The Shut Up & Take My Money Paradox

I recently injured myself saving my dog Ruger from falling to his death..

Or so it felt that way. 

I have some really big dogs, and my wife and I love to travel. Sometimes we take our dogs or some of them and sometimes we don’t. Two in the group seem to have constant issues. Sasha and Ruger. Sasha is a very energetic German Shepherd puppy, and Ruger is a pit bull. They both weigh around eighty to ninety pounds each. 

This last trip we went on, Sasha kept jumping into the seat in front of her, next to Ruger, to which he shared his disgust. What I didn’t know, though, was that this shoved him into the back door, which explains why he was growling. So when we pulled over and I opened the back door from the outside, he came bursting out of it. Had I just let him fall he would have fell straight on his back, smashing into the top corner of a curb.

Don’t ask me why I tried to catch a ninety pound dog with one arm, but I did. My arm popped, and the next thing I knew, I was in a sling.

Workouts have been tough, and I’ve come to the realization weeks later that I have a severe injury. After realizing I’m not in my twenties anymore, some sleepless nights and lots of anguish, I went to the doctor. Now, I’m supposed to go to physical therapy.

The physical therapist called me twice and has yet to follow up. I keep my phone locked down so that only my favorites can contact me, and the rest go straight to VM. Not only do I not enjoy chatting on the phone, but I’m a busy guy—wife, five kids, businesses, clients, dogs, and travel.

If they wanted my money, I would expect emails, texts and calls daily until I booked my appointment. As a busy guy with money that everyone wants, follow up is helpful for me. I assume they get so much guaranteed business from doctor referrals that they’re generally laid back. Nobody is hounding them about sales numbers or speed to lead. How much they are missing in sales, Idk.. maybe everyone eventually comes in due to the nature of their issue.. Maybe not.

Sadly, this is how most businesses operate. The difference is that they don’t have the luxury of referrals from an authority figure like a doctor for a problem as desperate as a physical injury inflicting excruciating pain on someone and limiting their mobility. 

Yet they run their sales and marketing departments that way.

I had another experience on this trip when I responded to an email about a digital product I bought. I wanted more access. I was primed for an upsell, but the person on the other end was oblivious. When they finally shared (days and multiple emails later) that there was another option that would solve my issue, they sent me a payment link and no information about what exactly I was getting. They acted like they didn’t want or care about my money or solving my issue.

I’ve also experienced this before when I had my debit card out and ready to buy the top package of whatever thing I was looking at, but couldn’t get help fast enough.

Or spoke with someone trying to save me money instead of giving me what I wanted and helping me solve my problem.

The thing is, people desperately want to solve their problems. Most of them would gladly pay you to do so, but they’re busy, confused, and overwhelmed with information. They don’t know what to listen to, and most companies have below average sales and marketing systems.

There are three places where I commonly see gaping holes in leaky bucket customer acquisition systems..

But the overarching problem is insufficient attention and speed to qualified leads.

Here’s what happens when someone clicks on your funnel or website and opts in:

They may or may not book a call or make a purchase..

They might opt in but then feel like they don’t have enough information to decide on the next step. They may be sitting on a toilet somewhere. They might be on a break at work. Or they might have just looked up to see that their dog crapped on the floor and their three year old is drawing on the wall.

The ad platform then shows them a bunch of ads with offers and products they are in the market for based on the action they just took. All of which are texting and emailing them.

If you’re not on your A-game, this person will forget you in less than 24 hours.

Politics, culture, bureaucracy, the limited bandwidth of the media buyer or ad agency, and the lack of an overall strategy being developed and pushed forward are some of the main causes of the sales and marketing not being strong enough to help this potential customer.

So, instead of having a team of people aggressively moving qualified leads through the funnel, you have a bunch of people doing whatever is most convenient to their minds at the time. Following a checklist, showing up to whatever gets placed on their calendar, and going through the motions daily.

The funny thing is, when I interview most of these businesses, they all say their sales team is excellent, the agency is doing a great job, or the in-house marketing team is incredible. When in reality, they’re better than shit. 

I know you hate to hear that. 

But let’s just stop for a moment here. What if your team looked at what they were doing and convinced themselves it was far below average? Do you really think they couldn’t find five things they could drastically improve? And do you honestly believe that it wouldn’t impact your bottom line positively in a very noticeable way?

In the hundreds of businesses I’ve helped scale, I’ve never found a process or team that was so perfect that it was maxed out on results it could achieve. Ever.

You might think you don’t have enough quality leads, but it doesn’t matter if you lack an airtight process for handling them when they come in.

Meaning if they opted in, filled out an application, or bought a low ticket product and there’s a chance they are qualified, someone needs to reach out right away. Yes, even if they’ve already booked a call.

The simplest thing you can put in place is a process where a human contacts qualified leads immediately. Again, don’t get into advanced or complicated things like AI, automation etc until you have the simplest part dialed in.

Most companies don’t. If they are actually doing something like this, there’s rarely a standardized way to do it or consistent management. Plus, there are all of the other things that they’re supposed to do that aren’t standardized. So, for every sales rep you bring on, you have to train them instead of sharing training material. 

Or there’s training material, but it’s not focused on aggressively prioritizing and contacting the most qualified leads immediately daily.

The next thing you need to do is send emails answering frequently asked questions and overcoming objections so that this person wants to book a call, and if they have booked, they’re T’d up for the sales rep. Emailing them multiple times per day, as long as it answers their burning questions, will provide more touch points and give them value. They will be more likely to show up knowing their time isn’t being wasted.

I want to emphasize that I’m not talking about auto reminders and spammy, irrelevant emails that were thrown together.

To bring this all full circle you need to be putting twenty to thirty percent of your budget into retargeting. 

Part of that budget needs to be put into a content strategy that allows your prospects to get to know you, and allows you to overcome fears and objections they have to moving forward. You want to include any information that is important for them to know. One of the easiest ways to do this is shoot content answering all of the FAQ’s and objections your team has ever gotten. The email, and even some of the conversion ads will go hand in hand with this.

The other part of that budget will be conversion ads to get your prospects to take the last step whether that’s book a call or purchase. I personally have seen better results with doing this on multiple platforms and placements such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google Search, and Google Display Network.

This creates a familiarity and omnipresence effect fast. Testimonials, FAQ, and objection handling, all work well.

You can use video sales letters, long-form ad copy, articles or blogs, and real video testimonials (recommend you make them FTC compliant). 

All of these steps ensure you stay top of mind, build rapport, and articulate to your audience how your product solves their issue. This makes you highly relevant and aids the sales team in doing their job.

Don’t expect conversions from the engagement content. You’ll know it’s working based on your show percentage, close percentage, and increase in cash collected. Prospects will actually reference their experience seeing you all over the place.

This will only work if you have a culture of people who are hungry, aggressive and excited about your mission and product working for you.

Any pushback is a sign you have the wrong people on your team.

–Lance C. Greenberg