PP 359: Stop Selling and Start Communicating

Kim Sutton: Have you ever felt like the emails that are hitting your inbox feel like an email version of a used car salesman? And I don’t mean a used car salesman that we may encounter in real life, but maybe the fictional ones that we see on movies or TV shows where they’re just yelling at us, buy, buy, buy. Buy this car, it’s awesome, it’s just what you need. Look at this one, you can pay a few hundred extra or a few thousand, maybe 10,000 more, and get this, this, this. This is exactly what you need. Just click here, sign up, get my program and you’re going to hit $50,000 a month. These emails drive me crazy. 

I feel like the person who’s selling to me doesn’t know a thing about me, doesn’t want to know a thing about me, and just wants my credit card number. I’m probably not very far off. I have made this mistake in my past and in my business, and I can tell you that it doesn’t work pushing our products down on people’s throats just turns them off. And in the end, we probably get more unsubscribes than we do sales. 

So what I want to encourage you to do today is to stop selling and start communicating. Rather than sending out emails where you’re pushing products all the time, start asking questions. I don’t know if you’ve realized it, but people love to talk about themselves. So even if it’s an automated email, sent from your CRM. You can be asking questions like, where are you at in your life? I don’t know if you’re selling business products or personal products, but start asking the people questions that are self identifying questions. 

If you’re using a system like Infusionsoft or Ontraport, you can even put a link right in the email where you can give them a few options. Put a link on those options, and then tag the people when they click the appropriate link. Based upon the selection that they make, you can start sending out follow up messages based upon where they are. Or even better yet, ask for them to reply to your email. I can’t tell you how many times people have been surprised when I asked them to reply to an email, and then I respond to their email. They don’t expect those personalized responses. And it’s those personal responses, which really start to build a report. The recipient starts thinking, oh, wow, they see me and they’re actually talking to me, they want to get to know more about me. And that’s when they start talking more about themselves. 

On your computer, you can have a note or a document in Google Docs, or even something on your project management system where when they respond, you can just cut and paste, but nobody needs to know it, but you can keep that conversation going. Stop selling and start getting them to talk. I can almost 100% promise you that as you continue that conversation, those leads are getting warmer and warmer and will be more likely to buy than if you were just sending them sales emails. Stop being so pushy in your communication. Focus on starting conversations, and you’ll see the money start rolling in. 

Now with all this said, go forth and make it a positive and productive day.