I’ve spent thousands of dollars over the last year hiring and firing these reps.
(If you’re wondering, they’re not from the Philippines.)
But before I get into how I actually hire that many sales reps, here’s a bit about them:
Most of them make just over $1 a day.
Some have been with me for over two years and make $100 a day, and I promote them when they do a good job.
Sometimes I fire them the first day on the job. But they don’t file for unemployment or complain.
No job is too small and they can cover every type of business, speaking every language.
When they reach out to prospects, they also let them know the friends we and they have in common.
Many have tried hiring these sales reps over the last 10 years, but fail.
Do you know why?
They treat these sales reps like billboards— worse than the folks in gorilla suits on street corners.
By now, you have probably guessed that I’m talking about Facebook ads.
If you conservatively assume I’ve made 10 ads per working day for the last 2 years (some days I’ll make 200), then I make 20,000 ads per year.
Here is my personal account, where I like to do a lot of experimenting before cloning to our client base and community:
It has taken me 2 years to come to this insight.
Case in point:
Last week, I was in Singapore speaking at a conference and visiting a client.
Someone who I didn’t know and had never met saw my status on Facebook and paid my fee for a few hours of consulting.
We didn’t get on the phone to discuss pricing or establish my credentials.
My sales reps had done the work educating this gentleman he was willing to pay upfront before I even walked into his office.
In fact, you’re reading this now because our sales reps are doing their jobs so diligently.
This is a step even more refined than the most sophisticated email marketing trigger systems since we’re not only delivering messages based on the user’s last action (or non-action), but with social context and via video.
These “minions” cannot handle a 20-minute complex sales conversation from first touch all the way to close.
They can each deliver one precise message at a particular time you choose, based on the sequence you define.
Dennis Yu, CTO of Content Factory, shares why you should use Facebook here.
You don’t have a sequence?
Then you will claim that Facebook ads “don’t work”. Just like dieting or exercising doesn’t work if you’re not following a process.
Creating semi-automated experiences that chain together messages (frequent lightweight touches over time) is an assist to what you already do to create a sale.
The barrier is not a technological one, but one of not having the right mindset to begin with.
Any more than yelling louder at a foreign tourist will help him understand your English better, such as making ads in a ham-fisted way.
Now I have to admit something to you.
When I said we have 602 sales reps– well, we actually have tens of thousands.
You see, we have thousands of sales reps delivering messages from Infusionsoft– just like little postmen, but no white trucks.
And we have thousands of sales reps from Google, faithfully delivering our messages when people ask questions on the Internet.
We support our sales reps by being ready to answer the inevitable questions they get along the way.
Behind them, we have other reps, each one trained to handle just one question (not two).
They are in our Remarketing Department, which is the largest department in our sales organization.
We know that the reps who are making the initial contact are only starting the relationship– delivering one message each.
But 2/3rds of the journey is in engaging and converting the prospect to a sale.
That’s the Remarketing Department.
The reps in the Remarketing Department deliver messages like:
- Since you bought tickets from us last season, we thought perhaps you’d like to see the schedule this season.
- Because you’ve watched at least 10 seconds of video on how to hire young adults as Facebook marketers, maybe you’d like to see our training.
- I noticed you came to our store, but didn’t buy something. How about a 20% discount?
Everyone in the company is jealous of the close rates the reps in the Remarketing Department get.
But were it not for the Awareness team doing the work to build custom audiences, primarily via One Minute Videos, email audiences, and website custom audiences, the remarketing team would have nobody to call on.
Treat your sales reps like part of your family.
Train them up, and look after their well-being for at least a few minutes per day.
Don’t just send them out into the world with no mapped sequences, abandon them for months, and chastise them when they return home with no sales.
Send them out in large groups so they can work together, each one responsible for one part of your messaging strategy.
Coordinate their interactions so that each can hand off to another, building a chain of positive customer momentum that leads to a sale.
Have you mapped out your customer journey with such touchpoints– driven dynamically by each customer’s action?
