How effective is Referral Key for generating leads?

I am going to begin my answer to this question not talking about writing emails at all, but rather getting at the true source of the problem. Then we'll talk text. The problem with "follow up" messages is they illuminate something is missing in your sales process. Most people fly by the seat of their pants on sales process anyway, believing that only big companies need one. But *everyone* in the field of selling needs a consistent sales process. "To manage we must measure" is a process improvement maxim...and if we aren't consistent in our behaviors, how can we measure? How do you know why you lose some orders and win others? Do you just assume it's your personality, or your price, or your brand? That would be crazy!--and what salespeople do every day. You have given us a single sentence to work with (industry, paths to market, what prospecting/qualifying method you're using now, and other facts would have been helpful). So I don't know anything for certain about your sales process or lack thereof. However, the fact that "following up" is included in your steps and vocabulary indicates to me you are having conversations that go nowhere. If you had a conversation with a prospect and it didn't result in a clear understanding for BOTH salesperson and prospect what the next step was...your process failed. That's what leads to having to "follow up". Every time I see "follow up", the first letter of each word jumps out at me, and that's what I hear it saying directly to me. "FU, Jason. You screwed up." Determining what the next step is, and ensuring it is ultra-clear for both you and your prospect, is YOUR responsibility. It needs to be built right into your consistent sales process. Do it automatically, every time. Otherwise, you end up in this "mutual mystification" situation you're in, where neither you nor the prospect knows what's supposed to happen next. Leading to the plaintive, "Are we there yet?" email. No, we are not. We are nowhere near there yet. If in your qualifying conversation with the prospect you did not uncover the urgent reason they want to buy, do you think you are going to discover it in a "follow up" email? If you didn't find out how important (or not) moving ahead was to them in your live, interactive, back-and-forth dialogue...what makes you think you're going to get the answer in a dull, one-way, inert email? Doesn't that sound ridiculous? Having to "follow up" means you're chasing prospects. Stop doing that immediately, and work on qualifying more effectively. Is this prospect In or Out? A Fit with us or not? Do they have an urgent, important reason to work with us now, or not? Uncover this, and you won't have to "follow up". Most of the places selling falls down are where the salesperson and the prospect have left things in this state of "collective confusion". Each believes they understand what the other means and intends...but the truth is totally different. When a prospect says, "Leave it with me and I'll get back to you," at the end of your meeting, what does that tell you? Me, it tells me NOTHING! Except that I'm being "niced out" of the door. These are times to be a little assertive: "I appreciate that. How long do you think it'll take for you to have a look at it? When should we book a talk to discuss your decision or any questions you have?" Don't leave it to chance. In fact, your sales process ought to have you laying out this as part of the ground rules right up front: "Ms. Prospect, we'll meet for about 40 minutes, that's typically what these conversations are, and I'm sure you'll have some questions for me. I'll definitely have some questions for you, because I want to find out more about your operation and determine whether we're really a good fit for you. At the end of that time, we'll know whether we're a potential fit or not. If not, no big deal. No one will get mad at anybody. If we are a fit, we'll figure out what that next step looks like then. Make sense?" And if the prospect wants to add anything into the agenda, they can. Most salespeople never even lay out these simple ground rules. A consistent sales process is a series of steps. At the end of every step, either it's over or it continues. If it's over, you know why: it's not a fit for a specific reason (no need, the problem's not big enough for you to get involved, or the prospect has uncontrollable anger issues, for example). Over is not a bad thing; it keeps you out of trouble and away from The Client From Hell. If you goof up--and I certainly do from time to time, even though I work with this stuff every day; it happens fast and there's a lot to keep in mind--and you must write an email, you must get the train back on the rails. Let it read like this: Mr. Prospect, I appreciate you meeting with me on (date) about (topic). I forgot to make sure of something at the6 end of that conversation, and I'm hoping you can help me out. Turns out you and I didn't figure out what our next step will be. Now you've had some time to go over what we talked about. At this point, there can only be three possible outcomes: 1. You've reviewed everything, and it's just not a fit for you at this time. 2. You have looked everything over, but have more questions that need answering before moving ahead. 3. You are delighted with the idea and want to move forward, and were just waiting for me to give you this quick reminder of the project. Let me make this super-easy. If the answer is the first possibility, will you reply to this email with the digit '1', and I'll know you're no longer interested? If you want to talk further, please reply with '2' and I'll call you about the further questions you have. If you are ready to go ahead now that I've brought this project back on your radar, please call me at ### so I can get things started ASAP...or reply with '3' to this email, and I'll know to call you so we can begin. Thanks again, YOUR NAME ** This message doesn't chase. It gets things back on track. If your prospect ignores it and you don't get an answer, you can safely assume it's '1' and stop trying to "follow up". In sales, "Yes" is good, "No" is good, but "I need to think it over"--making you have to "follow up"--is torture.

I think Facebook is great for really targeting your audience and you’re on the right track. But I think you can have a better funnel than that. I find, for getting better conversion today, it is better to get your Facebook traffic off of Facebook as fast as you can to your offer and into your funnel. It is more effective for driving actual sales. If you’re just looking for social branding etc. then your funnel might be ok. A very effect strategy is to create either a video or report that you give away to your audience in exchange for an email. It should be something that helps solve or bring to light the problems patients are suffering from and how to go about solving them. Then mention how having a great Chiropractor can solve all of that and can be the most effective way to get ride of the pain. I would also have some things in there that would help them in other ways. Then I would send them to an event or webinar with your top Chiropractor and you in an interview / reveal-all type webinar to educate your lead and manage their fears of going to a Chiropractor. You could tell them that the first step is making an appointment for an assessment. You should make it easy for them to find the best and most effective Chiropractor in their area. You might have a discount on the assessment only available to them for being on the webinar to get them to sign up at the end of the webinar. By the way, once this is recorded, you can make this evergreen so you don't have to do a webinar all the time. As long as you are reaching more and new people with your Facebook campaign you won’t have to change the video all the time.

Once you have people signed up to make an appointment, make sure they are also putting a deposit of a 100 dollars or something down. This will increase your show rate for the Chiropractors. Then give them a voucher for that Chiropractor, for more than you’re asking for at the deposit for services, to use with that Chiropractor. Allowing you to prevent cancelations etc. so that their getting their money back in the form of a voucher for services which, by the way, is not a discount and shouldn’t diminishing your Chiropractors Rates. This strategy I have used in several markets that has produced more prequalified leads and patients / customers. Remember to test, track and know your metrics. You’re going to need to make some tweaks in the beginning, but this can be very effective for you. So to recap: 1. Setup a landing page with your offer in exchange for an offer. You can build this in software like Leadpages.net or Megaphoneapp.com 2. Make your offer downloadable if an ebook or white paper or present your video after. I recommend using Wistia instead of YouTube for playback as you will be able to have heat maps of your video to know where your fall off points are. You can also make this page with the software mentioned above. 3. Use an email autoresponder to engage your lead and email them about the event you’re doing after they had time to read or download your materials. Or, if a video, I would just pitch them at the end with a link below the video to automatically register. 4. Put on a webinar with your guest using either GoToWebinar or Google hangouts if you know how to set that up. 5. Make sure you have your appointment getting page with your the down payment created. You can use several different type of scheduling services so you can automatically deliver the lead/ appointment to the chiropractor. To Note: The reason I don’t send the visitor to the webinar first is because it is better to get the visitor predisposed to your information before asking them to commit to a webinar and when you do it the way I played out, you will have a much better show rate. This is it in a nutshell. Obviously there is more to it. If you need another funnel idea I am hear to help. I have used other effective strategies in the past to also make money on the front end to make your advertising free. It just depends on what you want to do and how advanced you want to get. Hope this helps give you some ideas. :) If you need help implementing something like this just let me know.

Get specific with the "who" of your market (i.e. what kind of dentist? what is their specialty? whom do they serve? demographics and psychographics of both the dentist AND their patients?) And specific with your offer to them. What are you selling? What are they buying? And why do they want it (according to THEM... not you)? Get those factors right and they'll buy from you all day long.

Scaling with paid/cold traffic is a very different kind of beast. Depending on your paid traffic source their motivations and behavior is different than that of a house list or affiliate / JV traffic. Usually paid (cold) traffic is more difficult to convert with a $47 initial offer. I've had success warming up this type of traffic, with clients of mine, before asking for that level of sale. There are some exceptions to the rule depending on how rabid your market is to buy, but the fitness niche is usually more skeptical. You can warm them up by starting with an email opt in to a lead magnet then present them with your $47 sales offer, theres a side benefit to this as well. The other way to warm them up is to start with a survey leading them into a customized VSL to your $47 product. There's also some major benefits here if you segment your traffic right. As far as after the initial sale in regards to the backend funnel itself my typical flow looks like this: Sales page > Up Sell #1 > Down Sell #1 > Up Sell #2 > Thank you page. However some of my clients have much more than 2 up sells in place in some funnels. The trick is that your up sells should flow logically to each other. Meaning make your first up sell a product that gets your target market to their desired solution faster and easier with the up sell. For your down sell, you can keep the same product / offer but lower the price or offer a payment plan. Hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions.

This is not my specialty, however, I have been in your position many many times -- maybe this will help. If the product is in-tangible, then look for JV partners on the Internet. Try to find an expert that deals with these JV opportunities (like me). If the product is physical, then look for sales organizations that have networks of sales people across the country. You do the deal with the organization and the independent network of sales people sells your product. It's a sweet setup if you can negotiate a margin that works for everyone. Hope that helps - Cheers - Nick