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Attention: Small Businesses Who Sell Services In A Multi-Step Sales Process
If your work doesn't predictably lead to add-on sales or positive reviews, don't despair. Chances are you're losing the customer fizz in just one or two fixable places
Just like lemonade loses its fizz if you leave it unattended, so too do the relationships you have with your leads and your customers. Lemonade Plan solves that problem. It gives you a system and a plan to help you manage the eight customer processes in your business that get you leads, sales, upsells and endorsements consistently, automatically and in a way that scales as you grow.
See a summary of the eight steps below, then register for a free copy of the book here.
Leads
Capture enquiries on any platform = no lost leads
Generate Leads
Without predictable and consistent lead generation and lead capture processes, you can't be sure you'll get in front of enough qualified prospects to sell what you need.
How optimised and synced with your follow-up system are the ways you capture leads across your profiles on the web?
Without spending another penny on advertising, how many more leads do you think you could get just by having the right lead capture processes in place?
The number of lost leads in your business will be much higher than you might imagine.
Education
Nurture patiently until you're the obvious choice
Nurture & Educate Leads
98% of visitors to your website aren't ready to buy. But if all your processes are geared only towards the other 2% who are ready to ask for a quote or a meeting now, you're missing out on almost all of the buyers who might be ready in the next few weeks, months, or even years.
There are untapped riches in follow-up marketing if you educate your leads to recognise their biggest problems and see you as the obvious choice to solve them as you gradually turn them into pre-qualified buyers.
Do you have follow up processes in your plan to warm up leads?
Do they last months, or even years?
Meetings
Book meetings & prep your prospect for success
Book & Run Meetings
You have a limited number of available hours to run your business. So it’s important that the time you invest in sales meetings is effective and leads to predictable results. Despite the temporary glow it might give you, there’s little glory or kudos to filling your diary with the wrong type of sales meeting.
How and when prospects book time in your diary, then how you prepare them for it in the run up should result in you both feeling confident that you’re in the right place when you eventually sit down together.
Does your pre-meeting messaging help shape your prospects' expectations of what your ideal customer looks like?
Offers
Make compelling offers quickly & profitably
Make Offers & Get Paid
Almost every really successful small business has a signature product, product line or service that accounts for the significant majority of the business’ revenues and profits. You know who needs it, how to deliver it to exceptional standards, and how to charge a profitable but fair price for the value that is delivered.
Your marketing, sales conversations and quote templates address the customer problems that the signature offer solves, and you have payment services ready to take payments electronically that hit your bank account quickly and securely.
Are your marketing and sales systems set up to support you selling more of your own signature product, line or service?
New Customers
Manage expectations as you onboard
Onboard New Customers
How you welcome new customers into your business is - in all likelihood - where your chances of landing glowing reviews, case studies or referrals really evaporate.
After taking payment, if the customer senses that you haven't carried your sales momentum and energy into the delivery of the solution, then any fizz quickly disappears.
It's a cliff drop moment. Customers can rapidly experience buyer's remorse - the deficit gap between their high point in trust and expectation at purchase and their underwhelm that the problem hasn't just instantly gone away at sign-up.
How do you onboard? Is it a wow experience, or a woeful one?
Do you set realistic expectations of what happens next?
Add-ons
Turn first-time clients into repeat ones
Sell Add-On Services
When you have sales conversations, you should be listening or looking for signals about where the relationship might go next after you've solved the first problem they come with. Great questions give you the most actionable insights.
If you know you could help them more, it's your duty to sell. Even better if it fits an existing upsell or add-on package you offer.
If you're selling home / B2C services, are there other factors at play - pets, children, other rooms in their house etc?
If you're selling B2B services, what other problems do they have?
Are there any recurring services you can offer them?
Customers become loyal clients when you continue to help.
Delivery
Deliver the work that you have sold or up-sold
Deliver On Your Promises
In your small business, reputation is everything. It's critical to deliver what you say you will, when you promised and how you promised to do so. Without this clarity, customers can develop different perspectives of what you're going to deliver and tarnish their perspective of the relationship.
So it's important that you communicate, and are consistent, and clear from the outset to give them a clear picture of what you're doing and when, and what you need from them.
This might mean using project management software that they have sight of too. Or a CRM might be sufficient to help you manage and communicate the delivery process at every stage.
Are you always consistently clear with your customers, or does the clarity that they have get blurred after the sale?
Endorsements
Turn client delight into reviews & warm referrals
Receive Reviews & Referrals
How you've done all seven prior steps determines how likely or not it will be to get positive reviews, referrals or case studies.
Do them poorly or inconsistently and you've no chance. The worst gaps are where the sales experience sets higher expectations than the experience of what's delivered.
But if the experience is high quality from lead to completion and everything between, your customer will help you in return, giving ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ reviews and warm referrals to others like them.
But don't take it for granted that they will. You have to systemise the ask. Unless prompted, people are lazy.
Do you have a systemised process for circling back to ask for reviews, case studies and referrals?
Register for the Book
If you'd like to learn more about the eight customer processes that make up the Lemonade Plan and how to prioritise implementing it in your business, visit the link below to sign up to get the book for free when it's published. If you register pre-launch, we'll even cover the postage and packing costs.
Contact
Lemonade Plan
55 Grove Road - The Old Church
Harrogate
North Yorkshire
United Kingdom
HG1 5EP
SMS: 07445 047000
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Got sales questions? 07445 047000