There is a striking resemblance between a product or service B2B sales and On-line B2C sales. In both cases the Customer knows to have a problem and is looking for a solution. The sales carousel is a framework of activities that we can put in place to transform a potential customer into a Customer signing an order.
The sales carousel is made of 3 main streams,converging in an engagement arena, where the customer is made an offer.
Building it properly will increase our conversion rate. Read below how it works:
The sales carousel focus our attention in:
to design a funnel process that will go from the first point of contact to one of:
Along the direction of:
The first scope of any sales initiative is to reach out as many customer is possible. As main advertising professionals say: coverage is more important than frequency. But "who" are you really trying to reach out? Internet based businesses divide the prospect customers into 3 categories:
Each prospect category has therefore its trigger: an information hook that respond to a Pain. To know what the pain is, you can intercept Prospects conversations at Expo, look for key conference topics, ask and even bring it to the prospect attention.
After the customer has been activated by an external challenge or an internal organizational contradiction ( misalignement between desiderata and reality ), he will look for specific types of information that triggers its advancement into the sales funnel:
Every one of us would love to deal just with buyers, people that come to us already sold.
But unfortunately is not like that: most of the prospects need to get to know that there is a specific solution for their problem
( someone does not even know to have problem, by the way…) and those that have identified a potential category for solutions, need to be convinced of our product superiority.
We need to offer them a point of contact that is relevant to their need. The points of contact can be summarized for each prospect category as follows:
Prospects reach out the relevant trigger following precise
Is up to us to assure that prospects’ traffic along each direction is maximized.
The more prospect we are able to capture, the greatest the chances of business.
We need to be present on the LISTS, be recognized by ADVISORS and on the mouth of our NETWORK peers.
And for each type of prospect we must be able to offer what she wants:
whether great DATA, clear advantages ( or DELTAS), or great DEALS.
But the ultimate scope of the TRAFFIC ARENA is to convey the prospect to the engagement arena.
In internet you may call it “landing page”, in daily life the landing page can be a corner, a SHOP, an office reception, or your smiling face.
The engagement arena is the moment when you make your first impression, declaring the benefit you can offer to your Customer.
And since everyone is emotional, keep in mind that people tend to buy based on how they anticipate feeling as a result of owning and enjoying a particular product or service.
There are two type of:
Your first impression should be able to address the pain, or feeling, of your customer, caused by the problem he needs to eliminate. Or it should be able to address the desired outcomes, and therefore the state of mind that reaching the results can produce. Making a good first impression is important, wherever you meet the Customer, if you want to engage him, and transfer him to the Conversion arena.
If you have been able to capture Customer attention, there are only 4 options you can offer to him:
Each of these offers aims to a serie of leveled goals:
Everything in your Conversion Arena should be made to funnel the Customer to one of the last 3 type of options: LAST, SOFT, HARD.
The first option: leaving without any explanation, is a defeat. We should investigate (with an A/B testing?).
Is an occasion for learning from our own mistakes.