More and more purchasing decisions are happening inside the dark funnel—parts of the buyer’s journey that are invisible to sales and marketing teams. According to Gartner, marketers lack visibility into at least 50% of the buying journey, making growth opportunities harder to influence. And, when B2B buyers are considering a purchase, they spend less than a fifth (17%) of their time meeting with potential suppliers. 

The rise of the dark funnel means more sales processes are happening outside of a sales team’s control and that’s something many of us will balk at. Take software sales for example, more buyers than ever are conducting their research online before they even visit a provider’s website. Online reputation across review sites, social media platforms, discussion forums and events has become crucial in purchasing decisions. 

In this article, I explain more about the dark funnel and provide ideas on how you and your sales team can leverage this trend rather than succumb to its challenges.  

First, let’s talk more about the dark funnel

The dark funnel is a hidden space where prospects explore options, seek advice, and gather info through online research, reviews, social media, and more. Despite being hard to track and influence, the dark funnel is crucial in the rise of self-service culture and buyers wanting control. 

For sales teams, the challenge lies in identifying and understanding these invisible touchpoints, as well as finding ways to influence them positively. 

Now, we can dive deeper into how the sales landscape is changing

Self-service is transforming the way sales teams approach customer engagement. B2B buyers are taking matters into their own hands – research and shortlists are often compiled with little or no vendor interaction. 

Thanks to online retail, the B2C buying journey has evolved to the point where individuals shop around for the best prices,  meaning marketing and advertising channels need to work even harder for attention.  

For both groups, the dark funnel is appealing as buyers can avoid a hard sell and craft a buying journey on their terms. 

Traditional attribution metrics like email open rates and social media clicks are not as useful or significant as they once were. Customers are looking for products and services in places that sales teams often cannot influence – within the dark funnel. 

Using the dark funnel to support the sales cycle

For all its mystery, the dark funnel is not the enemy. Far from it. The propensity for buyers to self-serve means sales cycles can be shorter. This makes the dark funnel a positive support for the sales cycle. 

But that doesn’t mean that sales teams should sit back and let the dark funnel do the work. The onus is on businesses to get their content in front of their audience via the right channel. Podcasts, webinars and LinkedIn forums are all valuable tools of influence for today’s buyers and where content needs to be pushed. 

Companies must work hard to remain visible so sales teams can act when customers emerge from the dark funnel. 

The moment a customer emerges, sales reps can help buyers complete their purchase and feel confident in their decision. Sales teams stand out when they can provide additional insights and value that buyers can’t find on social media or in discussion forums.  

Tips for building influence inside the dark funnel

Sales teams may no longer make the first move but they need to make a good first impression. Since first impressions are made well before any interaction, sales leaders need to be prepared to build influence inside the dark funnel.  

The following strategies can support sales leaders in their efforts: 

• Invest in content marketing and thought leadership to attract potential customers during their pre-purchase research phase. Content such as blogs, whitepapers, videos, and webinars can help build credibility and trust. 
• Optimise SEO and online visibility and create content that answers common queries customers have during the research phase
• Use social media and influencer marketing to engage with prospects on platforms where they are active. Sales leaders who don’t post regularly on LinkedIn are missing out on great opportunities. 
• Consider retargeting and remarketing tactics to reach out to prospects who have already visited your website or engaged with your content. 
• Deploy personalisation and account-based marketing to address the specific needs and pain points of individual prospects. 

With the right strategies, you can make a positive impact on potential customers during this hidden phase of the buyer’s journey. Leveraging the dark funnel correctly will help your organisation stand out and establish a strong foundation for future sales interactions. 

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If you believe there is an easy button for success in sales, the joke’s on you! While there’s tremendous value in a vast array of digital tools, all emerging technologies have a dark side.

Take the internet itself and its use for nefarious purposes: I wish the majority of its usage were for knowledge. How many people are studying the rich tradition of human history, MOOC learning, culture and fostering communal collaboration to break down cultural barriers, cure cancer and end the common cold?

It’s overwhelming to fathom that the internet has become a TV substitute. The Social Networks are laughing all the way to the bank monetizing your time. But you can be laughing all the way to the bank, too, if you realize this.

One of the most powerful things in the world that you can personally do to improve your life and business career, sales or otherwise is to turn off TV and social media. Understand where the new school tools fit in and acknowledge their place in the cosmos. Modernized sellers who are deadly serious about being elite performers in their field use them differently, I assure you. A cautionary tale privately emailed to me:

“Tony, Building our sales team and I just had to fire a sales rep who was only emailing and messaging on LinkedIn and logging fake sales on our CRM. He tanked our company and I’m back to square one building from the ground up. Your post resonated with me and reinforces my belief that HUMAN not ‘social’ connections are the best. Picking up the phone, sitting down for a coffee, flying in for a meeting…are irreplaceable experiences.” – Anonymous

I’ve polled thousands of you from every continent and walk of life, from transactional to enterprise flights, to massively matrixed, complex government procurement cycles that can take 36 months. The jury is in that the phone is still absolutely essential to develop business at every stage of the funnel.

To make the most money possible, the top reps in your company and industry have figured out how to manage their time, leverage old and new tools to position themselves as a trusted advisor and subject matter expert. They’ve figured out which opportunities to prioritise in a pipeline and what they need to close to hit their number.

The simplest way to get there is to build ultra-targeted prospect lists, dial on them yourself with a razor sharp value proposition and set the appointment, don’t try to sell the product. Social is a phenomenal tool for locating which prospects to go after and getting foreknowledge of what they’ll care about but paradoxically, super personalized communication can be a repellent.

Sales Managers who work for ambitious CFOs often prognosticate fantastical growth rates. 30% is not an industry standard, it’s a mass delusion. This is why there’s blowtorch management going on where 10 lemmings get hired so they can systematically fire 7. I can’t help you if you are inside a blowtorch culture. If you have a fair management system, quality product market fit, and you are on a global team in which 20-40% of your peers are hitting their number or exceeding it, so can you!

There’s no secret to sales. You need to hustle and work harder than anyone else to make it pay off for you. “It’s no longer a numbers game,” is a band-aid for the lazy modern seller. I want to contort that statement the other way: it’s harder than it’s ever been. If you truly knew how hard you’d have to work to be successful in this game, you’d probably quit.

Maintain a good sense of humour. See things more clearly, don’t buy into things being more different than the same. Observe the actual day-to-day behaviour of top reps on your team and in your industry. Study the old school and fuse it with the new school. Look at your PHONE as the ultimate social device: “the social phone.” Invest in the best tools money can buy and read your company the Riot Act if they don’t invest in you. They spent 15-25K to recruit you, they can spend the price of a cell phone getting you the best tech for prospecting due diligence.

20% of any system will drive 80% of the results. 20% of any given day’s work will engender 80% of output. That means shockingly 80% of every day is waste, friends! The Pareto Principle is alive and well in all human systems. So in order to optimise the levers that will get you to your financial goal, it’s critical to focus on the most constructive revenue producing daily activities. That’s “tripling” a targeted list – call, text – LinkedIn invite. That’s methodically attacking the same 50 targets for an entire quarter top down, bottom up, middle out, lateral, by bee swarm, referrals, and teamlinks.

After decades years of looking at this stuff, I would say that chasing the wrong people to sell them things they’ll never need is the biggest error. You need to get crystal clear about your target list.

Step one: Go after the competitors of your existing clients. Go after the companies your own direct competitor is working with and are listed on their website.

Step two: You are only as strong as your own intel, just like in war. If you can get an edge, it’s massive. If you can read any LinkedIn Profile, even one that’s hidden to you, it’s pivotal. If you can get a direct phone number to add the power of your tone, intention, and warmth to the sales cycle, it’s imperative.

Elite athletes spend 10,000 hours honing their craft and know every stat down to the wire. They will spend any amount of money getting their driver in golf to weigh one less ounce or having one more component on their racing bike, be made of carbon fibre seeking aerodynamics to crest the hill faster in the Tour de France.

Per Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” You can’t do what hundreds of millions of people are doing and get an elite, unusual, uncommon result. You can’t just social sell or just pound phones, or just use one method of sales.

You’ll get noticed by swimming upstream against the current. You’ll stand out like a sore thumb by doing anachronistic things like writing handwritten notes. You’ll make waves by blending multiple channels in combinations. You’ll jut out by exhibiting business acumen and understanding the fundamentals of how your prospect makes money and SWOTTING where they’re weak.

You’ll get VIP status if you have a confident, sardonic and knowing chuckle because, like them, you are laughing all the way to the bank. You can bank on my methods in these posts, field tested by thousands, and influenced by thousands.

I wish I could tell you, cold calls are dead and it’s all just social selling. The savviest sellers are using both. Top reps are interrupting their “dream prospects” and landing meetings which are converting into rich opportunity pipeline and closing millions in new business. You’ve gotta spark people to realise and react the “pain of same is greater than the pain of change.”

There are too many paradoxes in sales to simplify something that is really an art form. E.g., reconcile these two quotes for me:

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Abraham Lincoln

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Bruce Lee

I’d look at these two quotes like this to master the art of sales. Abe Lincoln is the strategy piece and Bruce Lee is the tactical piece. There is no Strategy without effective tactics and effective tactics fall down without a stellar strategy.

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It’s an exercise I have found helpful for setting goals and developing plans, even if I have often found a way to retain a theme simply by changing the word.

I have kept this practice since 2013 and here is my history of this exercise.

2013: Platform. Lean. Tribes.
2014: Pivot. Frames. Margin.
2015: Order. Depth. Lifestyle.
2016: Growth. Multiplier. Focus
2017: Integrated. Impeccable. Essential.
2018: Polaris. Via Negativa. Leverage.
2019: Velocity. Execution. Potential.
2020: Intentional. Lines. Performance.

A year is 8,760 hours. We perceive time as scarce because we overestimate what we can do in a day (and by a wide margin, deluding ourselves about what is possible in twenty-four hours). However, we underestimate–by an even wider margin–what we can accomplish in a week, a month, a quarter, a year, or especially a decade.

My Three Words for 2021

Here are my three words for 2021 with a short description.

1. Deepen

The charge here is to go deeper. To read deeper. To think deeper and produce works with greater depth, work of greater import, and weight. It’s also an intention to improve by working on the internal, to be more introspective, to deepen all my practices.

2. Polish

Polish commands that one make something smooth and shiny. It is to refine something, and by doing so, improving it. Apple is an excellent example of a company that excels at “polish,” where even the box that contains a device is beautiful, positively contributing to the experience. “Polish” also speaks to the surface of things, making it the perfect counter to deepen. Every holon has an inside and an outside.

3. Slow

There is no mystery around this word. Productivity, a measure of work, is often confused with tasks and busywork. Real productivity is a measure of the value of the work you complete, the work’s outcome, the impact of the work, and the contribution it makes towards your goals. Going slow gets more done at a higher level of quality, increasing your effectiveness.

Whenever you set a standard, it’s worth writing down a set of questions to test whether you are meeting it.

• Is this work deep enough to be both meaningful and useful?
• Is this work polished? Is it beautiful?
• Does this work need more time?

Happy New Year!

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This conclusion, while seemingly obvious, in actuality couldn’t be further from the truth.

Sure price can be a factor, but remember each business owner has unique qualities and therefore price is just one factor on which they can compete.

So why do most businesses only have price to compete on?

1. They’ve failed to identify their unique selling proposition (USP).

As a business, it’s crucial that you identify your USP – however, this is one element in business that is most frequently overlooked.

A strong USP makes it far easier to market your business and essentially reduces the impact the price has on client acquisition. Clients won’t mind paying a little bit more if they believe they’re purchasing a unique product or service that actually offers more.

So how do you differentiate yourself from your competitors?

First, you need to determine what it is you offer that other businesses don’t – and why this is the case. A useful way to identify this is by working out which clients you achieve the best results for, and how they are different to your other clients.

Then you need to craft a unified message that stands out from the crowd. Your message should focus on explaining the actual benefit of what your business has to offer, rather than merely stating your functional skill.

For instance, I could call myself a sales and marketing strategist, which is my functional skill, however, I would then be trying to compete in a crowded market against all the other sales and marketing specialists. It also doesn’t truly encapsulate the benefits of what I do. I do so much more than sales and marketing strategy. I help organizations obtain Rapid Growth – a benefit many sales and marketing strategists do not – so I call myself “The Rapid Growth Guy.” You need to think deeper about what you provide; what makes you unique and different.

A while back I worked with a language school that struggled to obtain $50-$80 per hour for private language tuition. It was a very competitive market and many new entrants where willing to cut their prices to the bone to obtain market penetration. The owner’s primary concern was focusing on how to compete with these new entrants; I on the other hand focused on how to avoid the battle all together. Within the first hour of my analysis I recognised that there was one market they catered to where they provided a whole lot of additional unique services that offered the client immense value. For these unique clients they not only educated them on language, but also helped them learn about obtaining guanxi (the Chinese way of building relationships) and the differences in Chinese ecommerce, as well as assisting them with accent reduction. The answer was clear: instead of focusing on private language tuition for $50-$80 per hour, they needed to concentrate on helping executives and their families during the process of being relocated to China, teaching them the skills required to aid their success. This very simple change to the USP stepped an organization from $50-$80 per hour, to an organization that charged $30,000 per client acquisition for the promise of providing their employers with a more successful “total China experience.”

Many businesses fail to separate themselves from the pack, and in the process they become a “me too” business. If you’re doing the same thing as everyone else and cannot identify your USP, then you only have price to compete on. This is not the path for you!

2. They haven’t identified their target market and their marketing strategy is evidence of this.

It’s important that you identify which customer group you offer the most value to – and it’s this target market that you need to reach via your marketing efforts.

Many businesses fail to achieve this. Instead, they attempt to “try to speak to everyone.” Due to the nonspecific nature of the message, these businesses end up “speaking to no one” instead.

Rather than engaging in a blanket approach to marketing, you need to identify which target market will most appreciate your USP and where you can find them.

So how do you do this?

·         Determine which clients you get the best results for – what are their characteristics?

·         Identify the best ways to connect with those particular clients.

·         Tailor packages to suit your “ideal” customer – these packages should focus on your USP.

One of my recent clients was working in the saturated market of auto-responders. As most saturated markets are, this market was highly educated and highly price sensitive. Within just a few hours of working with his USP, it was decided that his true value wasn’t offering auto-responders to a pre-educated market, but instead offering client re-engagement to niches where “auto-responders” was a foreign word.

This resulted in a more informative sales process, as he had to now specify the benefits of his service. However, when it came to price, he could name it. This turned a product sold in a pre-established market for $1,200 into an $11,000 monthly recurring product overnight – and he subsequently acquired three new clients in just two weeks.

Now I know what you’re thinking: is he ripping these people off? In truth NO, because without his additional education, which costs him more to provide, they would have never discovered auto-responder technology and failed to obtain what has now become a substantial return on investment.

3. They don’t know how to sell.

Sales systemization is essential – however, many businesses simply don’t understand how to sell their products or services.

Your business could have a fantastic offering, but if your sales process isn’t refined then it becomes harder than necessary to turn customer interest into actual sales. Many businesses wrongly believe that their products or services will sell themselves, and therefore fail to take the time to implement a proper sales process.

Training is important; sales staff need to understand that sales is a system, and they need to learn how to use these systems to best sell your product or service. Your staff need to know:

·         What to say when a customer calls.

·         How to generate greater interest from email enquiries.

·         How to discuss what your business does at networking events, thereby engaging listeners and evoking questions.

·         How to gain client interest in your USP.

·         How to turn interest into sales.

Each one of the above processes should be systemized and eventually scripted. It’s important that your sales staff follows a tried and tested process that you know has the ability to deliver the best results. Oh, and if you don’t have sales staff, then as the owner of the business it is even more vital for you.

The disconnection in your sales process can be anything from talking about price before introducing enough value, to choosing the wrong method of communication.

I had a client a few years ago that provided writing services to businesses. When a client sent through an email enquiry, he would respond with a question, and after a few emails he’d send through a price. He found that either before or as soon as the price was mentioned, the client would disappear, never to email again. He decided it must be people that couldn’t afford him, and therefore talking to people like this was a waste of his time. To detour these time wasters he put his price on his website. Soon after the enquiries stopped coming and he decided that he was correct; people just didn’t have the money to pay. Only there was one problem: with no enquiries he would soon go broke. After working with him for a very short time, two things became clear:

1.       He was trying to communicate with people that were trying to outsource writing via email – the exact thing that they probably hated and were trying to avoid.

2.       That the price on the website wasn’t a deterrent to people that didn’t have money, it was a deterrent to all enquirers. Truth is, he was expensive and if he couldn’t explain why before price was mentioned, no one would pay it.

Turning his business around was easy. All we did was remove the price from his website, switched the focus of any return email to an enquirer from responding with answers/price to obtaining a phone conversation, and introduced a step-by-step sales call process. His very next sales call resulted in him landing a $40,000 project in just 40 minutes, and just seven weeks later he had closed deals totaling $80,000.

Many businesses fail to implement sales systemization. Without it, price becomes the only factor they can compete on.

Price shouldn’t be the only thing you’re competing on!

It shouldn’t be, but it is for many. While it does work for some select businesses, it simply isn’t sustainable for many.

If you rely too much on price in order to remain competitive, it’s time to change the way you view your business, your marketing strategy and your sales process.

Price is no longer the only factor you have to compete on!

Publisher notes – originally published at https://matthewpollard.com on August 4, 2015.

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