Category: Sales

If this post was a Facebook status it would say “Relationship with Marketing Funnels – It’s complicated.

Oh funnels, those sneaky, slimy ‘salesy‘ things… I’ll be honest, sometimes I dislike the funnel process as much as you do, but is the actual funnel, the sales style, the product? Let’s examine a few and see if we can get to the root of why some work and some don’t – and how you can decide which is the best for you.

Every entrepreneur, whether speaker or coach or make-up artist is a salesperson – or at least they SHOULD be.

If you run a business, selling is a big part of your job. There is no escaping it. If you want to keep the lights on, you need to generate sales. I can hear some of you cringe, but it is true. If you think selling is yucky, maybe you need to look at your attitude towards sales.

Recently I ran across a lead magnet that offered “what to say word-for-word to finally land paid speaking gigs”. I mean what speaker wouldn’t click on that, right. It is an amazing lead magnet, and the scripts that I received via email were very good. That part of the marketing funnel they did flawlessly. it was what happened after the click that made it all go south for me.

Here’s what happened…

After entering my email, I was taken to a lead page where they offered a one on one call with the promise that they would “walk me through the step by step process for booking gigs that pay in 2019. We’ll show you what’s working, what’s not, and how you can consistently get booked and paid to speak!”

Again, I thought, “Wow, a one-on-one call – that’s value!” Now don’t get me wrong – I am not naive, I knew it would be a sales call – no one gives away 30 minutes of their time to a stranger on a lead page unless it is a sales call – but at no point did they tell me it was. (in-authenticity #1)
Then below the video telling me about the tremendous value, I will receive on this ‘non-selling call’ was a form that was specifically designed to pre-qualify me for the sale. (in-authenticity #2)

Personally, I would have stopped there, but now I was curious. I booked the appointment and landed on yet another lead page with the title “watch this video to keep your call’ followed by a video meant to further qualify me for the sale. It highlighted the usual glowing testimonials, but it also included statements like “If your business partner or spouse helps you make decisions, make sure they watch this video and are on the call with you” and “If you aren’t serious about making an investment in yourself, respect your time and ours and cancel the call.”

The salesperson in me can appreciate that they are overcoming objections prior to the call and that is smart, but again my “timeshare radar” went up.

I am 100% sure that this marketing funnel will work for many people, and I have it on good authority that the company offering the service is ‘the real deal’. I think that if I was s speaker looking to build systems and get more gigs, I would find value here – because someone I trust told me so. The marketer in me also knows that this is an expensive funnel to run, so they must be making money, and often money = success.

But let’s examine why, in my opinion, this well thought out marketing funnel process failed.

1. They delivered the lead magnet via email (and 10 minutes after I subscribed) instead of allowing me to see and download it AND they launched immediately into sales.  That means I never got a chance to ‘know like and trust’ them. I never saw one iota of value before I was sold to. 
2. They mislead me, or at least, I felt they did. The offered a ‘no sales’ call that was obviously going to be all sales. I have no problem with a call that has an offer – but please be upfront about it and let me decide.
3. The language felt…’ slick.  It was polished.  It was professional. It was… obviously written by a copywriter and built to be in a funnel.  We are not in the ’80s any longer and the sales techniques I learned (and taught) in the ’80s just do not work any longer. Consumers are on to your sales tactics.  Stop it! We have more choices than ever before, and we will make up our own minds in our own time.
4. It felt pushy, and I felt sure if the COPY was pushy, the call would be that way too.

So, in a rather large nutshell, that was my example of a funnel that went awry. Next post we will examine some funnels that work, and why.