What is The Greeting and Why Should You Care?
3 Things you need to know about The Greeting
1. The Greeting is the wide point of the Sales Funnel. What does that mean?
If you’re like many small business owners I talk to, you may not have heard of a Sales Funnel, so understanding how to use the Greeting in your Sales Process might sound foreign.
Here’s a short description.
If you picture a funnel, you can see that its purpose is to take a substance, usually a liquid, from a wide point to a narrow point. Sales is similar. Your Sales Process takes (or should take) prospects from the “wide point” (where there are many people) to the “narrow point”, where there are few – from prospect to customer. The Greeting is the first step in your sales process, and is where you talk to the most prospective customers, so your copy is the most broad. Meaning, less granular, less defined, except for a couple of key instances.
2. It’s all about Identity: Who are YOU, and Who is your Customer?
- “Tired of feeling like your money’s not working for you?”
- “Ready to have the Caribbean vacation you’ve always dreamed of?”
- “Want to make sure your car’s in top running condition?”
Each of these questions speaks directly and intentionally to a specific slice of the larger customer base demographic in each niche – 
Investment, Travel, Automotive Repair. It calls out for someone to identify themselves as the prospect in need of that service, but also identifies itself as the “Solver” of that problem, (with apologies to Vanilla Ice).
By asking the right question, your greeting creates instant engagement
While each question speaks to that prospect, it does so using a valuable tool that you must master: Value Propositions. Each question is predicated on the idea that, if I can identify your problem, I MIGHT just be able to solve it.
Identity is powerful, and really, indispensable, in the Greeting phase of the sales process. If your identity is not clear, and the identity of your prospect is not tied to your Value Propositions, they won’t be motivated to take the Next Step in your Sales Process.
3. Gotta Have Clear Next Steps in your Sales Process
The second place you talk very specifically in the Greeting phase is Next Steps. You have to be very specific in describing what the next step of engagement is for a website visitor. You have to do this in person, too, but it’s much easier to tell if the prospect is missing it or in need of it (or if you completely missed the step).
What is a Next Step?
- “Click Here”
- “Read more”
- “Contact Us”
- “Fill Out This Survey”
–these are all examples of Next Steps in Conversion and the Sales Process. They give your prospect a next logical action to take.
Do you paint houses? Build a page about your method, and then talk a bit broadly on the home page about your process, mention your method and have a link to click to go to that page on your website about Painting.
Do your prospects typically contact you after reading only a little about your product or service? Have a Contact Us button readily available, as well as linked in your body text. In short, modify the execution of this idea to the needs and engagement habits of your audience.
The Effectiveness of The 5 Steps of the Sale
What makes the 5 Steps of the Sale, and by extension, the Greeting in your Sales Process, so effective in content marketing is that it focuses each piece of your content and gives it a purpose. It also informs your SEO efforts.
You know exactly what that piece of content needs to accomplish before you ever start writing it. You already understand your customer, what they want to buy and why, so everything you produce on your website in sales (landing pages, thought pieces, faq) has more punch, and thus more effect.