MBA2291 Q&A Wednesday: How do I get some quick sales ASAP?

0:09Heyo, welcome to the$100 MBA show, business insights delivered on a silver platter every single day with our daily 10-minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co-founder back in 2014. And today's episode is Q &A Wednesday. On Q &A Wednesdays, we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net. Today's question is from Frank, and Frank asks, Hey, Omar, I need to make some quick sales right away.

0:44I got a surprise bill from my web host. I got a surge of bot traffic that caused my hosting bill to be quite large. I've been able to adjust my hosting plan so it doesn't happen in the future, but I need to make some quick sales to cover this expense. What's your advice? Thanks so much for your help along the way, Frank. Frank, there's going to be some times in business like this one where you're going to need to make some quick sales. You need to get an injection of cash, especially at the start of your business where you just don't have a lot of buffer or runway. Now, if you're listening and you might be just like Frank looking for a quick injection of cash or you just want a boost of sales in general to give your business some life so you can invest it into making more sales, this episode is for you.

1:26I'm going to share with you some of the best ways for you to make a quick sale or quick sales in your business. Now, I should preface this with the fact that you must have an existing product or offer, whether it's a course or a training or a consulting package. This makes things a whole lot easier. If you don't have one, you better create one and apply today's techniques. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So Frank needs to make some quick sales in his business. Here's my best advice. The first thing I want to mention is in this process, you don't want to sacrifice quality or do something that you can't fulfill or promise something you can't fulfill.

2:06Say I'm going to give you XYZ and you just don't have the time to give XYZ or don't have the resources to give XYZ. So don't over promise. Give something, that's why I suggest give something or sell something that you already are selling, something that you already are offering, something that is tested. If you don't have something like that, then create something that's minimal viable, a minimal viable coaching package or consulting package or even just a consulting hour. Don't overpromise in the hopes of making money or trying to sweeten the deal to make it easier to sell. So how do you do this?

2:38So the first thing I always recommend is to tap into your existing customer list. Anybody that is buying from you right now or has bought for you in the past, they are the most likely person or most likely demographic to buy from you again. They have already have gotten value from you. They trust you. They know that you can deliver. You've built a relationship with them. These people are primed to buy. They're super warm because they've bought before. So emailing your existing customers an offer is one of the fastest way to make a sale. A lot of people use the formula of the four-day sale. There's a lot of versions of this online.

3:15You can Google this or YouTube it. Some people call it the four-day cash machine. Some people call it the four-day sale. But basically, it's an email sequence over four days making the same offer. And this is pretty straightforward. You're just emailing your list of existing customers with an offer that is up their alley. Now, some people might have bought that offer before. That's okay. You may want to exclude them from getting these emails, but those who haven't bought it might be interested. Fastest, easiest way. If your list is big enough, this probably will solve your problem in a matter of a few days.

3:48Now, if you don't have an existing list of customers or you don't have one that's big enough for you to cover the amount of sales you need, then the next best thing is leveraging somebody else's audience. Partnering up with somebody. Finding somebody who has an email list or an audience that would be interested in your product or service. Reach out to them. This is why relationships are so important because with partnerships, you can say, hey, I wanna get in front of a new audience and make them an offer, whether you wanna run a webinar for them or they just send an email promoting your product or service and you can cut a deal with them, whether you do the same for them or maybe you do some sort of affiliate commission or referral fee for every sale.

4:30Now, this is not the quickest way. Emailing your existing list is the quickest way because it's just a matter of how long you can take to craft an email sequence. This is an afternoon, right? But partnerships take time because you got to manage calendars. Maybe somebody's not free tomorrow or the next day. The next time they're free is a month from now. This is why you should always have partnerships on your calendar. You should always have them all lined up in advance. So you're constantly doing partnerships. But if you haven't done this yet, this is still a great option. And some people might be able to squeeze you in next week to do this partnership.

5:02Of course, if this is a webinar, you're going to need a little bit more time and a little bit more lead time. If this is an email campaign to their list, not as much lead time required. Another option is emailing your leads the offer. Now, I've put these in a particular order. Easiest, fastest, and most effective is number one, emailing your existing customers or past customers. Number two, partnering with an audience that you want to get in front of. These are fresh leads. People have never heard of you, never heard of your offer, haven't been fatigued. So it's going to be effective. And then number three, your leads.

5:33Your leads probably are aware of your products and services, probably have seen a couple of your offers and said no because they're not customers yet. But if the offer is right and it just might be timing, they'll be willing to buy right now. It's right time for them and they just needed a reason to buy because of this promotion, this sale. And really, if you want to have an impactful effect on your campaign, you're going to want to make sure your offer is solid, meaning it's compelling. It solves the whole problem completely. It's a no-brainer and gives them what they're looking for. So emailing your leads is a great way for you to tap into some people that may be ready to buy right now.

6:10So sometimes we don't recognize the fact that we don't offer our leads an opportunity to buy enough. Your leads should be given an offer minimum once a month. So if you haven't given them an offer recently, it's time to do it now so that you can make that revenue. Notice with all these options, whether you're emailing your own customers or you're partnering with somebody to promote you to their audience or you're emailing your leads, these are all warm contacts, people that are familiar with a brand, familiar with a person that's emailing them or messaging them or running the webinar. These are not cold leads.

6:45Cold leads are more long-term, meaning if you're gonna run some ads to get them to go to your website, to get them through your opt-in, this is gonna take some time for them to get warmed up. But depending on what you mean by ASAP, this might be an option for you. Depending on your deal size, your funnel, and how good your nurture sequence is, you might be able to convert people within a month. In my experience with paid advertising really going through the roof, the best bang for buck across a lot of industries has been Facebook lead ads, where they capture the lead right on Facebook. Now, remember, these leads are still cold.

7:17You need to warm them up in your email sequences, in your marketing, before you start making offers. So they are educated on what you offer and the value and why they want to buy from you. But if you got a month, you got five weeks, six weeks, you could probably warm them up in that time to get them to a point where they're ready to buy. I want to give one more strategy, one more tip when it comes to making some quick sales. And this one is one that's really neglected in our space. And that is emailing, contacting, offering a compelling offer to customers that canceled, customers that left you.

7:52customers that refunded. I know this sounds strange, but if they're still on your email list, these people are actually really good quality leads. Now, if you have a way to filter and find out why they canceled, if they canceled just because they're not using it or it's not a good time or they couldn't afford it at the time or whatever it might be, they might be ready to buy now and it might be a good time for you to reach out to them and give them a great offer. A lot of times people cancel or refund or change their mind and it has nothing to do with you. I know this because when people cancel or go through the cancellation process with our software company or software webinar ninja, they go through a survey and we hear from our customers why they cancel.

8:32And the vast majority, we're talking about 95 % of customers when they cancel, has nothing to do with us. And even when it has something to do with us, we might have changed, we might have improved, we might have offered what they were looking for or solved the problem that they had with our product or service at the time. If they're still on your email list, They haven't opted out. These people are great. And I'd like to target these customers instead of just lumping them in with all my leads or non-customers because you could tailor the message. Hey, we were together at one point. We were in a relationship, right?

9:06Or you were a customer at some point. It wasn't the right fit, but I still want to serve you. I still want to help you. And I have something here that might be able to help you. If not, no hard feelings. But when you tailor the message to a group of people so they know that you're talking directly to them, it has a higher likelihood of converting. I'll give you an example of this. I recently received a message from a hotel that we booked but had to cancel and get a refund because you guessed it, COVID times. So I actually bought but had to refund. It had nothing to do with them. It just had to do with COVID.

9:37We couldn't travel. They got back to me recently and sent me a personalized message. And I say personalized, I mean personalized to my situation. They said, hey, you weren't able to experience our hotel because of that situation. We would love to offer you a great rate and free buffet breakfast because we know that if you have the chance to experience our wonderful hotel, you'll be a regular every single season, every single year. They gave me a special offer. They gave me a deadline. It was such a good offer and great copy and great little message that they sent me. I shared it with my wife, Nicole, who's also my co-founder, and thought, hey, this is really smart.

10:13I might share this example on the podcast. So Panorama Hotel in Jindabyne, well done. Well, there you have it, Frank. Hopefully my advice today has helped. If it did, I encourage you to implement one or several of these and let me know how it goes. Just email me over at omar at 100mba.net. If you have a question you want to ask, if you're listening right now, like, hey, I got a question for my own business, go ahead and email me as well, omar at 100mba.net so I can make sure I answer it right here on Q &A Wednesday. say in the email, just let me know if you want to be anonymous or if you just want to use your first name, all good.

10:47Before I go, I want to leave you with this. My advice is to take this in step. Step one, focus on creating a compelling offer. Step two, choose an audience and reach out to them, whether it's inviting them to a webinar or inviting them to buy your product and service on the email or contacting the partner so you can make something happen. Step three, craft the sequence of messages or emails that will be needed for this campaign. Next step, make sure you fulfill on your promise on the product or service that you are offering. And when it's all over, do an analysis. Do a quick retrospective. See what worked, what didn't, how much did you confer, how much money did you make, which emails did best, which ones had the best open rates, click rates.

11:28Take about 30 minutes to write down as many notes as you can so that you know what worked and what didn't so that when the next time you do it, you have some data to use for your next campaign. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.