Ep. 58: Turning Events into Sales: Strategies for Growing Your Service Industry Sales Pipeline

Discover the untapped power of events to fill your sales pipeline. I'm inviting you to a special series where we unveil the secrets to growing your sales pipeline in the service industry, where relationships and trust go a long way. Learn how to turn webinars, workshops, and live events into a magnet for potential clients, guiding them on a journey from discovery to deal closure with your expertise at the helm. Buckle up for real-life stories and strategic insights that will transform the way you attract and convert leads.

This series isn't just about packing your calendar with events; it’s about crafting experiences that resonate with your client's core needs and effortlessly transition them into loyal clients of your services. Get ready to meet our panel of event space experts, who will share their wisdom on aligning your services with engaging topics that capture the right audience. We're not just talking about filling seats; we're talking about filling your business with eager clients who value your expertise and are ready to invest. Tune in and learn to craft a sales pipeline.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

With service businesses. It's an intimate relationship. They need to actually like you and trust you and put their revenue goals in your hand as a service provider. So you have a unique challenge there where you need to show your stuff and build trust with them.

Speaker 1: 0:22

Hey, beautiful humans, it is Sarah and Will Block, the host of the Tiny Marketing Show and today it's freezing. I'm in my office Actually pretty toasty, pretty toasty but outside it is negative 21 degrees. I'm in the Chicago area and the weather is insane. We had multiple days of blizzards and then it followed up by negative 21 degrees. So here I am, sitting in my cozy office talking to all of you. Maybe you're listening to this one at summertime, which is kind of funny to think about, but right now, for me it is not, and I'm recording on a Martin Luther King day. So my husband, who is an elementary school principal, is sitting right behind me playing with my kids behind this wall, and my two boys are home from school, still needing to do their e-learning from the snow days that we had last week. So that's where I am right now. Where are you? If you're watching this on video, leave a comment. Let me know what's going on in your life right now.

Speaker 1: 1:34

But that is not the point of today's topic. Obviously, we're tiny marketing. We talk marketing Today. We're talking about how you can create a more robust sales pipeline with virtual events, actually events all together. So let's just talk events. You have the ability as a service business to bring people from discovering you exist in the first place all the way through the funnel to trust and ready to buy from you with events, because it gives you a unique opportunity to well, you have a platform to be discovered in the first place, but then you're teaching them something through that event, whether it's a webinar, a workshop, you're going on a stage for a conference, anything like that. But then the question is how do you make sales from these events and how do you grow your sales pipeline through these events? So we're going to dig into this. This is going to be a whole series. It's not going to be in succession, it won't be boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, but we're doing a whole series about how to use events to grow your sales pipeline. I have a lineup of some amazing experts in the event space and I'm so excited about it. It's going to be really fun, but this, I guess, will be the kickoff of that series.

Speaker 1: 3:07

So let's first talk about why you need a sales pipeline. As a service business, your business will live and die by that sales pipeline, making sure that it's full and that you have enough in your pipeline to meet your goals. So what episode was that? In episode 51, I just had to look it up. Episode 50, now I'm questioning myself was it 51? Hold on, no good thing. I questioned myself. In episode 55 that came out on January 1st, I talked about how to plan your offers around your revenue goals. Now let's talk about how to plan your revenue goals around your sales pipeline. So let's say you close about 50% of the people that come into your sales pipeline. They fill out a lead gen form and about 50% of those make it all the way through to a contract and you working with them. So let's do the maths and you need to have double the revenue that you want to gain in your sales pipeline at any given time. So how do you do that? How do you get that many people to discover you exist in the first place and become comfortable enough with you that they are filling out that lead gen form, getting on a fit call with you and moving forward with a contract Events are a really easy way to do that. Let's dig into that.

Speaker 1: 4:54

First, let's talk about what a service business is, because we're talking a lot about service business. How do we define that? So service businesses are any business that provides a service. So accounting, lawyers, consultants, they all fall within the service business. And a customer is purchasing your expertise, whereas a product company they are purchasing access to a product or a course creator they are purchasing access to the course. So a service business has a whole different world of sales pipeline because you need to build a relationship with your potential customers and earn their trust before they're willing to work with you. A product, it's a blip on the radar. They will test it out and if it works out for them, it fits well with their processes, they'll keep it. If not, they'll cancel it. But with you, it's an intimate relationship. With service businesses it's an intimate relationship. They need to actually like you and trust you and put their revenue goals in your hands as a service provider. So you have a unique challenge there where you need to show your stuff and build trust with them before you ever have the opportunity of bringing them into your sales pipeline.

Speaker 1: 6:35

It's important to maintain a steady flow of leads and opportunities in your service business, because it's not like a SaaS or a product where ads will do the job and they'll move people through. They'll do a freemium service and it'll be. It's easy to sell at that point because they're trying the freemium service and they're like, yeah, that works for me. I'm going to keep it when. Working with you, you can come up with a freemium service, I suppose, but working with you, they need to put their money on the line in order to see if it works. So let's just pause there for a second and talk about how that works. How can you create a sort of freemium experience? But it's your time, it's your expertise, so you don't want it to be free. You need to come up with some sort of lead product that moves people through the process and gets them to earn trust, but with a low-cost, high-value offer that makes it easier for them to say yes to bigger projects. So start thinking about what smaller projects you can do right off the bat with new clients or new prospects that will get them to say, okay, I believe that he, she, they know what they're doing and can solve the problem that they say they're going to solve.

Speaker 1: 8:13

So let's talk about events. Events bring people from discovering you exist to learning from you, to trusting you and potentially going into your sales pipeline. So what kind of events can you produce yourself or you're owning that event and move them through the sales pipeline? So, first up, webinars. They are easy to put on. You can even do them free if you're scrappy enough, with Zoom or Google Meets and connecting them to your landing pages. You could do virtual workshops and you can do those even in a free Facebook group that is private. You can do conferences get on stages, pitch your expertise to event producers and get on those stages. That way you're borrowing other people's audiences. You can do guest podcasting, so you're getting in front of other people's audiences and showcasing your expertise, and I'll explain in a little bit how you can do that very strategically.

Speaker 1: 9:23

And along that same vein of borrowing other people's audiences, speaking in communities Like coaches often have private communities that they need guest speakers for you can also do webinar swaps, where you partner with a product company, for example, and you do a webinar for them. The product company does a webinar for your audience, so it's in a webinar swap. So those are a few options. You can also join Meetup and create a Meetup group and do in-person events and workshops. You can team up with a coworking space, for example. They already have a ton of people who might be in your ideal audience and team up with them and do a live event. Live events are even better in-person events because you can get to know people. You can chit chat in between events, before or after. It's a good thing. So hosting these types of events will help you build brand awareness, especially if you're borrowing someone else's audience and collabing with someone. It helps you establish credibility because you were teaching your audience something, and it fosters client relationships. It brings people into your sales pipeline.

Speaker 1: 10:45

Now don't let me forget, I'm gonna tell you exactly how to do that. The next thing you wanna do is align events with your sales objections Objectives, not objections objectives, your sales objectives. So think about your offer. What types of topics would make sense to bring people into that offer? And here's a big hint Do not do how-to content. How-to content in events and trust me, I've done it. That's why I know. Don't work to sell. It brings in people who would be better off, for course creators or digital products, so those are great if you are a course creator or a digital product creator listening to the show right now. But if you are a service business, how content brings in people who are DIYers and you don't want a DIYer Now, when you're selling your service. You want someone who is willing to invest in having it done for them by an expert. So start there, cut out any how ideas from your events and next you want to choose a topic that clearly swoops right into your offer what makes sense to your offer. So I'll give you an example.

Speaker 1: 12:09

If you were selling bookkeeping services, as an example, you wouldn't want to do an event how to set up your QuickBooks so that's going to attract DIYers. You would want to create an event. That's more why you need to include QuickBooks in your bookkeeping process. So this would explain why you need to do the thing. It wouldn't say how to do it, and that is the kind of event topic that you would want to do. If you're trying to sell, when you're hosting an event, you will want targeted contents and engagement opportunities within that event. So some ways you can do that. If you are speaking on a stage, for example, have a QR code on your PowerPoint that's showing behind you. That will get them to a workbook that's specifically for that topic. That will get them to leave magnets. That will help them move forward in the sales process and, inch by inch, get a little bit closer to their goals.

Speaker 1: 13:13

You also want to create engagement in those events, so make sure to do a lot of interactive elements to it Holes, quizzes, ask questions, go into the audience and have conversations. Make sure that you put in these engagement points like design your event around these engagement points, because interacting with the audience, getting them involved, getting them excited that is half the battle. You should be doing that Now. If you're doing in a virtual event, you can do this the same way. Cue in those engagement points, plan them ahead of time and make sure your chat is blowing up. If it's not blowing up, then you're not doing it right. But I always have questions in there. I always direct them to do something in the chat at the time, like, if you're understanding what I'm saying, say hell, yeah, something like that to get them engaged. Make sure they're interacting and encourage engagement with each other within that chat too. Like everybody, put in your LinkedIn link, your profile link, so we can all follow each other. These are great ways to create a community around your event.

Speaker 1: 14:33

Next up is case studies. When you can include case studies within your event content, that will make it so much more powerful because you can showcase exactly how you solve this problem for people similar to them. This is a good formula for an event. It could be challenge, transformation what they need to do to see that change and then case study. Do it in threes. Design your presentation with challenge. This is how you solve it. Here's a case study of how I solved it before. Do that three times and you've got a winning event right there. Showcasing case studies, showcasing testimonials screenshots from your clients are even better, because you can't make that up. There's authentic information right there. So definitely make sure to include case studies heavily within your event.

Speaker 1: 15:38

The last thing I'm going to talk about today is how to bring attendees through to subscribers so you can reach them in more ways. So here are a couple of things. If you're doing it live, if you're like borrowing someone else's audience, or if you're speaking at a conference, then you don't have their email addresses. You don't know who these attendees are until they subscribe. So make sure to include gated information where they can get more. So have gated lead magnets available to them, offer them a webinar that follows up and takes them even further through this process, and that's a great way to gather information from people who like, from an audience that hasn't subscribed to you yet.

Speaker 1: 16:30

Now for events that you own you already. They've already subscribed, when they signed up for the event, to your content. But the next step would be nurturing them. So what do you want to do next? When you are hosting an event and you need to turn these attendees into part of your sales pipeline, make sure to connect with them one on one and try and get a connection call on the books. That is the best way to start, like building that relationship. So that's your goal is that connection call. And then next would be community building out a community for anybody who has gone through your events before. So you could do this in a Facebook group. I use Story Prompt for it, so it's a video based community. You can use Circle. There's lots of options Slack, group, discord but creating this community is almost like a little parking lot having a little parking lot party that they can go, stay engaged with you and move them along the process. So when they are ready to hire somebody to solve their problem, you are the person they think of because they are invested in your community. So I'm going to just go through all of these steps one last time.

Speaker 1: 17:55

You have two options for events. You can borrow someone else's audience, which is where I recommend you start. So that would be conferences, webinar swaps, podcast casting. Or you can own the event. That would be webinars, virtual workshops, teaming up with meetup event-bright, teaming up with a co-working community and building an event there, and then make sure that your content makes sense. That moves them to the offer. So go with why content, not how content, and go with the formula of challenge solution case study. Then you want to, for any borrowed audiences, make sure that you get their subscribes. So include a lead magnet page. Maybe you have a 100% discount code on that lead magnet page for a paid product. Or you could do like give away an e-book. You can offer them a extended webinar that tells them more about this topic. So those are some options to get subscribers who are owned by another audience. Last, move those attendees into your sales pipeline by aiming. Your goal is to get them on connection calls so you can build a real relationship with them and building a community that follows the event. So you can, you have a little parking lot where you are engaging. It's a parking lot party. You're engaging, your building relationships with them and you are the first person they think of when they are ready to purchase. Say Ed Descartes, take my money, all that jazz. So that is my intro to how to use events to fill your sales pipeline when you are a service-based business.

Speaker 1: 19:57

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to rate, review, tell your friends. I really, really, really appreciate how much the show has grown over the last couple of years. You guys are doing the thing. I appreciate you. You must be telling your friends about it because I've been getting more listeners and more people reaching out to me, telling me how the content I'm creating makes them feel better, less overwhelmed, less burnt out, and that makes me feel so good that I'm teaching you something that takes away that pain, because I know how it feels to be overwhelmed and just feel a little bit like you're drowning. And when I started to develop these frameworks that I teach you on this show, it's changed everything. It made everything so much easier and I am happy that you guys get to experience that too. So thank you, I appreciate you and I will see you next time.