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What to Do When You Have Thousands of Leads and No Sales
In many ways, sales is like friendship. People see your ad and look at your offer and something about it tells them it would be a good thing to opt in or subscribe to. It’s sort of like a kid who likes basketball and sees another kid bouncing a basketball in the park, and suddenly gravitates to them striking up a conversation.A friendship is not derived from just a few minutes on the playground though; it’s something that is built over time. Sales is the same: The lead doesn’t have the luxury of spending time with you to get to know you better, so you’ve got to figure out ways to bring yourself and your product/service into their lives. Otherwise, people will simply forget you.
A Big List Isn’t Enough
Building a list of considerable size is neither a fast nor cheap feat, in most cases. So, if you’ve amassed 3,000 or 10,000 or however many contacts, give yourself a little pat on the back.If that list isn’t producing income, that’s certainly a problem but it’s one that should be easy to solve.
A big list, by itself, won’t produce income. A big list plus a good, solid offer is no guarantee either. Even a big list and solid offer with consistent promotion is NOT a slam dunk.
Yes, a big list is important, but so is your relationship to that list and your consistency in communicating to those people.
The “Wrong” People
Take a look at this scenario: Let’s say you’ve placed ads promoting a particular product or service to everyone on your list. People clicked and opted-in on your landing page or lead capture page, but now you’re promoting something to them in your emails that doesn’t quite correspond to the ad and landing page.It’s not really that they are the wrong people; they’re the right people for what you stated in your ad. You might just be promoting the wrong product or service to them.
You’ve got to consider all of this from the perspective of the typical person who opted in. They gave you their name and email address in exchange for information about “A.” Now you’re promoting “B” to them, so don’t be surprised if you get little, if any, response.
There are two ways to remedy the situation: build a new list, or find out specifics about what your existing list wants.
Build a New List
Your FREE Offer!
This may sound totally obvious, but when creating your sales funnel (your ads, landing pages, email follow-up sequence), you’ve got to start with the product or service and work backwards.So, if you’re selling a video course on how to invest in the stock market, you’re probably going to create some kind of free offer, such as a report, an e-book or, like I do with MOBE, free daily videos. This is what you give in exchange for their contact information.
At that point, you have your email follow-up sequence ready to go and the messages should be about making money in the stock market. The videos or the report or e-book should be about understanding the stock market, stock market trends, or good investments. The offers you push in your messages should be on how to make money in the stock market. That’s what people signed up for.
That way, you will not only have a new list, but one that’s responsive to your messages—they will read, and a certain percentage of them will purchase.
Talk to Your Current List
If you don’t want to build a new list, then you’d better find out from your current list exactly what they want.“How?” you ask. Again, not to be too obvious, but just ask them. You can send them an email with questions, like: What specific things do they want to learn about? What do they want to accomplish? Asking those questions will let you know what their interests are, and ultimately, their goals.
You could also use a free survey service like SurveyMonkey.com or KwikSurveys.com. However, keep in mind that many people probably won’t respond, especially if you’re dealing with a somewhat “dead” list. But, some will and they will tell you in detail exactly what they want. And because they opted in from the same ad and landing page as the non-responsives, you would be pretty safe in promoting what the responsive leads ask for. (The results certainly couldn’t be any worse than zero, right?)
Frequency and Consistency
Another reason for your large list not buying could be because you are not communicating often enough.The most successful marketers email their lists daily—sometimes several times a day if there’s a special offer or deadline. Remember that not every person on your list is going to read every email you send. So sending them daily is the best guarantee that they at least read some of your marketing messages.
But whatever you do—every other day or only twice a week—be consistent. Don’t drop out for a month or two and then start back up again and expect to get a lot of love from your list. More likely, they will have forgotten you. You’re probably not the only marketer your subscribers see. Your competition, who email every day, will have your leads’ attention by that point.
So even if you’re not seeing stellar results when you first start mailing your list, stick with it. Continue to email them. Keep providing them with valuable information and promote your offers in every message. That consistency will pay off.
The Master Principle of Lists
Like I mentioned at the start, sales is a lot like friendship. If you don’t nurture your friendships, if you don’t show your friends they are important to you, they will fade away. They will make new friends. Resentment may creep in. It can be hard, if not impossible, to repair.Lists are the same way. They are perishable. By your actions, you are either routinely improving your relationship with your list or allowing it to degrade. To do the latter means deletes, opt-outs and unsubscribes—and less income, for sure.
So don’t neglect it. Listen to your list. Give them what they ask for. Answer their questions promptly. Show them you are a real person who cares about and understands them—and start seeing regular and increasing sales. Matt Lloyd
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