☎️ Pick Up the Phone
🏋️♀️ Strategy Second
🤝 Get Better Referrals
☎️ Pick Up the Phone
The pen doesn’t sell. You don’t move the sales needle by hiding behind emails and text messages. Pick up the phone and start dialing.
Surprisingly, a piece of technology invented in 1867 still scares people. Phone fear is real, especially amongst young professionals. They’d rather text, email, tap out Morse code, send smoke signals — whatever it takes to avoid picking up the phone.
Like all forms of communication, the written word has its limitations. Real conversations solve problems and make sales.
If you want to move the sales needle quickly, use that device in your pocket to make phone calls! Talk with your customers.
This may require learning, or relearning, old habits and phone etiquette. Picking up the phone to call people has fallen out of favor. It almost feels rude to phone someone without texting them first to ask permission. Which is wild!
Skip the text and make a call. Nothing beats a conversation.
Challenge yourself this week to initiate ten real conversations. It can be as simple as a call to an existing or past customer to ask two questions: How’s business? How’s your team?
It’s surprising what you can learn, and more importantly, how easy sales is when you have a phone conversation.
🏋️♀️ Strategy Second
Leaders can waste a lot of time dreaming about what they want to do and calling it “strategy.”
It’s a little like “strategizing” to run a marathon. You can learn about the best running routines, how to select the right gear to use, and your optimal nutrition. You can even hire a coach to tell you how to win the marathon.
None of that matters until you start running.
The work comes first, in everything: fitness, sports, marketing, operations, business. The path to success is to do the work, then optimize it, and eventually implement strategies to win.
The way we approach growth strategy at Sticky Branding is with a “Sales-First Strategy.” We start with sales.
Sales is like running. You learn so much interacting with customers, listening to them, and serving their needs. As you sell, you deliver. As you deliver, you optimize.
Before jumping to strategy, ask the basic question: Are we selling? If not, start there.
📊 One Stat to Watch
58%
Referral leads convert into customers at 58%, compared to 2.9% for Google Ads leads.
🤝 Get Better Referrals
A good referral made at the right moment makes your life so much easier. Selling feels effortless, even fun.
You are connecting with a customer at the right time with a relevant need, and you are being endorsed by a trusted partner. You really can’t ask for a better situation.
Referrals are one of the cheapest and best sources of new customers, and you can generate more of them. You just have to answer one simple question: “Who knows about a customer’s need for our services before we do?”
It’s a deceptively simple question, but it demonstrates that not all referral partners are equal. Instead of networking with everyone, build relationships and trust with the few people who know your customers’ needs first.
🤔 Thoughts on Today’s Issue?
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