The friend zone… (cue dramatic music!). It’s awkward in relationships, and it’s even worse in business – you don’t want to be there.

But if you are there, then it’s not all bad news.

What it shows is you are doing an amazing job at building a connection with your leads. They love engaging with your blog, social media, emails, and other content.

The problem is they don’t want to take the next step and financially commit to spending money with you.

Meanwhile, you may be left feeling exhausted by the effort you’re putting into keeping them happy – without anything to show for it! So, what can you do?

Encourage a Little Give & Take

Sometimes the reason your leads are not buying from you is because they don’t see the need to if they can get all they need for free.

This is a perfect opportunity to collect some of your best content and package it into something you can sell for a relatively small price.

If your leads genuinely love what you offer, then they will have no issues parting with some spare change in return for some premium content.

This small act is sometimes enough to change the tone of the relationship and lift you out of the friend zone and into something more serious.

Make a Move

For some other people, their problem lies in hesitation or lack of initiative so they wait, and wait, and hope that their lead will decide to buy something on their own.

This is particularly true of businesses that have a strong offline presence, and traditionally don’t do much online sales or marketing beyond a website and an email newsletter.

They use their website as a sales brochure and hope that someone will pick up the phone and call them – but you can’t expect your lead to make the first move.

You need to be bold and chase after what you want, present a sales offer and be consistent with follow-up.

Pick Your Timing

For some other people, it’s their timing which is wrong. They may push a sales offer too soon, when the lead is still getting to know them or too late, once the ideal moment has passed.

The best time to present your main offer is once you know your lead has gotten to know and trust you and while they are actively engaging with content of a relevant theme.

While this may seem hard to do, marketing automation technology like Genoo makes it simple to insert relevant calls to action throughout your website and trigger automatic follow-up emails based on a visitor’s website activity and engagement levels.

Avoid Giving off The Wrong Vibes

Lastly, you could be giving off the wrong vibes – awkward much? When it comes to the sales pitch, there is a fine balance between drawing people in with desire and intrigue or putting them off.

A sales pitch should be smooth and well-executed. The best often involve several stages to help tune the lead into the frequency of the sales message.

Perhaps they start with a masterclass and lead into a free consult or demo before delivering the ultimate sales pitch.

This sort of approach takes more preparation but presents as more refined and less pushy. It improves the chance of success and doesn’t burn the relationship.

Structuring Your Offers

Lastly, think about how you structure your offers and make sure you have a variety of different flavors and commitment levels.

We call this a product ladder, and it works well because it provides your leads with options to best fit their needs and comfort levels.

Some may not see the need for a big commitment and buy into the whole package, but they may be willing to pay for a certain service or product on its own.

By having a product ladder, you also have opportunities to upsell and cross-sell your leads and take things to a new level.

If you’d like to get tips about how to sell without selling, then be sure to join the Know-Like-Trust Facebook Group where I will be dropping tips and videos every few days to help you become better at marketing and selling online.