Bankable, consistent and reliable results…
…that’s what you want from your marketing funnel, right?
Of course you do.
That’s one of the beauties of having an automated “evergreen” marketing funnel.
Yet, there’s one mistake… a MAJOR MISTAKE… that lots of marketers make with their funnels that makes scaling them up with more and more traffic… extremely risky and nerve wracking.
It’s the introduction into any funnel of something I call Variable Noise.
How I Discovered It
In The Fitness Industry
I grew to understand the value of eliminating all Variable Noise from any marketing and sales presentation when I worked in the fitness industry in my early twenties.
I worked for an extremely sales savvy company that owned and operated ten upscale health clubs throughout central New Jersey. When the owners opened their first club they hired a top gun sales consultant, CE, to come in, set-up all the sales systems, and hire and train the sales staff.
CE was a bit of freak. Like… fifty years-old, juiced-up, pumpkin orange tan, bleached white teeth, and a weird-fitting toupee (not that there are many properly-fitting toups). But, aside from that, he was a sales machine. Knew how to produce an ungodly amount of health club sales. And train a ferocious sales team.
And that’s exactly what he did. To the tune of an average of 3,000 new members a month across all clubs. In fact, it was his sales presentation and training methodology that played a huge role in why that health club company became a multi-million-dollar brand and dominant force in New Jersey.
And it was seeing his approach to sales training that first taught me about Variable Noise in marketing and sales. And why you must eliminate it to get consistency in your sales numbers.
You see: CE had a multipage sales presentation that every sales person was required to memorize and adhere to word for word without deviation.
In fact, every new hire had to memorize the script and present it to him before they were even put on payroll. He then had daily sales trainings, Monday thru Friday, that were based around dissecting, understanding, and reciting the sales presentation to ensure every sales person had it dialed to the tee.
He covered everything from voice inflection and tonality to pace, volume, and overall delivery. But, most important, was seeing that every sales person adhered to the script word for word without deviation every single time. So much so, that if a sales person said one wrong word or phrase while they were reciting the script… like “they are” instead of “they’re”… he pounced on them verbally and made them start over from the beginning.
You see: What CE knew was that introducing any new words, phrases, sentences, statements, etc., into the presentation had the ability to change the outcome, sales results, and conversion rate. Anything different… any Variable Noise introduced… took away the consistency and reliability of the presentation.
If he allowed the sales team to introduce Variable Noise into the presentation he would never have the consistency with his marketing and sales metrics needed to scale things up. Because he would never know, with reliability or predictability, how many prospects it would take to generate the number of sales needed to achieve his monthly sales goals and quotas.
The same holds true for your marketing funnel.
How To Apply It In Your Marketing Funnel
This is why it’s critical that you do not introduce anything new… any Variable Noise… into the marketing experience and communication sequence prospects go through when “active” in a marketing funnel.
Meaning: When a prospect is currently going through an evergreen marketing funnel, the only communications they should receive are the communications (i.e. emails) that are part of the funnel. They should not receive any additional broadcast emails, affiliate offers, blog posts, etc.
By ensuring that prospects who are “active” in a funnel only receive the pre-planned funnel messages, and nothing else, you’ll be able to determine your funnel metrics, and have them be a reliable predictor of future results. And, in turn, will allow you to determine when you’re ready to scale with predictability.
How To Do It…
To do this, either apply an “Active” tag to every prospect who is currently going through a funnel or put them on an “Active Funnel” list showing that they’re currently active in a funnel.
If they buy, put them on your customer list.
If they go through the funnel and don’t buy, remove the “Active” tag or take them off the “Active Funnel” list.
Regardless, the key is that you have some way of identifying the prospects who are active in any funnel, so you do not send them any additional communications outside of the evergreen funnel sequences.
When you do… and when you engineer a funnel that allows you to acquire new customers at break-even or better… you’ll be able to lay your head on your pillow at night and know that you can reliably scale up your traffic to acquire more and more customers.
