by: AskPat 567 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everybody Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 567, yes we have done 566 of these and here is the 567th. As always I am here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.
All right, here's today's question from Matt.
Matt: Hi Pat, my name is Matt from homeoanimal.com. We are using a chat system on our website and we get great results with it, but we wanted to help our agent to sell more without being pushy. Do you know great resources, are you planning to create a course on that subject or can you give us few tips, please? Thank you.
Pat Flynn: Hey Matt, thank you so much for the question. You know these chat features that pop up when people are on a website, they are very effective if they are done in the right way, and I think its smart of you to ask this question so you could see how your agents could do a better job for you in converting sales. A lot of it has to do with keeping track. You definitely want to create some systems and standard operating procedures that you can test and see what works best. Every audience is different. Every product has a different set of phrases or interactions and sequences of events that could happen that lead to a sale. You want to make sure you test those things and keep track. So that's the first thing I would say. I do know that this is an effective way to sell is through these chat systems. John Lee Dumas has used them before. I think there's a guy name Trevor Page who has been featured on the SPI Podcast. I believe he has a tool that can do this for you and obviously that's very effective or else he wouldn't have created a tool for it cause Trevor is a super smart guy.
How do you sell more without being pushy? I think the first thing you need to understand is that the more value you provide for others the less pushy that you have to be. This is what I like to call the soft pitch pipeline. The soft pitch you know, its kind of like you are teeing it up for them. You know if you think of baseball, you know, you don't want to give a fast ball, you don't want to give any curve balls. When you do that its hard to hit, right? But if you give a soft, slow pitch you are making it easier for them to actually hit that home run with you. I think that's a great analogy because that's how you want to approach it. It's by you slowing it down for people and actually serving them something that's actually going to help them, that's going to knock it out of the park for you. So that's enough with the baseball analogies.
What this really means is how can you better serve them. So answering any questions they have of course is very important. If you end up having a conversation that's really important because they are warm, they are interested in more. Actually doing something surprising is one of the best things you could do to sell something without being pushy. I think that one thing you could do is if they don't convert right away you could use a CRM or customer relationship management tool similar to PipeDrive that you can do and use to follow up with people. I think the fortune is really in the follow up. That's what Dane Maxwell says, that's what I include in my book, Will It Fly?, cause its true. I've experience it myself, the fortune is in the follow up. If you play the long term game you don't have to be pushy cause things just naturally start to happen as you develop this relationship with those customers.
Another thing that you can use is offering deals. That's another thing that happens quite nicely with some of these chat things. You say, hey thank you so much for spending time in chat, when you are ready to purchase, again you are not forcing people to, you are not creating any scarcity. I think scarcity is very effective but if done in a live format it could seem very pushy. Once you start to add that pressure to people, yes it will convert some but it will also hurt some people, and if people are going to convert there are other ways to do that. I think scarcity is effective and you can use that but if you just say straight up, hey you know you have until the end of the day today, and if you are saying that and they are hearing that for the first time on a specific deal then that's going to be a little bit aggressive.
Another thing I'd like to say is that different audiences feel that different things are aggressive, which is why I think it's important to track and test, and you know you might have to find out where that line is for that particular audience. Of course every person is different too so that's the challenge here. These agents are going to have to do a good job and hopefully you have hired people that are knowledgeable in the space of building relationships and selling to make it better for the customer, that experience for the prospect. To make it seem like its just a natural fit for them to continue to have that conversation with you.
Once thing I would definitely say is definitely take advantage of that yes ladder. So offering something small upfront even for free as a surprise, like I said early, surprises work really really well. They keep you in mind, they keep you in mind, and the more you could stay on that persons mind the more likely they are to convert down the road. You want to utilize that yes ladder, and that yes ladder means there's a sequence of yes's that have to happen before that final big yes can happen at the end. It could start very small. It could start from a response to one of those comments or chat boxes. To a response to a specific question related to that persons actual problem that you are solving. The more yes's you get the more likely it is that you'll get that big yes down the road. Of course because you've led your way there through these series of yes's its going to be less pushy too.
You had asked if I was going to do a course on this and you know I have talked about this before. You might want actually look up Affiliate Marketing the Smart Way and I know you're not doing affiliate marketing per say but you are doing things that in this particular presentation that I did, will help you. This is about setting it up, understanding your customer, what it is they are going for, offering them value upfront, also just being completely honest with them and authentic. That's going to help you sell more for sure, especially in this day and age. You know I think scarcity, like I said, is something you could use but you got to be very careful with how you use it cause that could be where the line really is drawn.
So Matt, just some tips and resources to help you there. I hope that helps you and I want to wish you all the best. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you like featured on the show like Matt's question was, just head on over to AskPat.com you can ask right there on that page. Of course, Matt cause your question was featured here we are going to give you an AskPat t-shirt. We're just going to send it to you cause you are awesome.
So thank you guys so much, I appreciate it. I also want to mention that my audiobook for Will It Fly? is now available at WillItFlyBook.com. You can check that out. It's on Audible, you can use one of your free credits if you already have Audible or you can sign up and get a free credit to listen to Will it Fly. So go ahead and check that out, you can just see it available at WillitFlyBook.com or on Audible, and I appreciate all of you who picked it up already. I have read it myself. I narrated it myself, it was a lot of fun so I highly recommend it cause I think you'll like it. If you've listened all the way through this episode you are probably okay with my voice and how I share things, and you will get more of that in the book for sure. So WillItFlyBook.com and as always I would like to end with a quote.
Today's quote is from Eleanor Roosevelt who said, “with the new day comes the new strength and new thoughts.” Today is a new day, what are you going to do? Take hold of it!
Love you guys. Take care and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.