Copyright 2006 Frank Rumbauskas
I probably receive more correspondence from salespeople who deal with long sales cycles, or what is commonly referred to as the complex sale, than from anyone else. They contact me because they’ve seen my website or heard about my books and are skeptical about whether or not my lead-generation techniques can work for them, or if they only work for commodity products with short sales cycles.
Stop! That’s what I usually say as I hear their objections. Stop jumping to conclusions without considering the possibilities first.
The fact of the matter is that the self-marketing systems I teach work even better for complex sales than for simple sales! The reason why is quite simple: Rudimentary sales techniques such as cold calling will be more effective for simple sales. Something more sophisticated, however, will be required for the complex sale. To me this is basic common sense, but for some reason, people have a tendency to get it backwards. Nearly everyone I talk to says that my self-marketing systems are probably fine for commodity products, but that complex sales will require cold calling! Like I said, they have it backwards.
There are a number of reasons why this is so. Rather than elaborate on theory, here are some points to consider as to why self-marketing techniques work even better with complex sales:
1. If you are involved with long sales cycle products or services, you need to have more than a business card and brochure on your side. You need to have your own website. I don’t mean your company’s website – I mean your very own personal website, just for your prospects and customers.
2. Since you are selling a complex product, it’s very important that your prospects are educated on it. Think about it – isn’t one of the biggest challenges in selling complex, or high-ticket products, the simple fact that most prospects fail to realize what the benefits are to them? By having a well-educated prospect base, you increase your odds of closing them. You do this through a good e-mail newsletter, not something that pitches them to buy from you every week or month or however often you choose to send it out, but rather something that benefits the prospect by educating them in areas either directly or indirectly related to your area of expertise.
3. In addition to educating your prospects, your e-mail newsletter serves to place you in the position of a leader and a recognized expert in your field. This is extremely important, because once you have accomplished this, your competition doesn’t stand a chance! Everyone wants to deal with the recognized expert, not the amateur who wastes his time by cold calling.
4. From this moment on, your primary goal in making new contacts should be to get them on your newsletter list and visiting your website. Your job from now on is to get them into your system, which will keep them in your pipeline permanently and will establish your credibility as the recognized expert, and the only person to buy from.
As you can see, there is a lot more to self-marketing than the myth that it is nothing more than sending out mailers and hoping someone will call. The very basic steps I’ve described here will do wonders for your sales – you will amass a huge list of prospects who hear from you on a regular basis, automatically, but even better, they will look up to you as the undisputed expert in your field, and won’t even bother talking to your competition!
Frank J. Rumbauskas Jr. is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Never Cold Call Again: Achieve Sales Greatness Without Cold Calling (Wiley, 2006). Frank has taught over 15,000 salespeople how to become top producers without cold calling. For Frank’s free newsletter, please visit www.nevercoldcall.com
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