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April 21, 2008
What Exactly is a USP?
A Unique Selling Proposition is what sets you apart from your competition. What makes your offer the best offer to the broadest range of customers? That’s your USP. It may be quality of product or service. It may be low price. It may be exclusivity or snob appeal. It may be easy availability or availability of financing. Whatever your USP happens to be, it will serve as the basis for your marketing success.
April 14, 2008
Track Your Customers Attitudes
Are your customers becoming more risk averse? Are they more unwilling to commit? As changes occur in the attitudes of your customers, you must acknowledge the change and build it into your plans. Otherwise your market could simply disappear. Track these changes by calling and talking directly with your customers, your past customers and even your competition’s customers.
March 17, 2008
Don’t Ignore Complaints
What are your customers saying? Are you on track? Do you need to make adjustments? Listening to feedback from you customers not only allows you to maintain a great relationship with that customer, it lets you know what other customers may be thinking. If you aren't getting feedback from your customers, go out and solicit some.
February 11, 2008
Read Your Customers Carefully
Spoken words, written words and body language are all important to understanding your customer’s needs and state of mind. By studying the customer’s needs, you can focus your presentation where it is more likely to generate a return. Many people incorrectly assume that presentation skills are the only key to selling. Listening skills are just as critical.
December 31, 2007
Cost of Customer Acquisition
Many businesses will spend hundreds of dollars to get a new customer. It may be well worth the price. But it isn’t nearly as cost effective as reselling an existing customer. With the existing customer, the communication channel is already open. The presentation is inexpensive to make and the close ratio will be better than with new prospects.
December 24, 2007
Maintain a Follow-up Strategy
You work hard to establish relationships. Don’t let those relationships fade. Use your database to track contacts with customers and prospects. If there has been a lapse, get back in touch. Your easiest opportunity to make a sales presentation is with your existing clientele. The hard part is done. When you have an offer that makes sense, roll it out to this group first. Not only will you generate sales, you will generate referrals.
December 17, 2007
Territorial – Is it a Bad Word?
Assigning sales territories is a necessary part of managing a direct sales function. The territories avoid conflict among the reps because each customer or prospect fits into the territory of a specified sales rep. Technology has created change. Many companies have trimmed their direct sales activities and rely instead on various indirect sales channels. Because these new channels are removed from the company’s direct control, it is far less practical to enforce geographic borders on a sales territory. Still, it’s in the best interest of the company to avoid channel conflict. Reseller and agent arrangements must be carefully crafted to limit the license to precisely that segment of the market that is agreed upon. The territory isn’t necessarily based on geography, but it is a territory nonetheless.
December 10, 2007
Educate your Customers and they will Buy
Don’t assume that your customers understand your products or services, especially the finer points that differentiate you from the competition. It takes time to get totally familiar with a product, and customers just aren’t motivated to get there on their own. Spend the time to point out features that you believe most likely to benefit the customer. Be redundant and use plain terms to have the maximum impact.
December 3, 2007
Dreamer vs. Realist
New ideas are critical to the continued growth of a business. Regular brainstorming sessions and rewards for thinking “out of the box” provide the innovation that leads to new services, new channels, new campaigns, new techniques that yield better results, etc. Just because a dreamer comes up with a seemingly whiz-bang idea, however, doesn’t give cause for flying headfirst in that direction. The realist steps in with controlled testing, cost analysis, market demand information and the other proof of concept data that avoids horrendous mistakes. It’s a rare individual who can play both roles, so keep someone around who takes the opposite view. When you both agree, you can feel strongly about your chances for success.
November 26, 2007
Put Yourself in the Customer’s Shoes
You’re smart enough and you make good choices. But you may not meet the profile of a typical customer. Don’t approach every sale as though you were the customer. Actually study and understand the profile of your typical customer. Then you can tailor your sales presentation to meet their needs and anticipate their objections. You may be the sports car type, but if you’re selling minivans, you have to understand the needs and concerns of customers looking for family transportation. Forget about your own preferences and communicate with the customer in a way that shows that you both understand and care about their special needs and preferences.
November 19, 2007
Getting Past the Secretary
Every salesman knows the challenge of a protective secretary. You can’t make the sale if your call doesn’t get through. The key to winning this battle is to treat the secretary with respect. If you try controlling her, you will lose because she is there are you aren’t. By showing proper respect, the secretary is more likely to assist your efforts to make contact. Of course, the techniques of dialing before or after normal business hours can also be effective at catching a busy executive behind his/her desk answering the phone.
November 5, 2007
Take Advantage of Incoming Calls
Every incoming call represents a potential sale. Don’t leave money on the table – or worse yet – drive a customer away, by having poorly trained personnel handle incoming calls. Customers expect to have questions addressed quickly, if not by the person answering the phone, then with only one transfer. They also expect to easily get to a live person – any automated system should have a ‘dial –0-‘ option to get help. When handled by a knowledgeable representative, each inbound call represents an opportunity to initiate a new sale. Train your phone personnel to ask questions, find out whether the caller can make a purchasing decision, and if so, to ask for the order.
October 22, 2007
Succeeding with Cold Calls
The key to a successful cold call campaign is being prepared. Knowledge of your product offer, knowledge of the profile of the typical prospect, a solid script and plenty of rehearsal will go a long way toward improving your batting average. You can’t control what takes place on the other end of the line, so there will always be a dose of rejection, but by rehearsing your response to objections, your will take control of more conversations. Maintain a positive outlook and don’t take the rejection personally. And definitely use the voice mail to get your message across in a positive manner with expectation of a follow-up call.
October 1, 2007
Build a Solid Reputation
There is a temptation among sales wan-a-bees to tell the prospect what they want to hear, make whatever promises to takes to close a sale and leave the sweep up to someone else. These people are building a house of cards and nearly always end up broke. The truly successful sales professional is the one who builds a history of integrity and ethics. Establish a code of conduct that espouses your values, and let that code govern your actions with sales prospects and with others you contact in the marketplace. By doing so, you will keep more of what you build. You cut down on customer churn and future sales become that much easier.
September 17, 2007
Learn from your Mistakes
No one likes making mistakes. However, sales superstars study their mistakes, understand the reasons for the mistakes and find corrective actions to avoid repeating those mistakes. Mistakes in one area of a business can even help us avoid seemingly related problems in another area of the business when we connect the common roots of problems. Make sure that your behavior modifications are reflected both in your policies and procedures and in your daily routines.
September 10, 2007
Building a Team
The successful salesman remains focused on sales activities. He/she is able to do that only because there is a cooperative team supporting the balance of the tasks of running the company and serving the customer. If you try to “do it all”, you will see only a fraction of the prospects and/or spend only a fraction of the time understanding the prospect’s needs and delivering the right proposal. Communicate with your support organization in a manner that makes them support your success rather than resent your success. Your success will be much greater when you are working together.
August 13, 2007
Overcoming objections
You can’t be a salesperson without encountering objections and negative responses. Your ability to overcome objections will make you a leader. The key to overcoming objections is asking enough questions to understand the prospect’s underlying concerns. Questions should help you learn how the buyer views your proposal and exactly what he/she believes that your proposal lacks. Then build a response to the objections that focusing on the value proposition: how does your product or service add to the bottom line of the prospect.
August 6, 2007
Optimism as a Tool
Whether you own the business, or you’re a key sales and marketing executive, the success of sales and marketing is dependent on your ability to remain positive. The successful company needs leadership more than it needs luck. Pessimism is a big-time de-motivator. Your ability to remain upbeat and coach your personnel through a slump will allow you to succeed over the long-term.
July 22, 2007
Use Recession to Build a Stronger Team
Every company makes mistakes. Bad hires build dead wood in the corporate structure. When sales are going gangbusters, it’s hard to cull the dead wood because pretty much everyone in the organization is needed to keep the workflow going. Track performance and when times get tough, use the performance statistics to reduce costs by cutting the non-producers. When trends start back in the right direction, replace the non-producers with a better class of personnel.
July 15, 2007
Building Sales Volume
The key to building sales volume is protecting your current base of customers while you prospect for new ones. A constant churn leaves you running in place, at best. An existing customer is your best and easiest source of revenues. You already have the contacts and understand their needs. It is critically important, however, that you stay in touch. Continue to treat the existing customer as a prospect in order to build on an existing base.
June 18, 2007
Keep Up the Pace
Some salespeople are most active when business is robust and prospects are easy to find. Other salespeople move into a sales support role when business is hot and sell harder when time allows. The truly great salesperson sells hard regardless of strength of the economy. When times are good, the dynamic salesperson will demand customer support from the support departments and focus on sales. The times are not so good, the dynamic salesperson will look for ways to get an edge on the competition and keep an eye out for the next big opportunity.
June 11, 2007
Continual Goal Setting
We enhance our performance over the long haul by making adjustments in our behavior. The only way to make the right adjustments is to keep score and track performance. By setting targets, we know which adjustments in behavior are working and which are not. As we learn, we continuing reset the target. By doing so, we are continually modifying our behavior in ways that increase productivity.
June 4, 2007
Value of a Qualified Lead
There are tremendous gains in sales productivity when the task of qualifying sales leads is separated from the task of making the sale. The successful salesperson has unique skills and those skills should be leveraged. By having call center personnel do the initial screening of prospects, the sales person is working qualified leads. The close ratio should increase dramatically. Dollars are wasted by having sales personnel chasing unproductive leads or spinning their wheels making cold calls.
May 21, 2007
Build Success Stories
Take concrete examples of customers who have used your product or service successfully and build profiles of those specific customer experiences. A “success story” can make a wonderful piece of sales collateral and can put real world elements into an otherwise hypothetical application. Be sure to build several profiles that cover each of your basic products and services. Also be sure to ask permission to use names and facts about your existing customers.
May 14, 2007
Customer Service as a Selling Tool
Sometimes you know your price is competitive but not the lowest, or you know your product features are no different that that of your competition. Make use of all of your assets. Customer support and service are critical elements of your overall ability to service an account. By focusing adequate attention on your company’s ability to service an account after the sale, you can overcome shortfalls in price and features. That is especially true if you can put a cost savings on the post-sale support.
April 30, 2007
Get a Commitment
Many sales fall through become the person responsible for soliciting the business fails to get any sort of firm commitment. The ideal result of a sales call will be receiving an order. You won’t get the order unless you ask. If you can’t get the order, then get a firm commitment on a follow-up meeting or call. Leaving the follow-up loose limits your opportunity to close the deal. Don’t leave without a specific plan of action.
April 23, 2007
Your Hottest Prospect
Every business is chasing the hot prospect. What many don’t realize is that their best prospect is their existing customer. We need to be constantly generating new customer relationships, but establishing the initial relationship is tough. For most businesses, it’s much easier to identify opportunities for new revenue streams from existing customers. When you need a quick boost in revenues, go for the low hanging fruit: the relationship you have already built.
April 9, 2007
Pricing is Important – but “Cheap” may not be the Way
People like to think that they are buying quality product. Your message must not focus on “Cheap”. While “made in Japan” was a joke in the 50’s, Japanese quality ate America’s lunch in the 70’s and 80’s. Focus on delivering a quality product at a reasonable price and your business stands a chance to endure.
April 2, 2007
Let Your Customer Try Your Product
Most products are sold subject to return. Consider delivering product for trial, with billing to follow. Companies with solid products find that the return rate isn’t much higher on trials than it is on sales – and the take rate on the trial offer is typically much higher than the rate of purchase.
March 19, 2007
Lead Your Customer to Buy
Successful salesmen take time to understand human nature and adjust their approach based on that understanding. Rather than screaming: “Buy, Buy, Buy”, the professional will reinforce the customer in a way that results in the customer having a natural impulse to buy.
March 12, 2007
Think of Your Customers as Individuals
To advertise successfully, you need to communicate with individual customers, not with the masses. Target your message to address the selfish concerns of a typical man or woman who will hear the message. Provide information about the product or service that communicates the benefit that individual will receive by purchasing from you.
March 5, 2007
Scientific Approach to Advertising
Why scientific? Because scientists use the approach of: test – refine; test – refine; test – refine. This process goes on indefinitely and the result is the best possible formula. Too many marketers are satisfied with positive results and never continue testing to determine whether the results have been maximized.
February 26, 2007
How Important is the Headline?
Nearly six times as many people read the headline than read the body of an ad. If your headline does not get attention, you budget will have been wasted. While the body must present the message, the headline has to grab the reader and cause them to keep reading.
February 12, 2007
Limit Your Downside Risk
Most entrepreneurs have a limited marketing budget. You cannot afford to be wrong on a major campaign. The answer is stay away from a major campaign until you can afford to be there. Never test big when you can test small. Allow yourself room for error.
February 5, 2007
Test Each Element of your Ads
Your ads consist of 6 basic elements: the headline, the pitch, the proposition, the exact offer, the guarantee and the call to action. Each of these elements must be tested to achieve the best results for your advertising dollar. Find your best drawing headline and then vary the other components to get the optimum mix.
January 29, 2007
Test, Test and ReTest
Your ad must produce measurable results. Document the results and test another approach. Continually spend small amounts of money testing variations, but spend the meaningful dollars on the winners of the test.
January 22, 2007
How Important is Your Headline?
The headline is not important. It’s CRITICAL. You can only sell after you have someone’s attention. Experts can argue about which headline will draw the best audience. Successful advertisers will run with the headline that is proven through tests to draw the best audience.
January 15, 2007
Effective Advertising – Rule No. 1
The number one rule is to remember that advertising is nothing more than salesmanship applied through a chosen media. Whether it’s print, broadcast or letters, develop ads that sell your product or service. Let the big guys spend their money on ads that are cute – it usually doesn’t work for them either. Small business does not have the budget to fund image building campaigns, so dollars must be spent to generate measurable results.
January 8, 2007
Effective Writing Techniques
Writing an ad or a direct marketing piece involves using techniques that have been tried and proven effective:
· Plan a beginning, a middle and an end.
· Keep your sentences short.
· Keep your paragraphs short.
· Use verbs rather than nouns.
· Use the first person.
· Use effective punctuation.
December 4, 2006
The Most Common Mistake in Marketing Copy
The number one rule of writing is to write material that others will want to read. The biggest mistake is using too many words. People want to read without effort. Use the fewest number of words that clearly explain your point. When you edit, strive to make it simpler.
November 27, 2006
Not All Direct Response Ads Have to Sell
Many direct response ads are expected to generate phone or mail orders. However, direct response can also be used effectively to increase the closing ratio of sales personnel. Sales reps making cold calls typically do well to close 20%. That same rep calling on prospects who responded to an ad might close 80%.
November 20, 2006
Don’t Forget to Listen
You’ve got a live person on the phone. Listen to what they are saying and respond to their needs. Repeat what they tell you to confirm that you understood. Answer questions by asking questions to draw out their needs more clearly. Present the close in simple terms that don’t confuse your prospect.
November 13, 2006
Go Where the Smart Money Goes
Why are small ads in certain magazines so expensive? It just may be because they work. Why are ads in other magazines so much less expensive? Maybe they don’t pull. You won’t know the truth until you test, but please test in media that has been tested and proven to work. Test the others as well, then spend your budget where you get the best return.
October 30, 2006
Eluding the Gatekeeper
A successful telesales rep must be skilled at reaching the decision maker. Secretaries see the role as intercepting and diverting the sales call. Personality and charm can go a long way toward getting past the gatekeeper. The more often a rep gets through to the decision maker, the more often they can practice their pitch.
October 16, 2006
Identifying the Right Telesales Rep
Telephone reps don’t have body language to use as a tool. Their skill set should therefore be heavy on use of voice tone and rate of speech. Personality is essential, as is the ability to build confidence, control the direction of a conversation and work towards a close.
October 2, 2006
Biggest Mistake in Telesales
Failure to keep it simple. Don’t assume that the person on the other end of the phone understands your concepts. Most often they don’t. What is common knowledge to you is foreign to the typical prospect. Read back information to confirm that the prospect is staying with you and keep your telesales efforts to products and services that are easy to explain.
September 18, 2006
Telemarketing to Improve Profits
A Telemarketing Rep costs far less than a Direct Sales Rep. The compensation is less and the travel cost is less. Effective companies use telemarketing reps to handle cold canvassing of prospects and setting appointments for the direct sales staff. Telemarketing can also be very cost effective for soliciting add-on business from existing customers.
September 11, 2006
No Cost Advertising
Advertising dollars are precious and few. How does a small company spread the word without spending a fortune? One way is to craft a story that has public interest. Local press is hungry for material. A few dollars spent on delivering your product or service to a well deserving charity or the portrayal of interesting people in an interesting use of the product can easily be worth coverage.
August 28, 2006
Clear Communication of your Message
A truly great selling proposition must be communicated in terms that the customer can clearly understand without having to stretch for the meaning. It doesn’t help that your insiders think a tagline is cute and understand its subtle meaning. If the customer doesn’t connect the unique value, the message will not be effective. Work on the message until you have it packaged in terms that are clear and straightforward.
August 21, 2006
How Do You Find Your Niche?
Look carefully at your industry. What needs are being overlooked? Make a list and develop a plan that addresses these needs. Better warranty? More selection? Advice on implementing use of a product? Find a way to set yourself apart. From that you can build your Unique Selling Proposition.
August 7, 2006
Focus on a Niche where you can Deliver
Your selling proposition should identify a need in the marketplace and respond to that need. It is critical that your response be focused, often within a small niche in the market. By staying focused, you will be able to consistently deliver on your promise. Consistent delivery on the promise will drive success.
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