Close More Deals By Improving Your Sales Pipeline
Generating More Revenue, Working with More Ideal Clients, and Managing Your Emotions As An Entrepreneur Becomes Easier As You Build A Bigger Pipeline.
Earlier this year, we talked about The Art of the Follow-Up.
Another strategy for generating more revenue, working with more Ideal Clients, and managing the ups-and-downs of #startuplife when it comes to cash flow is building a bigger sales pipeline.
Below, I’ll share a few ideas on how to increase the amount of leads you’re communicating with so that you can focus on closing more deals in 2-3 months from now. Fill the pipeline today…enjoy the rewards tomorrow.
NOTE: Today is the LAST day to receive an “Early Bird” ticket to our next Meeting of the Minds, taking place March 6-7. We’ll be covering all things marketing and business developing while developing deep, meaningful relationships among an intimate group of diverse, vetted, invite-only entrepreneurs. Learn more HERE and reply to this email if you’re interested.
You’ve probably experienced this before…
You are a few weeks from going broke and/or taking on short-term debt because there’s not enough predictable revenue coming in.
You have a few BIG deals in the works that could change everything for you, but because they are still deciding if they want to work with you…
…and/or have something going on in their personal lives…
…and/or miss one of your emails because of a random Spam filter…
You are starting to get nervous because you don’t know if you’re going to win the deal. Even if you do, will it happen soon enough to put food on the table?
To compensate, you might annoy your prospects with too many follow-up messages and ultimately kill the deal. Or, you may offer steep discounts that hurt you long-term. Even if your prospect seals-the-deal and makes-it-real with a contract, you may lose hours of work time worrying over whether or not you’ll be able to pay your bills.
This type of anxiety is crippling to any entrepreneur.
If you’ve ever had this feeling, let’s commit to each other TODAY that we will never find ourselves in this situation again because we are going to start building a bigger sales pipeline today. 🚀
3 Easy Ways to Build Your Sales Pipeline
For the sake of keeping this email short and sweet, here’s a few things you can do to add more leads to the top of your funnel and ultimately close more deals.
1) Always be prospecting.
Ever close a big deal, celebrate, and proceed to tackle client work for the next few months without thought to where your next opportunities may come from after your current project(s) come to an end?
It’s important to continue marketing and business development efforts even when business is booming! Because, one day…it may not be.
Rather than feast or famine, let’s continue prospecting.
Double down on marketing activities that generate predictable revenue, Ideal Clients, and measurable progress until you’ve exhausted all ROI.
Network with other entrepreneurs, potential referral partners, and thought leaders with intention, whether you join communities like Meeting of the Minds or organize experiences for your ever-growing client base that unlock new revenue, feedback, and referrals from people who already love working with you.
During our March 6-7 “Deep Dive”, we’ll cover Ideal Client Profiling, marketing experimentation, and designing systems that allow you to scale your marketing and business development efforts, but regardless of how you ultimately prospect…
…the important thing is to continue lead generation no matter how good, bad, or ugly your sales numbers look this month.
2) Shorten the Sales Cycle.
After you qualify leads to ensure that only your Ideal Clients are getting an opportunity to work with you and your company, make it easy for prospects to work with you.
If you have a Value Ladder of products/services, drive clients to your core offer first. (And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this…)
Ask for a “Yes” or “No” on the appropriate sales call or follow-up email.
The worst thing you can get is indifference, indecisiveness, or drawn-out Q&A, when you can simply ask for the business and manage any objections or questions on one well-executed Zoom call or in-person meeting.
If you get a “No”, then you can strategically down-sell to a lower-priced product or service to retain business and build trust.
If you get another “No”, then you can Nurture your prospect (see below) and gain clarity on where you prospect stands in their assessment of working with you, which will leave you with less stress and more time to generate leads, close other deals, etc.
Look for other ways to shorten your sales cycle by following up faster, qualifying leads upfront through applications, referrals, or clearer copy on your website, and sending “In Advance Of” emails before meeting with potential clients.
3) Nurture leads who are interested, but aren’t ready to work with you yet.
There are a million reasons why even your most Ideal Client may not be ready to work with you yet.
Rather than taking things personally, provide value and build trust over time through nurturing those leads.
This can be done through one-to-many networking such as an email newsletter, podcast, or potent online community.
Additionally, you can schedule regular touch-points in your CRM system, Google Calendar, or wherever you track sales efforts to send personal text messages, gifts, notes, emails, calls, etc.
I can’t tell you how many clients have learned of Meeting of the Minds or my other companies over time and stayed within orbit for months (or even years!) before deciding to work with us.
If you’re not nurturing leads and building your fringe network, you’re missing out on an ungodly amount of future business through referrals and building trust with people who may not have been ready to work with you at first, but decide later on to invest in your products/services.
How are you going to build a bigger and better sales pipeline for your business in the next 30, 60, and 90 days?
Reply back! I’d love to know how this helped you and what we can do to support your business-building efforts.
Happy Friday. 🙃
-Jared
P.S. - join us for our next “Deep Dive” on March 6-7. This Meeting of the Minds is all about marketing and business development. Today is the LAST day to get our Early Bird pricing and save $300 if you’re qualified. Click here to learn more and reply if interested.
Jared Kleinert is the founder of Meeting of the Minds (motm.co), as well as a TED speaker, 2x award-winning author, and USA Today's "Most Connected Millennial".
Meeting of the Minds curates "super-connectors" and subject matter experts as invite-only attendees to 3 day summits in places like Napa Valley, Bermuda, and elsewhere, as well as “deep dives” such as this Marketing and Biz Dev strategy & implementation workshop. Members of the MOTM network include CEOs of 7, 8, and 9-figure businesses, creators of globally-recognized brands and social movements, New York Times bestselling authors, founders of pre-IPO tech unicorns, c-suite execs from Fortune 500 companies, and others.
Jared's career began at 15 years old when he started his first company, and took off at 16 while working as the first intern, and then one of the first 10 employees, for an enterprise SaaS company called 15Five, which today has raised over $40M and has almost 2000 forward-thinking companies as monthly recurring clients.
Later, Jared would become a delegate to President Obama's 2013 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Malaysia, write multiple books including the "#1 Entrepreneurship Book of 2015", and speak at TED@IBM the day before he turned 20.
As a highly-sought after keynote speaker and consultant, Jared’s clients range from organizations like Facebook, Samsung, Bacardi, Estee Lauder, IBM, Cornell, Berkeley, AdAge, and the National Speakers Association. His insights on entrepreneurship, networking, marketing, and business development have been featured in Forbes, TIME, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, NPR, Entrepreneur, Mashable, Fox Business and more.
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