. Done is better than perfect because there are perfectionists out there.
I also think that people need to recognize that, yeah, it may seem daunting, but if you get it done, and you get it at least defined to some degree, you're gonna save time over the next months and years because it's just gonna become automatic. And if you bring in new people, you're like, this is our system.
And so, you know, a lot of that kind of haphazard nature will go away. And you'll have more time, not less time.
David: Exactly. Another thing that we do in our approach, I look at a statement like that, analyze and optimize your sales funnel. And I just think of it in terms of the things that have to happen. If you send out a hundred emails, how many people reply?
And of the people who reply, how many of them are ready to buy now? How many have specific dates in mind? How many are generally receptive? How many are rude, obnoxious, belligerent, disqualified? And how many don't reply at all?
Because then it becomes process of elimination.
If I send out a hundred emails and I hear back from seven people, that means that there's a hundred minus seven people that so far have been unresponsive.
So the next message that I send to them can be designed to pull them in. It can reference the previous message and we can get more juice out of the fruit.
Jay: Yeah, I love that. More juice, but also, that seven that you've spoken to, maybe you made customers out of two. What about the other five? What is your continuing message to those people?
How do you stay in touch? You know, you've got to identify each group and how they're going to be handled going forward. And once you've maximized that, I've found it really starts to feed itself. And then it's kind of fun, right?
Because I'm dealing with the leads that I got this month, but all of a sudden I get people who call me up and they're like, yeah, we talked three or four months ago, or yeah, we talked two weeks ago. I got your email, and you're like, you know, I didn't have to do anything, because I set up a system to handle that for me.
David: Yes, and we have tracking sheets that we use, that we give to our clients to use, so that they can say, alright, I sent out 100 emails, that goes in the one column,