56: Unlocking the Cheapest Facebook Ads (Part 2)

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Ben Matteucci has developed a keen sense for relationship selling in an increasingly digital world. Through his company, Zima Marketing, Ben helps his clients, primarily real estate agents, build online campaigns and funnels. But, in three short years, Ben has already figured out the value of building relationships with his clients and helping them really succeed in their business, so that he can succeed in his.

 

Teaser:

 

My Guest: Ben Matteucci

Ben Matteucci started his career at age 18 doing door to door sales. He is now the co-owner of Zima, which he founded three and a half years ago. Ben is currently taking care of 68 active clients, of which 40 are real estate agents, and is managing over $1 million dollars in ad spend. He has worked with Seattle’s and some of the country’s biggest brands doing PPC advertising and video production.

 

Pivotal Moments:

While in college, spent his summer vacation going door to door selling pest control for a company called Aptive.
Was very successful and continued with door to door sales once he had finished college.
Was hit by a car as a pedestrian, leaving him with various injuries that prevented him from walking door to door.
Teamed up with business partner and went into e-commerce.
Opened up ZIMA Marketing, a company that provides all digital marketing services.
Built up his business over three and a half years, to the point he is at today, where he has 68 active clients and has managed over $1 million in ad spending.

 

The Advice:

Door-to-Door vs. Relationship Sales
Door to door sales are very transactional. You meet the person once, make your pitch, and hopefully sell to them. Once you have made the sale, someone else from within your company takes over to deliver the product or service. You probably will never meet the person again. This type of sales is more typical for bigger corporations.
Small business usually involves relationship sales. With this type of selling, you are in frequent contact with the buyer and you need to build up a relationship in order to close the deal.

 

Keys to Successful Relationship Sales
When making a proposal for a relationship-based sale, never send over the written proposal without having a meeting to explain it, especially when there is a large price tag attached. Otherwise the lead will take one look at the price tag and throw out your proposal. Make sure to present the proposal during a meeting where you can explain what they are going to get and why they want to take this opportunity. Another option is to send the proposal with an explanatory video attached. In 2019, there are plenty of software packages out there that allow you to record and send videos really easily e.g. Loom.

 

Following up with leads
Calling a lead within 15 minutes of engagement gives a 300% higher chance of converting lead.
80% of sales are made between the 5th and 13th reach out.
The company that reaches out first is 30% more likely to get the client than any other company.

 

Making Sales
To make a sale, you need to get your leads offline and onto the phone. People buy when there is a real connection and relationship, so you are not going to make sales by typing into a DM or feed.

 

The Sales Funnel
There are three stages of the sales funnel:
  1. Awareness Stage: At this stage, you have caught the lead’s attention and they know that you exist. During the awareness stage, you want to give value and more value, without asking for anything at all. A great way of doing this is using video to explain what you do and how you can help.
  2. Consideration Stage: Once a lead engages by clicking on something, you can then give a value proposition.
  3. Decision Stage: If the lead doesn’t convert, you put them into a different funnel where they are shown social proof.
You need to make sure that the back-end of your ad campaigns is set up correctly. You can have the best ad campaign, with the highest click-through rate, but if your website isn’t set up properly, or you are directing leads to the wrong page of your website, you are not going to make the sale.

 

The Struggle:

Ben is ready to scale his business, and to do that, he needs to find good salespeople and train them in. He has set up a staff onboarding process using Training Wall, a software that allows him to build courses, create videos and quizzes, give or restrict access and evaluate knowledge retention. The software is working and is so successful in training people in that, in fact, he has become a victim of his own success. After training in new employees, they suddenly take all the knowledge and leave to build their own digital marketing agencies.

 

The Breakthrough:

Of the few sales people that did stay with Ben, one was an employee of Microsoft in his mid-30s who was on his year off (Microsoft give their employees one year off every five years). Although it was an interesting dynamic for 24-year-old Ben to be training someone a decade older than him, the dynamic actually worked well and both Ben and the new employee enjoyed learning from each other. Building on that success, Ben can target similar people, using the same digital marketing funnels that he uses for his clients.
Furthermore, Ben needs to create filters when employing new staff. During the interview stage, he should be asking potential employees how they feel about building a business. There are people out there who just want to collect salaries and don’t want the headache of running own business. Asking people about this at the interview stage can help Ben to find those people who are built to be employees and therefore have a much higher chance of staying with him long term.

 

Quote:

You don’t know what you don’t know.

 

Resources & Links:

 

For Part 1 of this episode, where you can hear Ben’s journey, go to estierand.com/56-1.


Did you enjoy this episode? Then subscribe to my podcast on iTunes, so you can get automatic updates whenever another episode goes live (and you will be helping me get to #1 on iTunes, making us all cooler in the process!)

About the author, Estie Rand

I love turning ideas into money, and helping others do the same. I help small business owners with everything from marketing to fiscal management, business plans to staffing, database architecture to work/life balance coaching and I love it all! What do you need help with today?

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