As a business owner, you always aim for higher revenue and profitability. One way to achieve this is by making high ticket sales. High ticket sales refer to products or services that cost a significant amount of money, typically over $1,000. These sales require a different approach than regular sales, and in this blog post, we will share some secrets to unlocking massive high-ticket sales that can skyrocket your revenue.

Understanding High Ticket Sales

Before we delve into the secrets of high ticket sales, let’s understand what it means. High ticket sales are not for every business, and not every customer can afford to make such purchases. Identifying the right audience with the resources and willingness to pay for high-end products or services is crucial. Such customers typically look for exclusivity, quality, and value.

Secrets to Unlocking Massive High Ticket Sales

Here are some secrets that can help you unlock massive high-ticket sales and skyrocket your revenue:

1. Build Trust and Credibility

When it comes to high ticket sales, trust and credibility are everything. Customers need to trust you and your brand before making a significant investment. You can build trust and credibility by providing valuable content, testimonials, case studies, and social proof. Make sure to highlight your expertise and experience in your niche.

2. Offer Exceptional Value

High ticket sales require exceptional value. Customers need to see the value in what you’re offering, and it should be worth the price. Your product or service should solve a critical problem or provide a unique benefit that customers can’t get elsewhere. Make sure to emphasize the benefits and outcomes of your product or service.

3. Create a Sense of Urgency

Creating a sense of urgency can help you close high-ticket sales quickly. You can create urgency by offering limited-time deals, exclusive bonuses, or scarcity. Customers are more likely to take action when they feel they might miss out on something valuable.

4. Provide Excellent Customer Service

Excellent customer service can make all the difference in high ticket sales. Customers need to feel supported and valued throughout the buying process and beyond. Make sure to provide excellent after-sales support, including warranties, return policies, and ongoing customer support.

5. Use a Sales Funnel

A sales funnel is a series of steps that guide potential customers toward purchasing. A high-ticket sales funnel differs from a regular one and requires a more personalized approach. You can use a sales funnel to build relationships, provide value, and nurture leads until they are ready to purchase.

Conclusion

High ticket sales can be an excellent way to boost your revenue and profitability, but it requires a different approach than regular sales. To unlock massive high-ticket sales, you must build trust and credibility, offer exceptional value, create a sense of urgency, provide excellent customer service, and use a sales funnel. By implementing these secrets, you can attract the right audience and close high ticket sales that can skyrocket your revenue.

The post Unlock the Secret to Massive High Ticket Sales and Skyrocket Your Revenue Today! appeared first on Done For You.

Maximizing Profits with Shopify Dropshipping: A Beginner’s Guide to Success

Are you interested in starting a dropshipping business with Shopify? If so, you’ve come to the right place! This guide will cover everything you need to know about dropshipping with Shopify and how to maximize your profits.

What is Dropshipping with Shopify?

Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method where a store doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when a store sells a product, it purchases the item from a third party and has it shipped directly to the customer. This means the store never sees or handles the product.

Shopify is a popular e-commerce platform that allows you to create an online store with ease. You can easily set up a dropshipping store with Shopify and start selling products immediately.

How to Get Started with Shopify Dropshipping

1. Choose a Niche: The first step in starting a successful Shopify dropshipping business is to choose a niche. You will focus on This area or industry, such as fashion, beauty, or home decor.
2. Find a Supplier: Once you have chosen a niche, the next step is to find a supplier. You can find suppliers on platforms like AliExpress, Oberlo, or SaleHoo. These platforms allow you to find products to sell in your store easily.
3. Set Up Your Store: After you have found a supplier, it’s time to set up your store. Shopify makes creating a professional-looking store easy without coding or design skills. Choose a theme, customize it to fit your brand, and add your products.
4. Optimize Your Store: To maximize your profits, you need to optimize your store for conversions. This means ensuring your store is easy to navigate, your products are well-presented, and your checkout process is smooth.
5. Market Your Store: Finally, you must market your store to drive traffic and sales. This can include social media marketing, email marketing, influencer marketing, and more.

Tips for Maximizing Your Profits

1. Offer Free Shipping: Customers love free shipping, which can increase your sales and profits.
2. Upsell and Cross-Sell: Upselling and cross-selling can increase your average order value and boost your profits.
3. Offer Discounts and Promotions: Discounts and promotions are a great way to attract new customers and increase sales.
4. Focus on Customer Service: Providing excellent customer service can lead to repeat business and positive reviews, increasing sales and profits.
5. Analyze Your Data: Use analytics tools to track your sales, traffic, and customer behavior. This can help you identify areas for improvement and optimize your store for maximum profits.

Conclusion

Dropshipping with Shopify can be lucrative, but it requires careful planning, execution, and optimization. 

By following the steps and tips outlined in this guide, you can start a successful Shopify dropshipping business and maximize your profits. Happy selling! Let us know if we can help you with getting started. 

The post Shopify Mastery: A Blueprint for Success with 10 Proven Dropshipping Strategies appeared first on Done For You.

Building a sales pipeline management system and creating a business with customers who flock to you is the point of all marketing.  Whether online or offline, you want to attract, engage, and sell people all day - forever!  There are a lot of tools to use, but the biggest question our agency gets asked is, "What's the difference between Pipeline Pro vs. Clickfunnels.

That's a valid question, too, because both are great tools!

In this video and blog post, we will give you a behind-the-scenes look at building a converting sales funnel.

First, we need to break down what a sales funnel is and isn't...  A sales funnel is much more than individual pages (i.e., landing and sales pages).

A sales funnel requires that email marketing campaigns and automation be set up, that you have traffic campaigns going, and that people are being moved and pushed through the sales funnel from piece to piece.  So when they enter the sales pipeline, they learn about you and your company on autopilot.  And then, they go through the entire sales process, also on autopilot!

Three Pieces To Your Sales Pipeline Management

In setting up sales funnels, there are three pieces to any sales process...  And part of your sales pipeline management should be to create reporting on:

• Traffic
• Offer
• Followup.

We've got an entire book about it - Convert.

What often happens when business owners are marketers is - they begin with traffic.  Then, they back-end into their offer and their follow-up. It's one of the biggest mistakes you can make because you're spending money on traffic without necessarily having a clear path to make that money back to generate revenue from your offers.

Where To Start

When we do sales funnels for clients, we start the project by creating the offer.

Your offer can take lots of different shapes. It can be:

• A consulting offer
• A coaching offer
• A digital product
• A membership course
• Physical products
• Mastermind Programs
• Live events

You name it. There are so many different ways to generate revenue online and so many different kinds of offers that you can make to the world. That's what business is!

Choosing Sales Pipeline Management CRM and Software

Pipeline Pro

PipelinePro is a cloud-based sales CRM platform that helps businesses of all sizes manage their sales pipelines and close more deals. It offers a wide range of features, including:

• Contact management: PipelinePro allows you to store and manage your contact information in one place. You can track contact interactions, create lead-scoring rules, and segment your contacts for targeted marketing campaigns.
• Pipeline management: PipelinePro helps you visualize your sales pipeline and track the progress of each deal. You can create custom sales stages, set deadlines, and assign tasks to team members.
• Opportunity management: PipelinePro helps you manage your sales opportunities from start to finish. You can track leads, qualify prospects, and schedule follow-up activities.
• Sales forecasting: PipelinePro provides you with real-time sales forecasting data. This information can help you make informed decisions about your sales pipeline and strategy.
• Reporting and analytics: PipelinePro offers a variety of reports and analytics that can help you track your sales performance and identify areas for improvement.

PipelinePro is also highly customizable and can be integrated with a variety of other business applications, such as email marketing software, accounting software, and customer support software.

ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is a cloud-based sales funnel platform that helps businesses of all sizes create and manage their sales funnels. A sales funnel is a series of steps a potential customer takes on their journey, from becoming aware of a product or service to making a purchase.

ClickFunnels offers a wide range of features to help businesses create and manage effective sales funnels, including:

• Landing page builder: ClickFunnels includes a drag-and-drop builder that makes creating high-converting landing pages without coding knowledge easy.
• Sales funnel templates: ClickFunnels offers a variety of sales funnel templates that businesses can use to get started quickly and easily.
• Email marketing integration: ClickFunnels integrates with various email marketing platforms so businesses can easily send automated emails to their leads and customers.
• Payment processing integration: ClickFunnels integrates with various payment processing platforms so businesses can easily accept customer payments.
• Analytics and reporting: ClickFunnels provides detailed analytics and reporting that businesses can use to track their sales funnel performance and identify areas for improvement.

ClickFunnels is a powerful tool that can help businesses of all sizes increase their sales. It is particularly well-suited for companies that sell high-ticket products or services, as it can help them create and manage complex sales funnels.

Here are some of the benefits of using ClickFunnels:

• Increased sales: ClickFunnels can help you increase sales by helping you create and manage effective sales funnels. By tracking the progress of each lead and deal, you can ensure that no opportunities fall through the cracks.
• Improved conversion rates: ClickFunnels can help you improve conversion rates by providing various features to help you create high-converting landing pages and sales funnels.
• Reduced costs: ClickFunnels can help you reduce costs by eliminating the need to hire a web developer or designer to create and manage your sales funnels.
• Increased efficiency: ClickFunnels can help you increase efficiency by automating many of the tasks involved in sales funnel management. This can free up your time to focus on other aspects of your business.

Overall, ClickFunnels is a powerful sales funnel platform that can help businesses of all sizes increase sales, improve conversion rates, reduce costs, and increase efficiency.

When To Have A VSL In Your Sales Pipeline

Now, depending on your offer, you need your sales material. That's the point in your sales pipeline management to get prospects to purchase something from you.

If you have an offer under $1,000, you can usually sell it with a video sales letter (VSL) or a multi-video launch process. If you have a video sales letter, you need an upsell and downsell process. You can take a $100 sale and then pitch something that's $300 on the confirmation page.  After that first upsell, you can then create a second upsell.

That, my friend, is how you increase the average customer lifetime value of your buyers!

What About Webinars?

If your offer is over $1,000, you need an automated webinar with some webinar marketing behind it. If you sell something above $2,000, you'll need a consultative sales call in your pipeline.  The call to action you make on your webinar will be, "Click the button to sign up for a call." The sales call will be the thing that does your selling.

Do Long-Form Sales Letters Still Work?

The short answer?  No.  Unless you also combine them with a video sales letter or a video.

Long-form works when it's a heavily graphical page with many images, and you see it selling a lot of SAAS software.  But for the most part, video sales letters and webinars will be your two main pieces of sales pipeline management.

Getting Your Marketing Pages Set Up

Once those are up, then, of course, you need the marketing pages.  Those are the pages that CONTAIN your sales collateral.

Think landing pages, sales pages, confirmation pages, strategy session pages...  Those kinds of things.

Nowadays, they're pretty easy to build with page builder software.  There are lots of options to choose from, including our Axis Page Builder.

Creating Your Followup Campaigns

You get into the follow-up once the pages and sales material are done—your follow-up followup automation campaigns for outbound email marketing, text messages, your CRM, etc.

That's going to handle the marketing automation piece of the sales pipeline.

• You need an email copy for your auto-responders.
• You'll need sales calls if you're selling something high ticket.
• It would be best to have fulfillment sequences when somebody buys something digitally, at least.
• You'll need shopping cart abandonment sequences
• ... And bonding sequences.

There are probably 25 to 35 emails that you will need, all pre-done, ready for when you launch your sales funnel and sales pipeline management initiatives to general traffic.

... Then You Can Start Driving Traffic

Then, and only then, can you start going after traffic?

And your traffic takes many forms depending on the networks your customers hang out on!

It can be:

• Facebook ads
• Google ads
• LinkedIn ads
• Email solo drops
• Organic SEO campaigns
• Blog posts and content marketing

There are tons of different ways of getting traffic.

You Need Your Sales Pipeline Management Set Up First

Here's my point. All you need to do is set up the foundation and infrastructure for your business before you can go out and start finding traffic.

1. You need the sales copy.
2. You need the marketing automation part nailed.
3. You'll need the email copy.
4. You need content, like blog content and videos.
5. You'll need a good nurture campaign so that when somebody opts in, they'll learn more about you.

All this is so your potential buyers start to know, like, and trust you.

They need to know that they will make a good decision if they invest the time in getting to know you better by exploring the idea of giving you money for your products and services.

That's what it is. It's a lot of work to get built and set up initially. Way more than it was two or three years ago when all you needed was a landing page or a webinar registration page and a couple of emails...  Then boom, you could start getting $10,000+ clients.

It's a lot more work than it used to be.

But it's what's required now. You have to be able to put all of this together, launch it, and re-invest your profits back into more advertising!

If you want help putting this stuff together, click the button below to sign up for an action plan call with my team and me. We'll discuss your business, offers, follow-up, automation campaigns, pipeline management, etc.

Whatever you don't have, we can build for you. I like to think of us as the glue that brings your sales pipeline together. We will make whatever you don't have. But first, we need to have a conversation. So, click the button below and watch the short video on sales funnels...

[VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]

This is GSD daily, episode 50. We are halfway to 100, which is fantastic. This morning, I saw that we broke 100 members in our DFY Funnels group, which is amazing. I'll drop the link here, which I'm pretty excited about. I think that is pretty awesome.

Let's see, dropping the link. All right. Here's the link to our funnel group. So make sure to sign up for that, and the stuff we'll talk about today is how to build a sales pipeline. So, this is the original post that we wrote a while ago.

We're going to talk about some tools, strategies, etc.

First, for those who don't know who I am, I am Jason Drohn, creator of doneforyou.com. I've been building funnels for a very long time for many different niches and categories and everything. We specialize in creating offers, automating sales funnels, and clarifying messages. Then, I also set up marketing automation and ran traffic. Making offers and building the sales system that powers the rest is what we are good at, so what we do.

We're capping off the high ticket week. Earlier this week, we talked about selling high-ticket offers. We talked about selling on Zoom presentations, and we were joined by my friend Patch. We talked about marketing.

Yesterday, we discussed doing conditional logic forms so that you are only working with the people and pitching the people who make the most sense for you and your offer. And what you can do then is based on how they answer specific questions. They will see a particular result, like maybe they know a calendar booking, or if they answer a question differently, they go down a different rabbit hole. So, that's kind of the power behind the applications and stuff.

What we're going to do is we're going to talk about the tricks to effective sales pipeline management. Now, I know that sounds like a mouthful, but basically, what it is is there are some rules that I follow when we're looking at putting sales funnels in place and sales pipelines in the area for clients.

There are three pieces in every Sales Pipeline.

Those rules, what it comes down to is that there are three pieces to every sales pipeline out there. The channel itself, the funnel itself, the system itself, whatever you want to call your sales system, you boil it down to traffic, your offer, and your follow-up. Your request is the follow-up you pitch, whether it's a coaching service, consulting, digital product, or whatever.

What offer requires a pipeline that involves follow-ups?

For purposes of followups our offer is above $1,000 because if you're charging something that is more than $1,000, chances are you're going to be getting on a sales call with this person at some point unless there is tremendous bonding and relationship that has happened for a long time through email. Or throughout an extended live stream or a multi-day event. So, an immense relationship needs to be built whenever you sell something over $1,000. So, one thing about the sales pipeline management piece is that the offer is crucial, and if the request is above $1,000, you will have a certain kind of pipeline. That pipeline involves specific follow-ups.

Where to start?

Followups on how to assemble this pipeline, we're looking first at the offer.

• Is it coaching?
• What is it are we selling?
• What are the pieces and components of it?
• Is it consulting?
• Is it a digital product membership site?
• What are the live pieces of it?
• What does our client or the client's team have to fulfill one-on-one like if it's a live event?

We don't have too many; we don't have any live events now. Live physical events, we have, of course, life digital events. If it's a live event, having the creative business owner put on that live event, it needs to be big enough room to make sense for them, and so on.

Offer is lower than $1,000

If your thing is lower than $1,000 or you're pitching a strategy session or a consultative sales call, which is what we've talked about this entire week, then you can have a little application that shows up under a sales page. You saw an example of that. We went through this application system; we call these the fully qualified lead video sales letters. We go through this kind of application system for all of our services. Yesterday, we talked about this conditional.

Do people leave your site without buying at an alarming rate?

That autoplay, we found that out a couple of times yesterday. But, we explored how this conditional logic application works to qualify our prospects. And then, we added a couple of variables here. You could see a couple of different scenarios.

1. Add an application below your sales page

You'll see all that if you go back to yesterday's livestream. We have a sales video, a VSL, with an application below it. They fill out the application, they get sent to our calendar, and they can book a time on our calendar to schedule a call with us. Now, of course, you have a different version of this, which is rather than a sales video, you can put them on a webinar, an automated webinar.

The call to action on that automated webinar to get them into a consultative sales call is to click the button below to sign up for strategy sessions. So, it's very much the same thing. They're going to go and apply. They will click the button below or type a URL into their browser and then use it on a page.

2. Add software to tie into the CRM

Sometimes, we talked about some of the software yesterday for that, too. Typeform, jotform, but ideally, we want to tie that into the CRM, which kicks over into your pipeline. So, that's where it all comes back around.

You have your sales piece, your sales piece is set up upfront, and you have your offer, but then the pipeline is all of it.

The pipeline is how people are moving through, getting to know you.

They're signing up for a call, then they're scheduling a call, then they're getting on the ring, and then they're leaving, or they're being pitched, or they're being proposed. So that's the idea behind this sales pipeline management piece.

Pages of the Sales Funnel

Now, your pages are the pages of the sales funnel. There are many ways to set up pages for the sales funnel. Our preferred method is using WordPress, a plugin, a theme engine, and a template system called an optimized press. That's how most of our clients are set up. There are lots of other ways to do it.

There are lead pages and click funnels. Everybody and their brother has some page builder, a template builder, or a funnel builder. It just depends on whether you want to pay it monthly. Or what kind of proficiency you have in it. But the pages, the marketing pages themselves, they're inconsequential. You have to have them, and they have to convert. So, some pages reverse better than others.

We have our own set of pages that we always use for controls, and they always work well. It's just something you have to think about.

Follow-up Campaigns

Now, the followup campaigns that follow pain, a critical piece of the sales pipeline management is they come in they schedule a call with you; what happens after the call? So, what happens after they receive the proposal? What happens after they don't receive a proposal? They set up a call, and they're not a great fit.

What happens then? Do they get emails in your nurture campaign, and you try to bring them back later when they are probably more qualified, or do you just let them go? So, you have to think about all the follow-up scenarios, too. Your sales guy, followup are pitching this person in your pipeline, then what happens next?

Do they have template emails that go out to this person? Do they drop them in a CRM, and then it goes out afterward with some blog posts, or do you just let the lead die?

1. Continue sending blog posts, podcasts and videos

So, like for us in our pipelines or sales funnels, we continue sending them blog posts, podcasts, and videos like this—the occasional book offer, but we never stop. Sometimes, people will come back and do business with us six years later. So, it would be best not to stop once you start building the list, cultivating the relationship with those prospects, and setting up the sales pipeline that works. Then that's how it should go about. You keep doing it.

2. Start Sending Traffic

Once all that is set up, once you have your sales funnel, webinar, and VSL in the mix of your offer and your system, you can start sending traffic.

Some of the best ways you know, you've heard of them. Facebook ads, fantastic traffic drivers, Google ads. LinkedIn, we've gotten into it a little bit. It's more expensive, but the quality of prospects is just astronomical for a B2B list.

You can do email solo drops; you can do SEO, which we've been doing quite a bit of SEO lately, just in terms of transcribing these GSD dailies and then dropping them as blog posts and ranking for a bunch more keyword phrases.

You need to have the sales pipeline built first.

So, that's kind of the mix of the traffic coming in, but the thing is, you need to have the sales pipeline built first. You have to have the website, the sales funnel, and all that made to build the marketing onto the front side. You have to have the sales funnel building, you create marketing, and then leads start flowing out of the back. Your sales pipeline lights up off out of the backside. So, you need the copy, the sales copy, and all that stuff.

Tools for your Sales Management Pipeline

Now, some tools make the pipeline piece easy. I'm going to show you some of those. So, when somebody comes,d they fill out a form and start the relationship. Often, they hit a sales page, then they come to this page and fill out this form.

1. Zapier

There's a couple of things that we do. The first is whenever somebody fills out this form; we use Zapier to trigger a message to our Slack channel. I'm just going to log in real quick. I want to show you this because it's super cool. If we go into my Zaps, two different kinds of things happen. The first is whenever somebody hits this page, and we know their information, it triggers a Slack message that says, this person is on our page right now.

This is marketing like Ninja-level shit right here. So, hopefully, nobody's watching. Yeah, there's a couple of people watching. So, these are some of my best tricks. So, inside Zapier, basically how it works is Ontraport... When a lead comes in on this page into Ontraport, then a Slack message fires.

This person is on a page in Slack, then it adds it to a spreadsheet in Google Drive, which is super cool because not only does that let us know A, who is on the page, and when they are on the page, but B it also lets us know... It tabulates them in a spreadsheet. So, we can see all our leads and then scroll down and say, okay, cool. Now, let's look at how this is set up. There are three pieces to this. When a form is submitted, and we went through this yesterday. So when we were kicking through the conditional logic of this form, when this form is submitted, then... So, new form submission and that new form submission is, that's my Ontraport account.

Then, the title of that form is FQL VSL, for Fully Qualified Lead Video Sales Letter, Ad Management Application. Then, what it does is send the data. That's just some examples from the data. It sends all that data right over to Slack, and then inside Slack, a message sends a private channel message to Slack. And then there are my accounts here. And then the private channel is this. The news that I received is from the new FQL lead ad management. And then I get a readout of the first name, last name, email, and SMS number.

As soon as that lead hits, I don't even need to wait for the text message that goes out. I don't need to wait for the email that goes out. I don't need to wait for tomorrow's report. It pops up in Slack, and I can pick up the phone, which I probably just screwed up my clarity. But I can pick up the phone and call that person and say, what's up? So, this is the next level of marketing automation 101-level stuff. You know what I mean, so this is Ninja shit.

I haven't seen anybody who does this, maybe some Fortune 500 companies, but I tell people this, and they're like, that's nuts, that's wild. Then, after it sends Slack a message, it tabulates that as a spreadsheet, it sends it to Google Spreadsheet and adds another row, and then boom, that entire contact history is there. And then, we can take notes on that call. So that's how our pipeline works. So, if you remember this form, once they submit it, it goes off to Pipedrive.

2. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is the following tool in this mix. Pipedrive.com and this tool have calendaring; it also has different stages. So, stage one, stage two, stage three, stage four. So, you can see somebody moving through the steps of your sales guys, and everybody's on the same page about where that person is inside the sales pipeline.

Are they in the lead stage, or did they schedule a call, or did they have a call and they're not ready, or are they willing and have been proposed, and we're just waiting on feedback? It also has email marketing so that you can fire emails off to these leads.

3. Pipeline Pro

It's pretty cool stuff. There is another one called Pipeline Pro, which is... I have some of my friends. So, Pipeline Pro is a very similar tool. Pipeline Pro, there we go.

Pipeline Pro is another tool that can be used from a sales letter or a sales pipeline standpoint. Now, the other thing I wanted to show you was that it shows leads when somebody is coming in. I have another folder called VSL page visits. And what this folder does is, if I have data about somebody, if they have signed up as an email address inside my CRM, and we have that person.

4. Ontraport

Ontraport tracks, it keeps hold of... So, when somebody comes to doneforyou.com and enters their email address, it creates a customer record, which is then tagged to them. So, if they come back a day or a week later and haven't cleared their cookies, then Ontraport knows that they came back. And the reason they do that is for recency.

After somebody doesn't do anything with us for... I think it's 60 days; it might be 90 days. But if they don't open an email, they haven't been to the website, they haven't done anything, then they go to an inactive list. So they don't receive our general emails. What that does is it means our sender score and our deliverability is always pretty high. It's higher than the industry average because we cut everybody who hasn't engaged with us.

The new leads are on, and they're on until they spend 60 or 90 days, like I said, where they haven't done anything. They haven't opened an email, they haven't come to the website, and they haven't interacted with us in any way. So, at that point, they go on like a... It's not a blocklist but on a cold list. Every once in a while, we'll email them and try to open them up, get them to open back up, and reengage with us. And sometimes that works, but if they're on the cold list, they'll probably be deleted before long.

It is that Ontraport tracks Infusionsoft tracks and most of the significant CRM track recency. Being that Ontraport recency, when somebody comes to doneforyou.com or any page on doneforyou.com, it fires every time a page loads. If somebody comes to this retargeted sales page and we have their information, then this page will load; Ontraport will know that this page is the one that did it because we already have their information.

What I do is I have that information sent to Slack so I can see who was on the site on the main pages of our site. And if they're coming back a lot, I can email them. If we have their phone number, I could also call them. I've done that a couple of times, where somebody repeatedly returns to the same page, and it pings. It'll ping inside Slack like this guy was here two days ago or this guy was here a day ago.

You can tell me Some email addresses, so I'll pick up the phone and say, "Hey, you're on the sales funnel page." And they're like, "Well, you're spying on me." Well, we're a marketing automation company. It's kind of what we do, sort of. If you've ever gotten a call from me, from just being on the website, that's how.

This is just some marketing automation stuff we get into Pipeline Pro, Pipedrive, and incredible sales tools. You can easily do sales pipeline management without them, but they make it very easy to keep track of your leads. Who's coming in, who's been pitched? And it becomes crucial when you have more than one sales rep. If you are the only person and you're doing three or four calls a week, then it's probably not all that big of a deal, but you start growing to the point where you're doing 10, 15, 20 calls, it's easy to forget who you talked to, what you covered and then where they are in the process.

That is how we do sales pipeline management. Now, it's Friday, and we are 20 minutes in.

For Questions and Guide

I think we're just going to wrap up the shop. If you have any questions, go to doneforyou.com/blog, and we will answer them. If you want to go through and have an action plan done, we will go through your business, talk about your business, traffic sources, and automation, then go to doneforyou.com/start. We will get that up and running, and I will see you soon.

The post Sales Pipeline Management That Will Increase Your Traffic appeared first on Done For You.

Seven years ago, I learned a lesson that absolutely changed the way that I build businesses, and I'm hoping it'll help you advertise your business online better too.  It's the secret of "Buyer Stages."

I first discovered it back in 2009.  I was reading a book that had already been published for probably six or seven years. This book talked about the stages of the buyer journey and gave you a roadmap to how quickly somebody will pull out their credit card and purchase something from you.

Now, it might sound kind of crazy, but it was a book on the fundamentals of how to advertise your business online, through Pay-Per-Click Google Ads (in the early, early days!).

Basically, the lesson was this.

The 3 Buyer Stages

There are three stages of buyers. Each of the stages is broken down into how quickly somebody will make a buying decision with you.

Stage One Buyer

Stage One, the first buyer stage is the person who knows they need something, but they aren't sure what yet. They are interested, they have a nagging feeling or passion that they want to explore more.

They're really not even a buyer. They are, but the educational and learning curve that you need to put them through sometimes is months and years away. This is somebody who, if you're able to attract them, you can make a lot of money from this person because you are their expert...

But, you will make a lot of money from this person like two years down the road. If you're looking for a quick way to advertise your business online, you need to make sure you give this person enough time to pay off.

The investment on your part in this person is very, very high. If you need to generate revenue now, then this is not the person you go after. If you're looking to build a platform and an audience that you can monetize way down the road, this is your person you go after. If you have huge ambitions for your company that are five and ten years out, then looking at a Stage One Buyer and planning and marketing, then going after them is a good investment in your time, resources, and energy.

Stage Two Buyer

Now, your Stage Two Buyer.  In terms of buyer stages, they still are not ready to buy yet. They're not ready to pull out their credit card and pay you money online just yet. But what they do know is that they are interested in the thing that you do.

Let's say you're a business consultant and this new lead has a startup business - your ideal client!. They've already made moves and created their products, and have a website. They know that they need to get more help with something - let's say search engine optimization - so they start looking for search engine optimization tips. They start researching the industry, the collective niche. They start digging through the pile of search engine articles to find who are the experts in that niche who can help them do what they need to do.

Narrowing Your Funnel

Often times in terms of advertising your business online, the Stage One Buyers represent the top end of your sales funnel.  It's a huge pool of people who think they may be interested in something. And then you step down to a smaller subsegment of the people who say, "Yes, I'm interested in this thing and I'm looking for the person or company or product that can help.  "Who can I follow to get to know a little bit more before purchasing..."

Stage Three Buyer

Then you have your Stage Three Buyer. Your Stage Three Buyer says, "I am interested in growing my business. I am ready to make an investment and I've narrowed it down to a couple of people.  Furthermore, I have the person or the company that I'm looking to make that investment with."

That is your hottest, most actionable buyer stage. This is the person who will convert, giving you money the fastest.

When you're advertising your business, you, of course, want to target this Stage Three Buyer.  This is the person who is already interested, they've already shown that they're interested in you, and have consumed some (or all) of your content. They are ready to make a buying decision with you.

Your Stage Two Buyer is a bit premature.  At Stage Two, in terms of your marketing funnel, you're attracting them. Maybe they've watched a video, but they haven't signed up for your email list. They know who you are, they follow you lightly, but they haven't necessarily committed to following every word that you publish.

Your Stage One Buyer...  They're the person still hanging out in Google trying to find relevant information on what they're interested in.  They're looking for a rabbit hole to follow.

Advertise Your Business Online The Smart Way

My point is, when you're looking at building a marketing campaign and a platform online, you need to understand those three buyer types.

• The Stage One Buyer is the person who will find you and they may or may not progress to the next level.
• The Stage Two Buyer knows they're interested in something, they're looking for their expert. That expert may be (I hope) is you.
• Your Stage Three Buyer already has identified you as an expert. They are looking to buy your thing, they're just looking for the right offer.

If you'd like to talk a little bit more about setting up marketing campaigns or putting a plan together to advertise your business online, click the button below, set up an action plan call with us, and we'll get you taken care of.

The post Buyer Stages: How To Advertise Your Business Online [Updated] appeared first on Done For You.

In this article we are going to discuss

• how you can improve cold email deliverability to reach your prospect’s inbox, and
• how to test your email campaigns before hitting the “send” button.

How you deliver these cold emails determines whether they are successful or otherwise. If you notice failure, for sure, you should take immediate action.

Tips for successful cold email deliverability

1. Your cold email is not SPAM!

Since the recipients of your emails have no idea about your existence, at times they might report those emails as spam. As a result, you will experience instant and radical change in your reputation. However, as time goes by, the same recipients will include your contact on their lists.

Also, you might get replies to your emails. Afterward, your reputation will increase in the quickest time possible. This is how you avoid getting reported as spam.

i) Prospects should unsubscribe easily

Giving links where prospects can unsubscribe can save your cold emails from being reported as spam. If such an incidence happens, take it easy. Never force them to re-feed their details. Just respect their decision instead.

ii) Personalize your email and target your prospects

Sending generic emails to thousands of emails without personalization or without a target is a horrible idea. Rather, include a few personalized details to show your interest in the recipient. Just carry ou online research about them to know what information to include in the emails.

Pay attention to those prospects who might be interested in whatever it is you are selling. Your follow-ups to emails should be friendly. Your time-frame should be flexible. Else sending lots of emails within a short duration could irritate your recipients.

iii) Avoid restricting your activities to cold emailing

If you fail to get feedback from your emails, perhaps the recipient has no interest – even if they do not report you as spam.

Alternatively, if you get feedback, then you will know your credibility is high. In the end, your reputation increases. The best way to use this credibility is to include other activities besides cold emailing. For instance, use email ids to email colleagues or friends. You never know, your reputation might go even higher.

2. Never allow internet/email service providers to flag you

For email service provider to identify your activity as suspicious, they look at factors like entire bounce rate and volume. Therefore, ensure you create a great reputation with these service providers. Here are some guidelines:

i) Start small

Instead of focusing on lots of emails, why don’t you focus on the feedback you get from those emails? You can begin by sending around 40 emails and increase your reputation as time goes by. The trick here is to keep sending a certain volume of emails daily.

This is opposed to sending hundreds of them once a week and none on other days. As you progress, you can increase that number after creating an email id.

ii) Be careful with automation software

Automation software, such as MixMax and Mailshake, can help you with cold emailing. However, you should adjust the settings in such a way that allows you to send emails in intervals and with a daily limit.

iii) Lower bounces

Service providers rate feedback in terms of bounces. Getting fewer bounces can boost your reputation, and vice versa. Therefore, avoid more bounces because they can affect your reputation, which is challenging to get out of it.

To avoid bounces ensure you verify, clean and freshen your cold email list. Use Findthatlead and Briteverify as services to validate those addresses.

iv) Send different templates

Sending similar emails over the same period sends a wrong signal. Instead, use personalized tags such as Company and First name. Luckily, most cold email and sales tools will help you set-up several A/B testing choices. As a result, you will be using different templates each time you send emails.

v) Watch your reputation

Return Path and Sender Score are some of the tools you can use to watch your reputation. You will know if your IP’s/domain reputation is rising or dropping within a given period. Dropping reputation means minimizing the volume of emails and concentrating on how you can enhance email deliverability.

3. Avoid spam filters

As technology advances, spam filters get highly complex. The best thing is to ensure the spam filters for your recipients do not flag your emails. And this is how you go about it.

Get the right email infrastructure

Some people send cold email using their Gmail accounts through software like MixMax, Mailshake or Klenty. In that case, they do not have to worry about spam filters. Otherwise, if using Rackspace or Sendgrid to create an SMTP server on a dedicated IP, then you should be careful.

First, you should include the right DKIM records and SPF records. Second, verify you own that domain. Complying with these two steps will win the trust of your recipients.

Are there other factors that affect cold email deliverability?

Yes, these are:

• Some recipients have advanced spam filters that track links and short URLs. The best thing to do is to do away with images and switch off email-open tracking.
• Attachments also affect the deliverability of your emails. Therefore, avoid attachments especially in your initial emails. If it is a must, you can upload the files to Dropbox/Google docs to send that link.
• Avoid salesy templates. Sending emails with many colors, lots of HTML, CAPS and exclamation points might make it appear as spam. Hence, your emails will be filtered easily.

How can you test your cold email?

Testing email campaigns before sending them is a bet practice that helps to improve inbox placement rate. There are several email testing tools you can use for that matter.

• Mail-tester is a tool that can help you out. This email deliverability tool will enable you to know how likely your emails will be delivered.
• MX toolbox is another online tool  for testing how spammy your email looks.
• Litmus is a premium email deliverability testing tool – it has a free trial.

The bottom line

As you can see, effective cold email deliverability goes down to spam. You should ensure your emails do not appear as spam by following these steps we have discussed.

Other ways you can avoid sending spam emails is to:

• Send well thought and written emails
• Carry out research and contact only those suitable for your product/service
• Simplify and respect prospects rights to unsubscribe
• Use an email deliverability testing tool before sending out a campaign

If you follow these steps, for sure, you will reap all the benefits of cold emailing.

PS.  We’d love to help dial in your marketing automation.  If you head on over to the Done For You Email Marketing page, you’ll get the chance to speak with us one on one about getting your email automation setup!

The post How To Improve Cold Email Deliverability appeared first on Done For You.

What is cold emailing?

Despite its somewhat shady reputation, cold emailing is a potent sales and marketing tool for the willing entrepreneur. It could be the competitive edge you need to scale efficiently or more essentially your launch pad to success. However, before you get to exploit its inherent benefits, you have to first master its subtle intricacies.

Tips to master cold emailing for sales

Tip #1

With cold emailing, the more efficient approach is to work towards creating a connection, a common meeting ground for you and the recipient to interact on the matter of interest.

This is opposed to the hit them hard approach where the emphasis is on delving straight to the point or, in essence, stating your need. Sure, for recipients time is scarce and people appreciate conciseness.

However, it’s important to note that people are more willing to cooperate when there’s a stake of benefit in it for them. This business truth should form the foundations of all your cold emails.

Tip #2

Once your foundations are set straight, it’s time to turn your attention to the actual content of the email.

It has to be original, assertive, creative and more importantly compelling. Shy away from vague phrases like ‘hopefully,’ ‘maybe’ or anything else that sounds like you’re unsure of yourself. They deplete your credibility.

And don’t forget to add a few tidbits about your successes and accomplishments as success is attractive to everyone.

Effective email swipes and sales scripts can have a huge impact on business development. Now, you can get access to done-for-you sales material that is proven to convert. Visit scriptly.org and get access to tested email swipes for dozens of niches. A free trial is available.

Tip #3

One other important aspect of cold emailing most people tend to overlook is the email address you send your message to.

Contacts derived from web pages or social media outlets are for the most part ineffective.

Luckily guesstimating an email from the context email is quite easy. You can have an idea by looking at the way a company formats its email addresses. It’s usually a combination of the first and last name or vice versa plus the business domain name.

How to send effective cold emails

For business expansion

Searching for the ideal business partner or investor can be challenging. The outstanding guys are almost always unavailable; which is why you need to get to them first.

Make no mistake however you’re going to get a lot of rejection emails, but that’s a good thing. It means people are actually taking the time to read your email pitches.

From here, you can determine what’s working and what excess baggage. Moreover, you get to form new connections that might be beneficial in the nearest future.

For recruiting

Like business partners, the best job candidates aren’t actively prowling the job market in search of openings. They’re more likely to be engaged, but that’s not to say they can’t be contracted if a better offering with more promising prospects is tabled before them.

But first, you have to get to them, and that’s where cold emailing either via regular emails or through social media channels (preferably the latter) comes in handy.

For networking

The traditional definition of networking is forming connections with compadres in your field of endeavor, seasoned professionals or thought leaders that can help bring out the best in you. Just how do you connect with an industry professional you’ve never met? Cold emailing.

Don’t be shy, rather than wait eons to bump into that leading authority accidentally, take the first step and send out a heartwarming but professional cold email. Granted this caliber of individuals get these sort of emails every now and again, but provided you stick to the rubrics outlined earlier, there’s a high chance you two could connect and who knows, it could be a connection that leads to even greater things.

Is cold emailing the genie in a bottle to all your business needs?

Certainly not. What it is, however, is that potentially disruptive business solution you shouldn’t ignore just because everyone else is switching over to the more trendier options.

Cold emailing, as we reiterated earlier can be the difference between scaling efficiently and struggling to keep your business afloat. It links you to unique business solutions.

When everyone else is busy competing for the competitive edge provided by contemporary technologies, cold emailing connects you to a relatively untapped segment of the entrepreneurship development pool.

Granted it might be tedious and sometimes impractical, however, think of it as vintage cars. Its old, yes, possibly archaic, but cold emailing is also undoubtedly extremely invaluable.

The post Why Cold Emailing Is Still Hot appeared first on Done For You.

By simply seeing an appointment show up on your calendar and going through the answers that the provided upon booking the call, you know that you’re speaking to a decision maker

Sales Intelligence 101

It goes without saying, the better you know your customers, the more you’ll sell to them. If you know at the outset of your call or meeting that they’re looking for a solution that does A, B and C; you know instantly whether you’re a good fit for them!

You also know what their roadblocks are…  What they’re struggling with…  And what they need help on.  In fact, if you ask the right questions, you can pretty much figure out how the close will go even before you get on the phone with them!

This works for anyone from coaches and consultants to high-end software vendors and service-based companies.

If you’re a good fit, have your meeting, send your prosposal, and get the sale!

If you’re not a good fit, then it’s ok to cancel the call… They’ll appreciate the fact that you didn’t waste their time!

This is exactly why your TimeSlots form exists… You can ask the questions you need to before you get on the phone with your customers!

Make Your Offer As Simple As Possible

I’ve been in business a lot of years, selling pretty much everything you can imagine for clients and for my own companies. One thing I can tell you is that the simpler you make your offer, the better it’ll be received.

Granted, some sales processes are more complex, and I get that. Your core offer needs to be easy to understand, though; and oftentimes customization of your offer is the difference between a yes or a no, right out of the gate!

Not to mention, keeping an eye on these 15 Characteristics of People Who Succeed at Sales is a good place to start…

Customizing Your Offer For Your Customer

What you’re selling has a lot of different uses, and can be applied in lots of different ways… Whether that be design services, coaching, consulting or higher end physical and digital products.

The power of a sales call, a lunch appointment or a meeting lies in the ‘customization’ of your offer. Will it work for your customer? Is it truly a good investment? Will it specifically solve their biggest problem?

On a sales call, you can address those issues more easily than through any other form of communication – and you can charge a lot more too!  It’s different than with more traditional sales letters – you’re on the phone live with a prospect so you can immediately address their desires and concerns.

Relationship Building

In this world of fast-paced, instant gratification that we consider technology to be; there is always room for relationship-building.

You wouldn’t beleive how many people I’ve talked to who have turned me down the first (and even second time) I talked to them… But those same people are usually our best buyers months and years down the road.

Maybe the don’t have the funds or the capital required to jump on board right now… That doesn’t mean they won’t in a few months!

The Importance Of Following Up

One of the biggest mistakes that I’ve seen folks make in sales calls isn’t what they did on the call itself… It was their lack of ‘follow up.’

After you get off the phone with your prospect, you should be busy doing what you told them you’d do. Maybe it’s putting together a proposal or finding a link for them…

If you go more than 24 hours without following up, that red hot lead is starting to cool off. It’s up to you to take the next step, even if that’s just thanking them for the call or the meeting, and allowing you to learn a little more about them.

Selling effectively isn’t a sprint – it’s a marathon! It’s important to know that and understand that it could take some time…

One of the things TimeSlots does exceptionally well is make sure your prospects get automated emails, all customizable, to make sure they know you haven’t forgotten about them!

Getting Started

The best way to get started is to let your ideal customer come to you…  It doesn’t matter what you’re selling – coaching, consulting, high end programs or services – if someone comes to you they’re already preconditioned to by.

Not to mention, you’re by passing gatekeepers altogether, which makes your job of influencing them and selling them that much easier!

The first step is to sign up for TimeSlot’s free trial and post your calendar online.  You can embed your calendar right in your website or post a floating widget in the sidebar.

Once that’s done, your prospects will be able to book a time on your calendar – not the other way around!

Click here to sign up for TimeSlots for free >>

The post Sales Intelligence: The Key To Influencing Decision Makers appeared first on Done For You.

Mentioned in the video are:

Merchant accounts:

• Paypal
• Stripe
• Braintree
• Authorize.net

Shopping carts:

• Samcart
• Thrivecart
• Shopify

Affiliate platforms with shopping cart functionality

• Clickbank
• JVzoo

To schedule an Automation Action Plan call where we take a look at your business and figure out how to automate, streamline, and scale your business, book a call here:

Click here to book an Action Plan call today! >>

Video Transcript:

Hey what’s up. This is Jason Drohn. I just got a great question from a client and what is the best way to take people’s money basically. We talk so much about conversion, we talk so much about converting leads to buyers, what is the best way to take funds from their account and move them into ours? How do we convert prospects to buyers and successfully take their money?

Now, I know it’s just kind of one of those things that really goes unsaid. Because so much of what we do from a marketing standpoint is turning prospects into customers. But actually taking their money and from their credit card and putting it into our bank account, how does that happen? There’s a couple things, couple ways to do it. The first is to set up your own merchant processor. You’re own merchant account. And a merchant account very simply means something like PayPal. Something that a customer can put their credit card number in, it takes money out of their credit card and puts it into our bank account.

It used to be that there were traditional merchant accounts that you needed to set up first. And they were a pain because it was all phone based stuff. You had to call between the hours of 8:00 and 5:00 and so on and so forth and god forbid they shut down your merchant account and something happens or what not. Now in the last like two or three years, this new breed of merchant accounts has gotten very popular. Things like Stripe and Braintree being two of them. Stripe is a very widely adopted merchant account. It’s also very easy to set up. We use Stripe quite a bit because you can set up a merchant account in minutes. As opposed to needing approval from Authorize.net and then having them take forever and then jumping through risks, the risk department and all kinds of other crazy stuff. Stripe is a good one for your own merchant account.

You can also use PayPal. At the end of the day, PayPal will work fine. As long as it’s tied to an order form. Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Authorize on Net, they’re great from a gateway standpoint. They handle the transaction. They take the money out of credit card and put it into your account. But they don’t have order forms. As Stripe sits, you can’t just set up a Stripe account and then say, “Go pay me through Stripe.” You need an order form. And that’s where pieces of software like SamCart and ThriveCart and even Shopify, that’s where they all come into play because they’re all order forms, they integrate with a merchant gateway. You set them up and then from there they take a customer’s money.

The order form houses the order form, then the transaction gets processed through the merchant gateway and then ends up in your bank account. If you were driving your own traffic then that’s the best solution for you. Having your own merchant gateway. Because funds are deposited in your account within days. Usually two days or three days. As opposed to using a JVZoo or ClickBank where funds are … With JVZoo they’re processed instantly through PayPal. With ClickBank they send you a check or they do a direct deposit so you might wait a week or two weeks or three weeks in order to actually get your money. That’s a problem. Especially when you’re driving your own traffic.

Now, where it makes sense to use a ClickBank, a JVZoo, that’s when you are relying on affiliates to drive your traffic for you. With ClickBank and JVZoo the payment comes in. ClickBank immediately sends your prospect 50% and you 50%. You don’t need to worry about the bookkeeping and making sure that affiliates are paid and all that other stuff. At the end of the day, if you are driving affiliate traffic then JVZoo or ClickBank are the better options for taking a customer’s money.

Where JVZoo falls is JVZoo is very, they’re awesome in the biz op space, in the internet marketing space, business development space, anything business tech oriented is great for JVZoo. They have tens, hundreds of thousands of affiliates that will promote your product for you. If you’re promoting a health and fitness offer or a 4X offer or an investment offer or survivalist offer then you’re better bet is to go and put that offer in ClickBank. ClickBank has, that last I knew, over 200,000 active affiliates. In every vertical and niche imaginable so they’re the better place to get you the traffic that you want for your own niche offers.

But, with ClickBank you have to wait for funds. Whether it’s a week or two weeks, depending on how you set it up, you still need to wait for that check to come in the mail. Which means if you’re turning around and reinvesting that money back into pay traffic, then that’s an issue.

Real quick, just a recap, if you’re running your own traffic you should be processing your own payments so you should be using Stripe or using Braintree or using Authorize on Net tied with an order form. SamCart has fantastic order form software. If you are relying on affiliates to send traffic for you then it’s advantageous to run your order forms through JVZoo or ClickBank. I hope that helps anybody who’s in that kind of a payment processing conundrum.

The post Inside Merchant Accounts And Shopping Carts appeared first on Done For You.