Build your foundational marketing and sales systems
Sales and marketing in the expertise-based business space often sounds like the business advice from the South Park underpants gnomes.
Their master strategy?
Phase 1: Collect Underpants
Phase 2: ????
Phase 3: Profit!!
Of course, Phase 2 is the customer buying journey aka marketing and sales.
And the majority of marketing and sales “strategies” online sound like this:
Phase 1: Be just 10% ahead of your clients! (Read System 1 for my take on authority building.)
Phase 2: Try a variety of digital marketing tactics, with social media posting taking the pole position.
Phase 3: Watch the Stripe notifications roll in while you sleep. (Read last week’s Profit System blog for my approach on offer and revenue design.)
When looking for solid advice to get your business in front of people, you’re bombarded by urgent claims from online business gurus: you need an automated marketing funnel, need to be omni-present on social media, need to send daily emails during your launches, and need to get hundreds of leads that you cold message every day.
But these are just tactics. These don’t address the underlying systems so you know why these (or any) tactics work. And without knowing your own marketing and sales system, you wouldn’t know how or when to tailor these tactics to your business, especially if you’re running an expertise-based business that doesn’t rely on volume.
So to set up our marketing and sales system, we need to address two parts:
The four stages of marketing and sales, and systems for each stage
The supporting systems to drive the process
Phase 1: The Stages of Marketing and Sales
In general, I see four stages to the customer buying journey– connection, consideration, conversion, and champion. Your marketing and sales activities should address all four of these stages, so let’s learn more about them first.
Stage 1 - Connection - aka new people know about you
In this stage you’re getting in front of new people and connecting with them. You might hear this stage called “attract new leads”, “grow your audience”, or “discovery”, though I find that language to be somewhat passive and often focused on follower count. Instead, this stage reflects an active effort to build relationships, expose new people to your work, and make meaningful connections with people likely to be potential clients, partners, or even business friends.
You don’t need all the ways to build awareness with new people. You just need a regular way to consistently expand the surface area of people who know about you.
The spectrum of discovery and connection activity spans from relational to traffic/broadcast based, as I’ve learned from Michelle Warner.
Connection activities span from relationship to broadcast-based activities:
Relational activities: Joining communities and being an active participant, referrals, attending or speaking at events, borrowing others’s audiences: guest teaching, guesting on podcasts, guest posting or collaborations, or even direct outreach.
Broadcast: Discovery-based* social media or YouTube, newsletter networks
Discovery-based: Showing up on Google or Yelp, sponsorships or Ads, SEO. (Learn more about your lean ads list building process from Regina Anaejionu).
Read the whole post on how to use relationships to build your audience.
*Note: This activity has to powerfully get you in front of new people. So if your IG or LinkedIn posts are being seen by crickets - and mostly your own current followers? Then it’s not net new increasing your network and increasing who knows about you. So it doesn’t count.
Stage 2 - Consideration aka deepening awareness
In this stage, your potential customers are considering whether you have a solution that can solve their problem or help them to get where they want to go. You might also hear this stage called the “engagement” or “nurture” stage, but I encourage you to not just attempt to stay top of mind, and instead deepen the relationship through value.
They’re considering:
Is now the time for any change?
Is now the time for this change, or this solution?
Are you the right provider for this solution, or is this the right solution for them?
You are building trust with potential customers and getting them ready to work with you and committed to change. They are deciding whether or not they want to go in an active purchase process.
As part of building that trust and assuring them they’re making a good investment, you’re increasing the time they spend with you and your work via content and conversation to be ready to purchase from you. Google identified the “7-11-4” rule, where before before they’ll buy, a consumer needs 7 hours of engagement, across 11 touchpoints, in 4 separate locations (aka video or podcast, face-to-face, email, social media). Read the full post on bingeable content.
Consideration activities can be relational, broadcast, or through “always on” discoverable content. I’ve learned so much about using evergreen content to move an audience from attention to investment from Regina Anaejionu and the amazing Thought Leadership course.
Relational: Following up with new connections and prospects personally, cards and snail mail, live classes, workshops, and challenges
Broadcast, again in that 1: many fashion: Email newsletter, podcast or YouTube, nurture-based social media, online community (but be prepared for the effort to nurture a free or low-cost community that is not your main offer)
“Always On” where they find you and can move through the consideration stage without active effort from you: Online portfolio and press, evergreen email sequence, low-priced online course, book or case study doc.
Importantly, you need to have at least one activity or set of assets that helps your potential client get to know you, your work, and how you help in a deeper fashion as they are considering buying from you.
Stage 3 - Conversion aka going from connection to customer/client
In this stage, we move from marketing to sales. You are leading a sales process: formalizing price, scope, timing, and confirming the purchase through an active sales process. This is often called the “invite” or “offer” stage.
This stage has three sub-stages: Initiate, Guide, and Close.
You’ll INVITE them or INITIATE an active sales process, in again either relational or broadcast-style activities.
Personal invitations: the shoulder tap - personal invitation to someone who expressed interest earlier, mailed invitations
Ongoing inbound inquiries: referrals, discovery calls from your website, the “P.S.” footer of an email, a course or product linked from a related blog post, an evergreen funnel with a pricing change
“Pattern Interrupts”: a launch, a challenge or a project with an upsell option at the end, a “handraiser email”
You’ll GUIDE them to a decision based on your business model: a single discovery call, a long-form sales page, or a multi-step sales process with a B2B client with multiple stakeholders.
You’ll CLOSE with a purchase: from a cart, from a contract, or from a proposal.
In this stage, you’ll want confidence in your consistent sales activities: regular invitation activities, a general sales process outline (and questions to ask), clear proposal or pricing rubric, and an easy way for people to purchase and sign their contract, based on your business model.
Stage 4 - Champion aka repeat and referrals from your true fans
The sales and marketing process isn’t over once they swipe their card or pay your invoice. You want to deliver on that promise of value with strong service and clear delivery so that your clients will want to renew or expand with you and champion your work as a referral source or simply as a happy client.
What’s your client experience, from onboarding to delivery to renewal to offboarding that will turn clients and customers into raving fans and champions?
How are you following up with existing clients on repeat or expanded services?
How are you collecting feedback, testimonials and case studies to demonstrate value to new prospects?
You’ll want regular systems to collect those testimonials, get those receipts of your work, and consistently engage with former clients.
See what I did here? It’s not about having all.the.ways and being in all.the.places.
A sustainable marketing and sales system is having at one activity in each stage that matches your business model requirements that you run regularly AND gets results - new people to be exposed to your work, learn about you and how you can help, and be invited into an active sales process.
And this system runs the most smoothly when you identify activities that you can run regardless of if you’re busy with client work. Because this is how you avoid the feast and famine cycle.
The Supporting Systems: Making those stages run smoothly
You might be thinking, “well Jessica, this is great, but how do I even borrow other’s audiences, get referrals, or know who to invite into a sales process?”
This is where the supporting systems come into play. These systems are all about building the relationships and the structures to make building new connections, getting those visibility opportunities, and actually getting proposals out the door more easeful and repeatable.
Network Development
Network Development is all about building relationships with key people that can help you build your business and you supporting them as well. This is about building an ecosystem of support.
These can be peers, centers of influence, teachers/mentors, referral partners, and potential/active/former clients. Building these relationships are key to unlocking opportunities: opportunities for visibility, collaborations, new ideas and insights.
To develop your network includes activities:
BUILD your network (who do you want to know)
NURTURE that network (tending and deepening that relationship over time)
GIVING generously (who can you be generous with given your own sources of capital)
ASKING for what you need over time (advice, connections, introductions, collaborations).
And you’ll need tools to keep track, such as a network map and a database of when you last talked and next want to reach out. (Also called a relationship CRM).
I cover these tools in the Map Your Network video included in the Deeper Business Membership.
Having a system and structure for regularly doing each stage (build, nurture, give, ask) is how you build that ecosystem. And routinely building and tending to my business network has been the unlock for every accelerating activity in my business.
Referral Development
As referral expert Stacey Brown Randall says, referrals are based on science and CAN be cultivated.
Cultivating referrals is a subset of network development with specific partners who regularly encounter your ideal clients.
Similar to network development, referral development is systematic through identifying those partners, cultivating that relationship, and expressing gratitude.
You’ll want to maintain a database of referrals and referral sources, a stack of thank you cards and an address book.
And of course, you need regularly set aside time to do these outreach and development activities!
Pipeline Tracking
Only 3% of our “audience” is an active buyer at any given time. Our audience is filled with a lot of people who intend to change but aren’t there yet, or those who have a need but aren’t ready to act. Pipeline tracking is the art and science of bringing visibility and structure to know who is in what stage and their next step, so that potential clients don’t get lost in the shuffle of the day to day.
In a Sales-focused CRM, you would track potential customers by stage of the sales process: those who have inquired, who are in the discovery process, who you owe a proposal, who have a proposal, and those onboarding.
You might also track signals of interest: people who click all of the links in your emails, those who reply to emails, and those who sign up for a waitlist or attend any of your live calls.
For this system to run smoothly you need:
A way to keep track of when you last contacted them
A date for what’s next
Explicit time set aside to do the next step in the process: create the proposal, schedule the meeting, handle the follow up, make the contract.
Proposal/Pricing System
Many of you might have a productized offer, or an offer that doesn’t change price. You don’t need this system.
But if you do custom services or require proposals, you’ll want a way to make proposals and pricing simpler, so your proposals don’t take weeks to put together.
Elements of this system can include standard proposal slides or document format with information pre-populated, standard discovery questions to unearth value, or a pricing rubric.
Pricing rubrics are either hourly-based or modular-based parts of your offer, so you know each phase is profitably priced.
How the systems work together
Of all of the systems we’ve covered so far, marketing and sales truly is a system that requires consistent and ongoing attention. You might not need to consistently revisit your authority engine, or your offer structure.
But marketing and sales activities are the lifeblood of a business.
And like many systems, the effort required to turn the wheel a cold start is high. But maintaining a system that’s in motion takes much less effort.
Because once you have all of these stages and supporting systems built out with key activities, you’ll repeat these over time.
Regularly making new connections and exposing new people to your work.
Collaborating with others.
Deepening relationships.
Making invitations to work together.
Building customer relationships.
All get easier once you’re in motion.
Which parts of this system do you need to strengthen?
Assessment Questions
Stages:
Connection: Do you have a consistent set of activities that regularly connects you to new people?
Consideration: Do you have a regular way to deepen the relationship with people who already know you?
Conversion: Do you have a well documented sales process that consistently produces new business?
Champion: Are you collecting reviews, testimonials, or otherwise showcasing your the results of your work?
Systems:
Network Development: Are you building and nurturing your business network regularly, including updating details in a database/CRM system?
Referral Development: Do you have a process for identifying, cultivating, and maintaining referral relationships?
Pipeline Management: Do you maintain the status and next step of all prospects in your sales process?
Proposal and Pricing System: Are you able to develop profitable proposals quickly by utilizing standardized templates, tools, and pricing approach?
Sources
Michelle Warner - Networking that Pays
Regina Anaejionu - Thought Leadership Course
Stacey Brown Randall - Build a Referable Business