Download How to Sell SharpSpring

A Guide to Selling
SharpSpring
(for those new to marketing automation)
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SELLING SHARPSPRING
WELCOME
This is your first step towards a long and successful partnership with SharpSpring.
With this guide, we will prepare you to discuss the benefits of marketing automation
with your clients.
We will cover:
Three revenue streams from marketing automation
How do you price SharpSpring?
How do you sell SharpSpring?
Common objections and questions
Difference between marketing automation and ESP
Difference between marketing automation and CRM
Cost Argument
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SELLING SHARPSPRING
Three Revenue Streams
Before discussing specific pricing strategies, it is important to understand that there are
3 main revenue streams that come from offering marketing automation products to your
clients.
1
2
3
Margin – SharpSpring’s agency pricing is unique in the industry allowing
our agency partners to keep as much as 90% of the retail pricing charged
to the client. Agencies can charge clients retail pricing – which far exceeds
the wholesale cost – and profit from the difference.
Management Fees – Marketing automation allows for highly personalized
communication “workflows” with your client’s leads based on their
behaviors and interests. Producing these high-converting workflows
and related content represents an opportunity for increased billable
hours for the agency, while providing sales revenue and impressive ROI
for clients.
Recurring Revenue – SharpSpring allows you to tie your clients to
your agency and build retainer relationships. When used correctly by
an agency, marketing automation becomes ingrained in your client’s
business processes – generating leads and revenue – and providing
value on a daily basis.
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SELLING SHARPSPRING
So, how do you price it?
Our pricing model is designed to be extremely flexible. We want to make it easy to make
money, and we don’t expect you to be a “reseller” of software. Remember, SharpSpring is
licensed to your agency, so you have the freedom to price our product any way you would
like.
The retail pricing listed on our website is a tool for you to use when speaking to customers
about price. The listed “retail” prices on our website gives you the ability to apply 3 strategies
to pricing SharpSpring:
Full Retail – You can charge your clients the suggested retail price on the website and
collect additional revenue from the mark up. SharpSpring will never knowingly compete
with our agency partners. If your client seeks a price from SharpSpring, they will always be
quoted the full retail price, and 100% of the license fee will be required in advance.
Completely Free – In contrast to the full retail pricing strategy, we have many agency
partners that elect to not charge their clients for SharpSpring at all. Instead, they absorb
the minimal licensing cost, and they use SharpSpring to generate billable hours and
retainer-based relationships with their clients.
Discount on Retail – Perhaps the most common strategy employed by agencies is to
extend a discount off the retail price. Typical discounts we have observed range between
20% and 50% off retail. Agencies who employ this strategy build goodwill with their clients
by passing on a discount, while still maintaining very large margins for the agency. We
find agencies that offer deeper discounts are more concerned with using SharpSpring to
build retainer-based relationships and/or billable hours with their clients. The discounted
price further ties the client to the agency since only an agency can offer its customer a
discounted price.
N
Note
Platform-based Pricing
These varying pricing strategies are only possible because of SharpSpring’s
unique “platform-based” pricing model for agencies. Pricing flexibility is generally
not possible with any other automation company where the agency is considered
a reseller and receives a minimal discount off of a set retail price.
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SELLING SHARPSPRING
How do you sell SharpSpring?
The key to selling SharpSpring is clearly communicating the benefits of marketing
automation. This includes defining marketing automation and explaining the benefits of
the tools to your client’s unique situation.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is a suite of tools to:
Drive more leads
- VisitorID
- Dynamic forms
- Campaign optimization
Convert more leads to sales
- Behavior tracking
- Lead scoring
- Email automation
- Sales notifications
Demonstrate ROI
- Campaign analytics
- Google AdWords integration
- Content ROI tracking
TP
Talking Point
Start Simple
When you explain marketing automation to people with no prior knowledge of
the tools, it can be easy to overwhelm them. We recommend starting with simple
solutions. Since SharpSpring is so affordable, the ability to receive notifications of
traffic to a pricing page could be all the value needed to sell SharpSpring. Later,
you can layer on additional workflows and higher-value automations.
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SELLING SHARPSPRING
How do you sell SharpSpring?
How does marketing automation benefit your client?
Marketing automation generates more leads, drives sales and proves ROI.
In other words, your agency will optimize each phase of the client’s marketing funnel. At
the top, you will capture more leads with VistorID and dynamic forms. In the middle, lead
tracking, lead scoring and sales notifications will enable sales teams to close more deals.
At the bottom, closed deals (won and lost) are analyzed to eliminate waste and identify
successful tactics – allowing you to drive more leads with the same marketing dollars.
Features
Generate Leads
•
•
•
•
Identify anonymous visitors
Capture information with forms
Campaign optimization
Social media integration
Drive Sales
•
•
•
•
Lead scoring to alert hot leads
Email automation for nurturing
Behavior tracking for lead insights
Sales notifications
Measure ROI
•
•
•
•
Comprehensive analytics
Exportable graphs and reports
Eliminate waste
Invest in successesful tactics
Optimize
Campaign
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SELLING SHARPSPRING
How does this differ from an ESP?
Now that you’ve seen the tools and understand the benefits, it’s important to understand
the difference between marketing automation and Email Service Providers (ESP) like
MailChimp or Constant Contact. Confusion between marketing automation and ESPs is
very common for those just becoming aware of marketing automation..
This list of features will help you clearly understand the value of marketing automation
and the limitations of an ESP.
ESP
Marketing
Automation
Generating Leads
Importing lists of contacts
VisitorID for identifying anonymous web traffic
Dynamic form fields for building complete contact profiles
Third-party and native-form integration
Simple CSS adoption to make your forms blend in
Driving Sales
CRM integrations
Easy-to-use email designer
Large catalog of predesigned templates
Lead scoring based on engagement and sales readiness
Single emails scheduled to specific contacts at future times
Valuable sales insights pertaining to a lead’s interests
Notifications sent to sales team of a lead’s online activity
Automatic list segmentation based on lead behavior
Targeted messages for near one-on-one communication
An illustrated timeline of all emails each contact received
Automatic distribution of emails based on contact’s behavior
Effortless conversation with individual contacts
Increased engagement with segmented messages
Proving ROI
Open rate and click-through-rate tracking
Website behavior reports
Identification of contact’s position in sales process
Online and offline monitoring of leads activity
Automatic return on investment calculations
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SELLING SHARPSPRING
How does this apply to my clients?
For most businesses, adopting marketing automation will result in an exponential return
on investment.
The No. 1 reason for pushback from clients is that they confuse marketing automation with
other services like basic email or CRM. Focus on the BENEFITS of marketing automation
rather than selling the specific features. Remember that the three benefits of marketing
automation are:
1. Drive More Leads
2. Convert leads to sales
3. Prove ROI and optimize marketing spending
Of course, you’ll need to talk about the features but always be sure to do so in the context
of these three main benefits.
Once your client understands the features and benefits, you might want to consider
showing your client how marketing automation will work with their specific business.
Explaining marketing automation in the context of your client’s business is simple. The
application of marketing automation can be divided into two categories: Business-toBusiness (B2B) companies and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) companies. Here is a simple
chart of the features of SharpSpring put in the context of the benefits to a B2B and B2C
company.
B2B
B2C
More Leads
•
•
•
Dynamic forms
VisitorID
Campaign optimization
•
•
Campaign optimization
AdWords integration
Drive Sales
•
•
•
Lead scoring
Sales notifications
Behavior tracking
•
•
•
List segmentation
Lead scoring
Email automation
Prove ROI
•
•
Campaign analytics
Eliminate waste
•
•
Campaign analytics
Email analytics
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SELLING SHARPSPRING
How does this apply to my clients?
B2B Application
In nearly all cases, the high revenue per sales
transaction (RPU) of the typical B2B company justifies
the relatively small spend on marketing automation.
Every sale is worth thousands, and every lead is worth
hundreds of dollars. Typical B2B companies spend
hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars on sales
salaries and lead generation activities. Therefore,
it is extremely important to identify every lead and
convert each of these leads into sales at the highest
rates possible.
(continued)
B2B Tool Kit
Lead scoring
Sales notifications
Behavior-based email automation
Dynamic forms
Marketing automation drives more qualified leads and collects valuable sales intelligence
to improve closing rates. These efficiencies are incredibly valuable to your B2B clients.
Triple Your Leads via VisitorID
For B2B companies, highlight the Visitor ID feature, and point out the fact that SharpSpring
can double or triple the number of leads generated by all of your client’s other marketing
efforts. How? Less than 3 percent of visitors fill out a form. That means that 97% of the
traffic being generated from PPC campaigns, search engine optimization (SEO) and
other digital marketing can be considered wastful. VisitorID will identify many of these
“anonymous” visitors, tell sales people what they are interested in and provide contact
information such as email and phone numbers. In many situations, Visitor ID can double
or triple the average conversion of a website.
N
Note
Rebrand SharpSpring
As part of the onboarding process, your agency will rebrand the SharpSpring
platform, email notifications and Visitor ID Daily emails – allowing your agency’s
brand to be in front of your client and providing value everyday.
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SELLING SHARPSPRING
How does this apply to my clients?
(continued)
B2C Application
Marketing automation present B2C companies with a different set of value propositions,
but without a doubt, the benefits of marketing automation for B2C companies can be
equally impressive.
The ability to segment customers and automate near one-on-one communication will
drive more sales. While all the analytics SharpSpring captures will help eliminate waste,
refine messaging and prove ROI.
B2C Tool Kit
Personalization through automation
Campaign Optimization
(when every penny counts, low RPU and high competition
makes optimization key)
Lead scoring for automation
Customer Segmentation via Dynamic Lists
If your client is a B2C company, the dynamic lists are a great way to illustrate the power of
marketing automation. Give your client an easy example. For instance, a t-shirt company
selling colored shirts. You send out an email with five links for five colored shirts. The contacts
will click through to the color shirt they are interested in. As this happens, a dynamic list will
populate and inform the t-shirt company which shirt color the contacts like.
The dynamic lists then allow you to send specific messaging geared towards the contacts’
interests – in this example the color of the shirt. SharpSpring’s lead scoring will quantify the
engagement of this communication and notify your client’s sales team when a hot lead is
ready for a purchase.
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SELLING SHARPSPRING
How does this apply to my clients?
(continued)
This list of features will help you remember what tools you can apply to your client’s
business.
VisitorID
Triple your leads by identifying anonymous traffic
Behavior Tracking
Understand your leads to create one-on-one communication
Lead Scoring
Priortize your pipeline and reach out to sales-ready leads
Sales Notifications
Email or text sales team when a lead indicates they are ready to buy
Dynamic Forms
Capture more leads with forms designed to convert
Email Automation
Send emails with triggers and build personal relationships with leads
CRM Integration
Immediately plug your leads into your sales team’s system
Campaign Optimization
Eliminate waste and identify opportunities
Sales Analytics
Enable your sales team with key insights about each lead
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SELLING SHARPSPRING
Common objections & questions
The benefits of marketing automation are hard for a business to resist, but if you do
face objections, it is generally based on a misunderstanding of the technology and the
benefits. The most common objections are easy to mitigate.
Objection 1
Confusion about email services versus marketing automation
YOU MAY HEAR
“I’m okay. I already have an email service provider - I use Mailchimp.”
or
“What is the difference between marketing automation and Constant Contact?”
If you hear this, you’ll have to gently explain it’s not possible to do marketing automation
with an ESP.
ConstantContact is an email service provider (ESP) – other popular ESPs include MailChimp,
Vertical Response and iContact. ESPs are extremely limited in functionality and analytics.
An ESP will send an email and tell you how many people opened and clicked through the
link. On the other hand, marketing automation will send emails then track where contacts
traveled through the website, score this behavior and automatically send follow-up emails
based on activity. Just as important, marketing automation can notify salespeople of a
leads behavior and interests, so they have the knowledge to turn the lead into a sale.
Finally, marketing automation will produce analytics for every step through the sales
funnel, allowing the saavy marketer to optimize the entire process.
There is simply no comparison between the benefits of marketing automation and
traditional ESPs.
This sales sheet clearly illustrates the difference between marketing automation and ESP.
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SELLING SHARPSPRING
Common objections & questions
Objection 2
Confusion about customer relationship managment tools versus marketing automation
YOU MAY HEAR
“No thanks, I’m currently using SalesForce.”
or
“What is the difference between marketing automation and a CRM?
Unfortunately, we hear this a lot.
Customer relationship managers (CRM) – like SalesForce, Sugar and Zoho – are not
marketing automation platforms. Marketing automation platforms are a robust set of tools
for generating and qualifying leads. There is a nice harmony between the two platforms,
but a CRMs functionality is basically limited to tracking communication between a sales
rep and a prospect. Marketing automation uses forms, behavior tracking, dynamic lists,
email automations and analytics to feed the leads into and sales organization. Simply put,
a CRM does not generate leads or help convert them to sales. Instead, it is an organization
tool for sales people and sales managers.
This sales sheet clearly illustrates the difference between Marketing automation and CRM.
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SELLING SHARPSPRING
Common objections & questions
Objection 3
Concern about the cost
YOU MAY HEAR
“I can’t afford marketing automation”
or
How can we keep this within our current retainer?
SharpSpring is extremely affordable. When a client is concerned about the cost, it’s
important to reiterate the benefits: driving more leads and converting more sales. Your
clients are investing in your agency. With marketing automation, your agency will deliver
and prove a return on that investment. Business owners appreciate an opportunity to
yield more than a dollar on every dollar they spend. Marketing automation is one of those
opportunities.
Additionally, SharpSpring eliminates waste. For example, if you’re spending thousands of
dollars on a PPC campaign that is only driving a handful of leads, SharpSpring will identify
this issue and allow you to redirect those dollars towards productive campaigns. In some
cases, eliminating waste alone will justify marketing automation.
You also can make the case for consolidating tools. SharpSpring’s robust set of features
allows you to operate from one low-priced platform. By cancelling your client’s MailChimp
subscription, you can find the budget for marketing automation.
If they continue to have cost concerns, we recommend offering the client a free trial. With
our platform-based pricing, there is no charge to an agency for setting up or removing
clients within your pool if you have the available space. You can use the empty accounts
to offer your clients an opportunity to try SharpSpring before they buy.
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SELLING SHARPSPRING
Class dismissed
Are you ready to get out there and start selling? Just remember, it’s all about the benefits
of marketing automation:
• More Leads
• Drive Sales
• Prove ROI
TP
Talking Point
Back to the Benefits
We covered a lot in this guide, and if you only remember one thing, remember
the benefits: more leads, drive sales and prove ROI. Memorize these benefits.
When you explain SharpSpring, tie all the features back to these benefits. Your
ability to close the deal is riding on your ability to communicate these benefits.
Once you decide how to generate revenue for your agency and pick a pricing strategy,
you need to start talking to your clients and prospects about the benefits of marketing
automation.
As a professional marketer, you shouldn’t have any problem deciding on the best channel
to communicate your pitch, and don’t forget, SharpSpring is free for your agency to use.
What better way to prove the value of marketing automation than to use it in your sales
process? Start capturing leads, tracking visitor behavior, segementing leads (B2B vs B2C)
and sending automated emails to communicate:
• What is marketing automation?
• What are the benefits of marketing automation?
• How does marketing automation apply to my business?
Last but not least, we are your partners. If you ever need any help or have any questions,
send us an email at [email protected] or visit our resource page here.
Now go start selling!
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