Phantom CTO

Have you ever said these words over the last few months:

It takes longer to make a sale/get a new client.

or

The market is no longer as hot as it once used to be and you got used to the easy stream of clients coming your way.

These are the complaints and frustrations I hear from small business owners who are asking what can I do, things are not happening as fast as they used to be, even then it wasn’t easy now it’s even harder.

What I can recommend every business that noticed that their sales cycle is taking longer to complete is to build systems that make it cheaper to move one step closer to getting a new client.

This could mean more touch points, like scheduling in phone calls to share some valuable content or breaking news that would benefit your prospective client or video case study of someone doing something like they were considering.

Think about what ways can you move leads through your pipeline cheaper? If you’re not making the most of email as a marketing follow up tool, you have a great chance to interact more often with your prospects more effectively than print mail.
Things you can do with email to help move prospects through the sales cycle:

• Have you set up a email campaign/newsletter that walks through issues and obstacles of your best customers?
• Are you working on making a free regular update on how to make their lives or their work better?
• Are you giving them the information to reach you and give them an easy way to pass on your email to their peers with a send to friend link?
• Do you have a genuine, heart-felt  welcome letter once a lead gives you their information that is sent out right away?
• Are you using some kind of CRM, customer relationship management tool, to track your interactions between your clients and prospects?

In a slowing economy, keeping in regular contact with your soon to be new clients is more critical than ever. You want to be top of mind when they are ready to buy or sign a contract. What other ways can you think of reaching out more frequently to your prospects? What kinds of obstacles is your business having implementing this kind of email campaign? Leave a comment for suggestions and feedback.

Snail photo by Martin LaBar

Getting the most out of your website conversions doesn’t have to be a shot in the dark. By using A/B or multivariable testing you can let your visitors tell you what they respond better to. I use Google’s Website Optimizer to do my A/B testing for my small business clients and running split tests without documenting what results occurred can lead to a disaster when  you try to remember several tests back and base decisions on them.

Get a Process for Documenting Your Split Tests

Josh Baker wrote a detailed post on how he documents the processes and results of split testing with a spreadsheet. He wrote out every step he takes for documenting his split tests. To give those visual readers a better idea of what documenting a split test looks like, I created this mind map for you and with his permission I’m sharing this for you to create better processes in documenting the results of your split testing. Download the Documenting A/B Testing in Excel Mindmap as a PDF

We’re closing less sales/clients than ever before?

If your closing rate is going down, focus on  bringing in more people into your pipeline.

Focus on generating more leads, on the cheap. Are you making the most out of your website to bring organic search results for long term visibility to people looking for you? If you’re like most of the small business owners I’ve been helping, you know that your business dollars have to go even farther than ever before. Since you’re closing rate is going down, here are some questions to help you kick start ideas on how to bring in more raw leads into your marketing funnel with the value based web marketing.

Are you focusing on being highly relevant and available to very specific descriptive keywords?

Do you know what your customers type into the search engines to find the answers to their problems?

Are you running a relevant PPC campaign, that you test for best results?

Are you optimizing your ads and landing pages to be relevant to what your business can offer and an immediate call to action?

Does your website give the impression of trust, professional expertise and every other characteristic your business stands for?

If you’re a local business, are you working a local business strategy to come up for people searching for your services in your immediate area?

What problems are you seeing in your business because of a slowdown? What things are you doing differently than a year ago?

How can you make your landing page calls to action, like newsletter sign up or call for more information stand out even more?

Photo by Mobilestreetlife

1. Your business is your life and your passion

2. You take action then think about it

3. You don’t like people telling you what to do

4. You dream about your business

5. You always find new ways to do everything

6. You hate small talk

7. You don’t actually read fine print or long contracts

8. You expect things to happen instantly

9. You hate waiting in line

10. You don’t like meetings

11. You look forward to your workday

12. You have a ten minute attention span

13. You don’t read long emails

14. You write short emails and people think you’re blunt

15. You hate hearing that you’re wrong