• Person of Persuasion
• Producer of Persuasion
• Profitable Persuader
• Prolific Persuader

“Closing” is so yesterday. Persuading is the way to grow your business now.

“Wes, How do I persuade in my line of work?”

Frequently and with multi-media.

When I ask clients that come to me “what makes you different, unique, special, better than your competition” I usually hear things like

• “We provide great service.”
• “We are accountable.”
• “We are honest.”
• “We are trustworthy.”

That is fine and dandy, however, it cannot be proven until long after the prospect chooses to do business with you.

If you are, indeed, different, prove it up front by acting differently.

You do that by offering great value up front, often for free. You do that with some type of autoresponder that communicates immediately, relevantly and frequently.

You do that with a membership site that protects your valuable, premium content. You exchange that valuable information for the valuable contact information of the prospect. (Since he who has the biggest list wins is the #1 rule of marketing, that’s a good exchange.)

You do that by being patient, transparent and educational, which is impossible without a detailed marketing and sales process that is automated.

This all takes work.

It takes work to analyze your system. It takes work to map it out. It takes work to implement it and test it and verify and measure it and update it. It takes work to write great headlines, deliver relevant messages and strong calls to action.

It also takes work to worry about where your next lead or sale will come from. It takes work to refund money to unhappy clients and respond to social media attacks.

Building a thriving business is work but it’s worth it.

Do you have what it takes to become a POPer? I think so. If you need a little help in any of these areas – growing sales, delivering a pithier pitch, delivering automated direct mail, or automating it all – please jump in with both feet and take advantage of the programs I offer at these links.

Is Your Salesforce CRM Making You Money Or Wasting Your Profits?

Yes, entrepreneurs need CRMs like Ford needs a warehouse and a chef needs a pantry and refrigerator.

All are great for storing the raw material needed to create a final product that can be sold for a profit but until you create and sell the final product, you are just wasting money as you pay to store the raw material.

Yes, you heard me correctly. A static CRM is a liability because it does not make you money on its own. Having the names of your clients and prospects sitting “in the cloud” impatiently waiting for you to remember to call or email or visit or send them a letter means you can only sell to those you remember to communicate with, and hopefully you do so on time, every time and deliver the proper message and content at the right time.

Ford makes money (without a government bailout that bought Union votes) because they mastered the assembly line and automation. Ditto for McDonald’s and every other big company that is a household name.

You, the ambitious, motivated entrepreneur must do the same with your lead nurturing process, which is why I say you don’t want or need a CRM like Salesforce. Having a CRM like Salesforce is actually hurting your business and your profit-earning potential.

Why do I say such harsh things about Salesforce.com? Because it requires you to bolt on additional, expensive, tools to attempt to automate some portion of your lead capture, nurturing, sale, fulfillment and/or follow-up. (See the video below.)

As an entrepreneur, you and I have enough to do. Worrying about whether or not a hot prospect got Email #3 of your 7-step sequence they requested last week is not scalable. Having to remember it has been 30 days since your client purchased and it’s time to send them the New Client Survey is insanity. At best you’ll grind yourself into the dirt trying to make that happen or you’ll pay an admin to do it – but nobody’s perfect, so not all clients will get the survey, which means some will go away mad and some of the happy ones will never be asked for a referral or testimonial – or you just won’t do it at all.

Instead, you’ll focus where all entrepreneurs focus:

• making a better mousetrap. (Which will provide marginal increases in revenue if it’s released on time and if enough people buy it.)
• handling the hot lead because you can’t let the hot ones slip away because you don’t have a system producing more leads tomorrow than you generated today.

What a grind.

I know. I first started using Salesforce.com in 2004 and became certified on it to help Dell deploy it to THOUSANDS of their sales people in 2007 and 2008 (and was even rated the #1 CRM / Sales Trainer during their SPT rollout in the summer of 2007.) Before that I used Onyx, Siebel, ACT!, and a handful of smaller and/or home-grown CRMs, none of which had any automation built in.

And at every company I was a “power-user” of the CRM platform. With Salesforce I used the Blackberry and iPhone editions. I had the Desktop and Microsoft Office features installed. I could generate quotes, assign Tasks, add team members to view and/or edit my Companies, Contacts and Opportunities. I kept my forecasts updated, made Templates to accelerate my one-off communications and utilized the Outlook plugin so my email history stayed with the Contact inside Salesforce.

But Salesforce was not for me. It was installed for my manager and his director and his VP of Sales and the VP of Operations and the owner of the company (or the CEO) so they could run reports, forecast sales to order raw components, set our quotas for the next quarter or year and squeeze us if we were behind on our sales.

Salesforce WAS NOT EVER used well, regularly or proactively to help us generate sales.

Marketing would get an idea and maybe develop a Campaign using an expensive, bolt-on marketing tool like Marketo, to send a couple of emails about a webinar or trade show but then the salespeople wouldn’t know how to look at the hot leads and/or didn’t know how to communicate with them in a relevant manner based on how they came into the system.

But Salesforce.com is the 800 pound walrus in the CRM space and since you think you need a CRM – instead of a sales and marketing automation platform – you think you need “the best” so you pay for Salesforce.com for a year – because they force you to – and by the time you upload your contacts and realize support is not included, email is not included, ecommerce is not included, affiliate marketing is not included, automation is not included, nice templates are not included…- you’re stuck.

Get unstuck. Automate. Integrate. Celebrate.

Contact The Sales Whisperer® team to get, Infusionsoft, the only all-in-one sales and marketing automation platform built by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs.

And when you order Infusionsoft from me, you get so many bonuses like extra training hours, weekly live training, in-person training options, archives, free books and MP3 and copywriting tools you’ll think it’s an Entrepreneurial Christmas every week.

Automate Your Sales. Live Your Life.

Did I get 100% better? Nope.

I just became more convicted and aware of the value I bring and I based my rate on the results I produce for motivated clients.

Only motivated people will pay my rate.

Motivated clients take my advice and produce results that are 2x to 100x what they pay me, so they are happy.

To be great in sales you must first be convinced that what you sell is worth what you charge.

If what you sell is your personal expertise, it could be a hard sell until you get rid of that head trash.

If you need help getting rid of that head trash give me a shout.

Litmos Learning Management System vs CustomerHub by Infusionsoft

Recently a new client mentioned they were using Litmos to deliver their premium content. I hadn’t worked with Litmos much so I decided to take a closer look to help them make an informed decision on how best to proceed.

Litmos is an advanced Sofware-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering that enables you to upload SCORM-compatible content that you can offer for free or for a fee to your prospects / clients / students. It is both an LRS (Learning Record Store) and a LMS (Learning Management System), which simplifies your creation and delivery of various types of content.

Litmos has mobile versions for iPad, iPhone and Android devices, which is nice and it has an integrated shopping cart with no extra fees, which is very nice!

However, it does not have a CRM component, which is a concern. While its API allows you to connect most of the big CRMs to it, that can be quite a hassle. ALL businesses MUST be able to segment and communicate with their prospects and clients in a relevant manner. The flexibility and power of your CRM is key to making this happen.

Litmos offers some nice features for communicating with your list of students in a bulletin-board type manner and observe their progress.

They also have a nice user interface that reminds me a bit of Basecamp. It is easy to add Modules and Content, assign a targeted completion date and issue a certificate and even compliance terms upon completion.

That’s the mostly-good news on Litmus.

The bad news starts with their price. Starting at $49/mo for just 5 users and going all the way up to $1,499 per month for 2,000 users, Litmus is quite expensive compared to CustomerHub, which gives you unlimited users and unlimited storage for just $79 per month. As a small business owner, having this predictability and scalability from the moment you begin brings tremendous peace of mind.

Now if you have a program that sells for hundreds or even thousands of dollars and you have no problem generating dozens of new clients a week or even a month, it’s no big deal. But most new users are not that advanced and/or need some time to not only finish the content but also market it to generate sales so being forced to either think small or dig deep into your wallet is a touch decision for someone launching a new program.

CustomerHub with Infusionsoft gives you the ability add and remove client / student access to content, measure and track progress via Tags and send reminders when clients need to recertify.

The uploading of content is just as easy in CustomerHub and with the setting of Permissions it is easy to grant or remove access.

Litmos’ Dashboard and Reporting is quite nice, but not $1,128/mo better than what Infusionsoft and CustomerHub offer.

In summary, if you are a large enterprise needing to deliver timed training simultaneously to a large subset of your staff and you have a big CRM you are comfortable with and a big IT team to make it all work together, Litmos is a great tool.

If, however, you are a solo-preneur, small business owner, and/or info-marketer, Infusionsoft and CustomerHub give you everything you need with seamless integration, 24/7 support all under one roof.

I see too many people taking notes and attending conferences and watching webinars (halfway while they also tweet and facebook) and they are not doing.

People ask how I have built my business and I tell them I’m a DOER. I get A LOT of stuff wrong but I only know it’s wrong because I launched and I know how to fix it once I see it in action.

Building a business is like learning how to hit a golf ball. You don’t know if you’re hitting it to the right or left or too low or too high or too short UNTIL YOU SWING AND HIT THE BALL! Once you see your ball flight you can then seek help to fix what is not right. So today / this weekend / this next week hit the SEND / GO / PUBLISH / PRINT button and see what happens.

(Warning: Your best proofreading capability happens AFTER you publish. So get over your perfectionist self.”

I am devouring the content to find new nuggets and to check our app to see what I need to go back and revisit.

The book is better than reading the latest novel by a famous author! I can’t wait to get entirely through the whole book so I can go back and read all of the dog Eared pages!!

Seriously.. Thank you!! I am reading it from cover to cover so I don’t miss a thing!

Becky Haugen, Brain Trusts

Your Infusionsoft resources here include:

• Infusionsoft Cheat Sheet
• Order Infusionsoft Now
• Infusionsoft Weekly Mastermind
• Order The Infusionsoft Book
• Get Infusionsoft Help
• Earn $500 for an Infusionsoft Referral

Vision without action is hallucination. ~Edison

Hanging out with my fellow Infusionsoft Certified Consultants, clients and prospects, one question I heard at least 18 times a day during the week was, “Wes, how do you sell so much with no full time staff, no paid advertising, no sales people and no outbound calling?”

My answer every time is, I take massive action. Sometimes that massive action is a 6-month project writing The Definitive Guide To Infusionsoft, while other times it’s taking 50 minutes during a semi-interesting conference to launch an entirely new program, Infusionsoft Study Hall, including a landing page, new Product inside my Infusionsoft application replete with single-pay, month-to-month and annual payment plans, while having my mom issue a press release and my assistant create an event on Facebook and Google+ and get the word out.

Is the Campaign Builder 100% complete? Yes and no.

Yes, it can process orders.
No, it does not have a 75-step Follow-Up Sequence in place, yet.

I follow the adage of “Sell it first, then build it.”

I have the location reserved and the staff on standby to support this. Once the first order or two comes in I’ll finish up the automation behind it but I’m not going to do that until I know I have a winner.

Despite running The Sales Whisperer® since 2006 and being an Infusionsoft Consultant since 2008, I still don’t have a crystal ball. There is no guarantee to know what will work every time and what won’t. But I keep trying and testing and measuring and building.

This Infusionsoft Study Hall will catch on. I think we’ll get a few people in the first one and a few more in the second until we get a steady stream of 8-10 clients each month. But if we don’t, my time and money investment is extremely low.

Which brings me to my “Why Attending Infusioncon Is A Waste Of Time And Money” subject. If you spent three days attending sessions, taking notes, meeting with potential JV partners, looking at the Battle of the Apps and getting inspired and went home and did nothing with the information, you just wasted three days, a lot of gas, and hundreds of dollars on travel, access passes, meals and lodging.

Now that you’re at the end of this blog post go do something to build your business right now then come back and leave a comment on what you did and I’ll send you a bonus gift. I’m not sure what it’ll be. I’m making it up as I go here. Maybe it’ll be a free CD or my new laminated Infusionsoft Cheat Sheet or even a free consultation. Whatever it is, it’ll be good because those that take action deserve a reward above and beyond the reward you’ll receive from doing so.

It’s why poker players wear sunglasses, boxers stare each other down and it’s why executives have receptionists and answering machines. It’s all a game of positioning, angles, posturing and strategy. Which is why, at the heart of my training, my goal is to strengthen your sales psyche.

This is why Zig Ziglar said positive thinking was like bathing. It doesn’t last, which is why you should do it daily.

We can all get down on ourselves. None of us are impervious to having deals go bad, clients get crazy, prospects lie to us, etc. It’s like a “bad beat” in poker or an unseen low-blow in boxing.

It happens.

If you’re a professional, you accept and prepare for the risks and accept it when fate doesn’t work out like you prepared. But you prepare nonetheless. You prepare to win, which starts with winning thoughts.

So let’s take a look at the limiting beliefs we all suffer from on occasion and how to put them behind us.

LIMITING BELIEF: I don’t have enough experience or education to approach and/or sell to top prospects and Big Wigs.
REALITY: Every top prospect, Big Wig, CEO, etc. has their own self-doubts, demons and skeletons in their closets. Many are self-made and/or were poor students in high school and/or college and even dropouts. (Sir Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg, Ted Turner, Ralph Lauren, Howard Hughes, John D. Rockefeller are all college dropouts.) Executives and people of power know what it took to get there and they appreciate tenacity, heart, passion, drive and determination. Few will ever ask, and fewer will care, about your education or lack thereof. They are looking to surround themselves with people that can get things done and make their lives easier. If that’s you, to hell with your educational background

Would you like to see the other 9 now and get started on a 30 day guided plan to sales growth? Check out 30 Day Sales Growth here.

Overcoming Limiting Beliefs Part 1.
Overcoming Limiting Beliefs Part 2.
Overcoming Limiting Beliefs Part 3.

For Infusioncon 2013 I’m launching a new joint venture with a fellow Infusionsoft Consultant (1), a mastermind program (2), a new print on demand service (3), the 2nd edition of “The Definitive Guide To Infusionsoft” book (4), and a few other goodies we’ll be showing at Booth 27 (5, 6 & 7). Please stop by.

To prepare for it we are launching a free, 6-part training program called “The Work-Smart, Play-Hard Infusionsoft Guru Telesummit: 12 Infusionsoft Experts Spill the Beans on 6 Gotta-Be-There-Live Webinars.”

Meeting with and networking and brainstorming (and smoking cigars and imbibing) and talking smack with these 12 Infusionsoft experts is a huge factor in my excitement to be attending Infusioncon 2013. The experts are:

1. Chris Austin – API Expert & Infusionsoft Consultant
2. Tyler Garns – Former VP of Marketing at Infusionsoft
3. Craig Jacobson – Analytics Expert & Infusionsoft Consultant
4. Marc Summers – Membership Expert & Infusionsoft Consultant
5. Bob Keen – Infusionsoft Consultant and Founder of iMember 360
6. Lee Goff – Marketing Expert & Infusionsoft Consultant
7. Jordan Hall – PPC Expert and Infusionsoft Consultant
8. Ritchie Hale – Conversion Expert and Infusionsoft Consultant
9. Janette Gleason – Workflow Automation Expert & Infusionsoft Consultant
10. John Tantola – API Expert & Infusionsoft Consultant
11. Jarrod Morris – Expert Developer & Infusionsoft Consultant
12. Clifford Jones – Conversion Expert & Infusionsoft Consultant
13. Samantha Bennett – Copywriter, Ultimate Marketer Finalist & Infusionsoft Consultant

I’m also looking forward to seeing the Spring 2013 Release (20), swimming in the lazy river at the fancy hotel pool with my kids (21) and showing off the new, 2-sided, laminated Infusionsoft Cheat Sheet I’ll be selling / giving away as a bonus to new clients (22).

Finally, I’m excited about catching up with the Infusionsoft staff from Clate Mask, the CEO, down to the latest new hire (which are quite a few, actually) (23) and meeting prospects I’ve connected with remotely (24) and clients whom I have either never met or not seen since the last Infusioncon (25).

You need to be there, too.

Where else can you network and learn from motivated, optimistic professional salespeople, sales managers, business owners and entrepreneurs for under $500 for 3 days?!

I have a discount code if you still need a ticket and I might be giving away a ticket later this week…stay tuned.