integrateHere’s the final chapter of my book on lead generation using a “free book” offer…

Let’s finish by stepping back to see how this fits into your business as a whole.

I started off this book talking about how to sell more without more sales people.  The secret is to recognize which selling tasks require one-to-one human interaction, and which are better off automated.  And for the automated tasks, to build a selling system around them, to make them happen consistently with minimum effort and for maximum results.

I walked you through the creation of a sales funnel, built around a free book offer.  Done right, this does a few things for you and your business.

First, it automates the lead generation, qualification, nurturing, and education-based selling processes such that by the time a lead is speaking with a member of your team, they’re pre-qualified, pre-educated, and pre-sold on doing business with you.  This means you or your sales team are only speaking with folks who are excited to be speaking with you, and you’re converting more of your leads and prospects into clients and customers.

Second, through the use of a book as an educational selling tool, you establish your authority and expertise in your industry in a way that few marketing and selling tools can match.  Because you’re following the “free book” offer, you’re getting your book into a large number of prospects’ hands, creating a leadership position in your market.

And third, by building this as an automated funnel, you are creating a scalable marketing and selling system to help you grow your business.

Done right, this creates enormous predictability and confidence in your sales and profits.

As you implement this funnel, you will start to collect data on the flow of leads and new customers from it.

— How much you have to pay to get a click to your website.

— How many clicks you must get to get a free book request.

— How many free books turn into applications and booked sales calls.

— How many sales calls turn into deals.

Working through these numbers, you can actually use them in a predictive way to grow your business exactly the way you want to do so.

Let’s say, for example, that your goal is to get an additional 20 deals at $6,000 each this month, for $120,000 in additional revenue.

Well, let’s look at some example numbers, working backwards.

You know that you convert 50% of sales calls to deals.  That means to get 20 deals, you need to have 40 booked sales calls.

Perhaps based on your free book and follow up system, you know 25% of your free book requests turn into a booked sales call.  That means for 40 calls, you have to have 160 free book requests.

You know that you convert 20% of targeted visitors to your page into free book request, which means for every 160 free books you want to send out, you have to get 800 visitors to your page.

And finally, you’ve figured out how to get targeted visitors to your free book offer page for $3 per click.  To hit your 800 visitor target, that means you have to spend $2,400 on advertising.

What does this all mean?  It means that if you want to add 20 customers worth $120,000 in additional income for your business this month, following these numbers, you simply need to invest $2,400 in getting visitors to your free book offer page.

$2,400 in, $120,000 out.

These numbers, of course, are examples.  Largely made up.  But in a targeted market, they are very reasonable.

This is a predictable and scalable way of sending a steady stream of leads to your sales team, and ultimately driving top-line revenue and bottom-line profits.  And you’ll find, in most cases, it’s far more affordable — as well as less stressful and time-consuming — to do this, versus hiring, training, and managing a team of sales people to accomplish the same goals.

Here’s how to use this in your current selling process.

If you currently have a sales team in place, driving results for your business, great.  You don’t have to automate away their jobs.

For now, you can focus on rolling out your funnel, and creating an automated selling job that will make their life easier.

Enlist their help.  They can certainly provide valuable input in identifying what it is your prospects need most to move their purchasing process forward.  They can help you design the book content, as well as the follow-up steps that make the most sense.  By building a system that works better, it only means they will enjoy higher-quality leads and a far easier job of closing the sale.

Roll it out, and start to test it.  You want to test different ways of getting people to the page, perhaps different content, different follow-up steps, and different ways of approaching the consultative sales call after they’ve applied.  The more you work the system, the better you can get it to work for you.

When you have the system working like you want it, generating consistent results, consider how else you can integrate it into your marketing.  Does it make sense to add an advertisement for the free book to the front page of your website?  Are you using the free book offer to drive trade show leads and sales?  What else is your sales team doing, where you could integrate the free book offer and sales funnel into it?

Also, if you did a really good job targeting one specific type of customer with your first free book funnel, you may decide you need another to sell to another segment of your customer base.  For example, when I was selling IT training, we had one sales process or cycle for IT department heads, and another for individual IT pros.  Since each have their own drives and motivations and interests that lead to purchase, it’s smart to treat each in very differently, matching the messaging and approach to each segment of the market.

At the very least, “Just Do It.”

When I write about marketing and selling and business development, I come back to the Nike slogan often.  In three short words, they nailed one of the most important and overlooked aspects of success — in sports, business, life, wherever.

There is tremendous urge toward inaction.  It’s hard to overcome the lack of inertia.  Creating momentum from nothing is difficult.  Even in the face of enormous opportunity, it’s easy to use obstacles, roadblocks, and fear of failure (or success) as excuses to not do anything.

In selling, this is evidenced in a point that I made earlier in this book.

When I created a selling system around a free consultation for IT department heads, nobody copied me.  Even when they saw me beating the pants off the rest of the sales team in the highest-value sales, they — at best — simply wanted some of my leads.  When I left, it only took on website redesign for that steady source of high-quality leads to be turned off completely.

You’ve read this book.  Maybe your competitors read this book.  You got ideas and inspiration, as did they.  The difference in results, though, will come when someone takes action.  When they invest the time, talent, and resources in setting up the funnel.

Few will follow through.  It’s a fact of life.  But those who do will reap tremendous rewards in their business.

So, what will YOU do?

Yours for bigger breakthroughs,

Roy Furr