Consumers see thousands of marketing messages and adverts every single day. For businesses and marketers this poses a difficult problem, how can they reach their audience when they’re audience is bombarded with so many messages?

Not only do business owners have to fight for their audience’s attention, but this extra competition also drives the cost of advertising through the roof making it unfeasible for many small businesses.

Larger companies, have another problem. They struggle to have real conversations with their audience, instead adopting the old-style of marketing– talking ‘at’ their audience rather than ‘to’ them.

How personalised marketing can help

Personalised marketing is exactly how it sounds, it’s about speaking to an audience in a way that they prefer. They receive messages and information based on their preferences and needs, as opposed to bombarding them with broad advertising messages that they’re most likely ignoring.

Personalised marketing also allows companies to speak to customers more closely and gain an understanding of them, their goals, problems and concerns. This also allows business owners to offer specific solutions that will help their audience achieve their goals in a way that suits them. There are a few ways you can get started with personalised marketing.

Collect the correct data first

One of the best ways to find out what customers want and need is to ask them. It sounds simple enough, but businesses often miss this step. Instead, they opt for creating products and services that their customers don’t want and they fail to sell them.

Use a quiz or a survey tool

Businesses can make a quiz or a survey that customers can take before buying. This quiz will allow customers to answer questions before a company makes a recommendation. The best part, it’s automated. This is a highly effective way to deliver personalised messaging without customers needing to speak to anyone. Businesses can collect information and contact details from their potential customers whilst also delivering relevant products. It’s win-win.

One major benefit for business owners is that this method of automation allows them to collect new and interested leads 24 hours a day.

Personlised recommendations

Once someone has completed a quiz or survey, they can be redirected to a page that only offers products and services that are right for them. This method of data-driven recommendations makes customers feel more valued and allows them to save time when shopping online.

Email communication

If customers decide not to buy immediately after taking a quiz, a company can continue to send email communication that is hyper relevant. The data from the quiz or survey allows companies to send personalised messaging about products and services that they know customers want.

Retargetting

Social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn allow businesses to advertise directly to people on their email lists. This means the same people who have taken the quiz but have not purchased can then be segmented and retargetted on social media. This makes the adverts more personalised which is proven to increase conversions.

Use the data for good

If business owners are looking to create more products and services in the future, the data from the quiz will be extremely valuable. The data shows a list of wants and needs which will help companies prioritise which products to focus on first.

Businesses will always be looking for new ways to grow their audience and increase revenue. But by using quiz software alongside personalised marketing, companies can dramatically increase their customer relationships for years to come.

Read more:
Is personalised marketing the key to business growth?

No handshake, no deal. Life has been tough for sales people raised on face to face meetings and networking.

Yet while some have railed against the lack of personal contact over the past 18 months, digitally empowered individuals have gone from strength to strength, tapping into deep online data and fast video access to prospects to transform the sales process.

Digital tools, including AI, have changed the nature of sales for good. They are supporting sales people by identifying the most likely deals with more accuracy, reducing wasted time and improving conversion. They are defining the most successful approach for each prospect engagement, allowing individuals to move away from a standard, restrictive, sales methodology.

Tools are not replacing sales people – they are empowering them to take an intelligent, tailored approach to every single engagement, and, As Andy McDonald, CEO, Cloudapps, explains, combining the art and science of selling to reach a completely new level.

Maximising a Captive Audience

There is a new generation of sales team top performers – and they are unlikely to be the same people who smashed their targets pre-COVID. Without the face to face meetings, conferences and events that have underpinned traditional relationship building, many sales people have found the last 18 months incredibly challenging. From the difficulty of reaching out to prospects to having to pitch via a screen, the familiar ways of interacting have vanished. Plus, of course, the team vibe has gone when everyone is working remotely. Where is the fun in winning a deal when there is no one to celebrate with? Who can commiserate when a deal is lost?

Yet at the same time, there are a growing number of digitally savvy sales experts relishing the new opportunities. Not only are homeworking prospects and customers now a captive audience, but digital tools provide an amazing depth of pre-sales information that can transform the entire engagement process.

With prospects no longer protected by a gatekeeper and face to face meetings replaced by video calls, there are no time consuming diary management issues to resolve. With no need to travel, productivity has soared – and effective, digitally confident sales people are booking back to back calls throughout the day. They have more time and far more information to support prospecting activity; and are enjoying the personal contact created by shared homeworking experiences to create a new level of engagement.

These new digital top performers are unlocking and closing more opportunities than ever.

Information Driven Sales

Deep, accurate and immediate digital information is transforming the end to end sales cycle. It has inspired the creation of Sales Development Representatives dedicated to outbound prospecting and setting up meetings for the enterprise team. It is enabling individuals to create in-depth insight about prospects, including the multiple personas involved in the decision making process, and gain far more confidence in the best approach to each sales opportunity.

This is just the start. In depth information is allowing companies to qualify out prospects more quickly, reducing wasted time. It is helping to close deals more quickly, and more cost effectively. The explosion in data – and a commitment to using that data effectively – is creating high performing sales forces. Businesses falling behind are patently failing to recognise and take advantage of the digitally savvy sales force.

So how can more companies move the dial? How can businesses support sales teams that have struggled to make the transition and embrace the power of digitally enabled sales processes? Critically, how can companies identify the new successful behaviours and motivate the entire sales team to change?

Bringing CRM to Life

The value of information to improve the sales process has, of course, been the driving force behind CRM for decades. But sales people view updating the CRM as a chore, not a benefit – and a tool for tracking and managing their performance rather than adding value. That attitude has to change, fast. Training can help – at a cost; and its impact lessens over time. Companies need to change behaviour for good – and that is where gamification can be transformational.

From awarding points for inputting information to using leader boards, gamifying behavioural change adds value to even the least exciting tasks. Making it fun and competitive works – especially for a driven group of sales people. Activities become habit forming, while gamification also provides a way to interact with team mates – providing that vital contact, especially at times of both success and failure.

Bringing the CRM to life with a new depth of data also enables a business to take quick, targeted actions that make a tangible difference. Identifying the specific steps taken by the top performers provides a best practice model that can be shared across the business. Data analysis can also highlight those individuals who are making their numbers, despite doing the wrong things, potentially making bad deals just to hit targets. It can identify the medium performers who are doing ok, despite failing to take the same steps as the top tier. Armed with this insight, managers can take a personal approach to coaching and guide people in the right direction.

Achieving Immediate ROI

Even more valuable, combining this data with deep learning AI will identify sales patterns that humans simply can never see. It can provide far more accurate predictions of likely deal closure or the actions that have worked on similar deals in the past – insight that sales people can use to prioritise the best opportunities, take the right actions at the right times, and increase revenue and commission.

Digital tools have initiated an entirely new sales model. There is no longer any need for a single sales methodology, and there should be no set stages through which every engagement must flow. Every deal is different; from requirements to constraints, goals to timelines, each customer demands a unique response. AI led insight can curate the ideal approach to each individual deal; it can empower a sales person to take the right step at the right moment; and succeed more often.

It is those individuals who embrace digital tools, the sales co-bots, who are now topping the rankings. And it is those companies that actively embrace and embed these new, successful behaviours across the business that will move the dial and create a sales team that can gain and sustain a winning edge over the competition. No handshake required.

Read more:
Co-bots not robots: The future of sales

This hotly anticipated event is just around the corner but what will it look like for businesses this year? Consumer interest in Black Friday dipped by over one-third in 2020 and as a result, businesses are looking to capitalise on the 2021 event both on and offline.

It looks highly likely that the BFCM period will extend across the whole month of November this year, being dubbed “Black November”, where sales are expected to run from the start of the month, giving online retailers a larger window of opportunity to convert customers to make a purchase as they look to find a bargain.

Has iOS 14 made a difference?

A significant affecting factor this year is confidence in iOS 14 (or lack of!) and could make your approach to BFCM 2021 a bit tricky. If you’re going to spend a significant amount of budget, you won’t fully know if it’s going to work and that will cause a lot of confusion for advertisers and brands.

The changes in attribution, not just for Facebook, but across numerous mainstream platforms have significantly impacted on advertising activity, being almost impossible to track off-platform activity via third-party browser cookies and no way of reaching consumers on a 1-1 basis across sites and apps if they haven’t chosen to opt in.

This makes it very difficult for advertisers to target consumers on a personal level and even harder to measure the results of their marketing activity. There is no way of attributing purchases made on advertisers’ sites to the ads served and has therefore had a substantial impact across the digital marketing network. There is a much bigger risk and reward as you don’t get that instant feedback from the ad, which of course influences the activity by digital advertisers for the BFCM period.

Reduce risk where you can

You need to fully understand your core audience with your performance advertising as this isn’t a time to be taking risks, so use your tried and tested creatives, landing pages and offers that you know will work for your audience and then extend that sale window for as long as possible to maximise impact.

You might be tempted to create an all singing and dancing landing page or website that looks great and has amazing offers, but this might compromise the quality and effectiveness of the user experience. The ads might look attractive but if it’s not your traditional formula or page, then maybe you have overthought it, while those competitors who have played it safe and stuck to what they know and what works have the advantage.

Carry out your testing in advance

All your testing needs to be done well in advance, being up and running and incrementally scaling from mid-October until that core November sales period. As mentioned, many businesses this year will do a full Black November as this massively reduces risk and allows you to spend more consistently.

Competition will be tough, so you need to ensure you have the more competitive and compelling offer. Understand what the competitors are offering because if they have a better discount or a better proposition, especially in that short window, people will buy from them.

Frontloading investment is key for brands to win

What doesn’t work well is spending a large amount of money in a short period of time. If a brand wants to spend 100 – 200K in a week but hasn’t done enough pre-launching and testing before that, it’s very likely to go wrong because there is so much margin for error.

The brands who do well have built a strong foundation and have put a decent level of spend into these ads and then incrementally scaled them up. Those who go from, for example, £100 to 10K per day on an advert could get lost in such a competitive market.

Run more lead generation campaigns

Try to generate as many email or SMS sign ups as possible and then track the success of these i.e. how many people bought through an individual email campaign.

Converting through email marketing for lead generation is going to be essential so you need to exploit this method, particularly as there isn’t any significant cost associated with sending the emails. You need to capitalise on your digital customers and show them what are you offering has added value so that you at least have some confidence that it’s going to convert.

Watch out for fluctuating CPM’s

This year the cost to reach 1000 people will be at a record high. Generic CPM’s across the board in November 2020 were around $19, so it wouldn’t surprise me if that increases to closer to $20 or $21 CPM for November this year, or even higher.

This will make a difference from a client budget perspective, so be prepared for this. For some, Q4 equates to 60 or 70% of your budget, and businesses generally up their budgets to cash in on this selling window or this buying window for customers.

Summary

From a trends perspective I am certain BFCM 2021 will break all Ecommerce sales records globally compared to last year so there is a massive opportunity to cash in on this if you have done your homework, spread you budget and avoided the temptation to take unnecessary and potentially costly risks.

Get started now and blow your competition out of the water.

Read more:
Black Friday/Cyber Monday 2021 – How to stand out and win sales

For many, it remains unclear what needs to happen to successfully address the selling challenges brought on by Covid-19.

To put it bluntly, selling is more competitive than ever and it is now imperative the modern sales team makes use of every tool at their disposal to rebuild their sales funnel and help drive business recovery. So, what makes a seller successful? Mike Shea, VP Sales, Eastern U.S at Upland Software offers some golden rules used to guide successful sellers before the pandemic, and continue to be true even in a severely disrupted world.

Here are five elements successful sales teams have tried and tested across the history of selling:

Focus on what matters

The pandemic has certainly forced all of us to re-examine existing assumptions and traditional ways of working, but some of the golden rules remain the same: in order to keep closing deals, you must know your customer and strengthen your partnership with them. Salespeople know better than anyone the magnitude of how many deals have been paused, disrupted, or outright cancelled as a result – but was it just an effect of the pandemic, or were buyers themselves re-examining what they need, and what brings them true value? Granted, companies are spending more conservatively than ever and drastic changes have taken place in buyer’ behaviour, strained budgets, and internal factors such as redundancies and restructuring. On top of this, the sales funnel itself has become almost unrecognisable, with customers now entering and exiting the funnel at unexpected intervals. Knowing the intent of various customers, be that end users or businesses (in a B2B landscape) is paramount. Finding the right intent data can be a chore all on its own. However, it matters. In this age of changed sales funnels knowing a buyers intent is more important than ever before.

The selling landscape has been redrawn, which means that sellers must zero in on what truly matters: giving true business value to buyers, helping them attain successful outcomes, and reducing complexity across the process. Thus, sellers will create great buyer experiences and ensure that customers keep coming back.

Sell to the right person

The ‘new normal’ has resulted in mass organisational restructuring due to factors such as the furlough scheme, redundancies, and shifts in a company’s strategic direction. The previous go-to contacts for sales teams may no longer be the right point of contact anymore, causing an expanding gap in the flow of information between these teams and their prospective customers.

Given this state of flux, is your contact still the most influential person within the organisation for this sale? Research has proven that salespeople who gain access to key players and influencers increase their quota attainment by 30%. The quicker your sales team can identify who holds purchasing power within a customer’s organisation, the faster the process can be tailored and individualised, boosting the prospect of success.

However, locating the correct person to target can be a challenge. A good solution for this is to use relationship mapping technology which is designed to reduce the complexity of selling and increase win rates by helping sales teams build relationships with the right people. Having the automated capability to locate key decision-makers and visualise the relationships which are ultimately influencing the deal provides sales teams with clarity over who their supporters are, who they should be spending their time with, and who will need dedicated focus in order to close the deal.

Select the right time to target your prospect

Though it is a fundamental starting point in improving any sales strategy, it is no longer enough to just know who your customer is. In order to stay ahead of your competition, you must create and maintain close relationships with your existing and prospective customers. The reason for this is to not only know what tools these customers are looking for, but also the business outcomes that they want to achieve with them, and the timelines they manage for purchasing and deployment of the tools they need. With this information, sales teams have a more holistic view of the customer’s individual needs set against a realistic timeframe determined by the customer’s own needs and are better equipped to provide them with a tailored solution at the right time.

Diversify your sales team

Diversity is an often-overlooked element when looking at sales success, but the statistics speak for themselves. Having a team that is as diverse as your customer base is not only right, but it pays off in the short and long term. Research has found that a staggering 90% of buyers believe that a company’s diversity policy impacts their overall performance, with 38% of buyers actively considering diversity when making a purchase.

While hiring with diversity and inclusion in mind is key to fostering innovation, diversity is also crucial in terms of skillsets: a salesperson who is well-versed in the technology space is ideal to liaise with customers and prospects in the same space, while someone with past experience in the services industry can better understand and speak to targets’ interests in the same industry.

The fact is, the more diverse your sales team is, the more likely you will have the accumulated knowledge and experience necessary to truly relate to and understand your customer. The selling process is rarely, if ever, linear and demands creativity and focus. Having a diverse sales team ensures that different voices and opinions contribute to the process, ultimately fostering innovation and helping forge a stronger strategy.

Love your existing customers – do not neglect them in any way

Your existing customers already know what your company offers, the quality of these services and the benefits these bring to their organisations’ performance. It is therefore business-critical to realise the value of these customers, and to recognize organisations will be more open to buying further solutions from a business partner they know, while prospective customers who have had no previous exposure to your company will need a longer time to be convinced.

The potential to cross-sell and up-sell can be great, as long as you do not neglect the relationship you have with customers. It comes down to understanding not just your own portfolio, but more importantly, through understanding the needs of the customer. The best way to do this is through fostering great relationships across the board, knowing who holds the buying power and the types of solutions they may be looking for to continue growing. Do the extra things that create appreciation with your customers every day. They are what will separate you from just being just another vendor they do business with. You can achieve this easily by using a sales enablement tool.

In today’s new normal, closing a deal is harder than ever. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, especially for sales teams that are flexible enough to adapt, without forgetting the golden rules of selling.

Read more:
Five golden rules for sales success in the new world

One of the most effective ways to increase your business’s revenue and profits is to upsell and cross-sell to your customers.

Whilst lots of businesses claim to understand the upsell and cross-sell approach, many don’t actually do it as a consistent and planned activity, it’s something that happens sporadically or not at all.  The result is a missed opportunity to increase your business’s revenue and profits.

So if you would like to check you’re doing all you can to take advantage of the upsell and cross-sell opportunities available to you, here’s some tips to help you establish a plan of activity.

Upselling v cross-selling: What’s the difference?

The first thing to clarify is that upsell and cross-sell are two completely different sales tactics.  This is great news because it means that you can both upsell and cross-sell to a customer at the same time, it’s not a case of either or.  The difference between the two is this,

Upselling is encouraging the purchase of anything that would make the primary purchase higher in price, for example,

• Upselling an increase in a life insurance policy from £500k cover to £1m cover, thereby requiring a higher premium
• Upselling an increase in a Business Communications Data circuit from 40GB to 100GB, thereby increasing the rental cost
• Upselling a MacBook Pro 13”, 128GB at £1,299 to a MacBook Pro 13” 256BGB at £1,499, thereby increasing the sale by £200.

Cross-selling is encouraging the purchase of anything in conjunction with the primary purchase, for example,

• Cross-selling a Home Insurance policy to the person we upsold the Life Insurance policy to
• Cross-selling a Unified Communications System to the company we upsold the 100GB Data circuit to
• Cross-selling a carry case to the person we upsold the MacBook Pro to.

So if you didn’t know before, now you know the difference between the upselling and cross-selling.

Why is establishing an upsell and cross-sell sales plan so important?

There are quite a few reasons why you should put some thought and effort into establishing an upsell and cross-sell plan, these include,

• It’s between 5 to 25 times more expensive to find and sell to new customers than to sell to existing ones;[1] So upselling and cross-selling to existing customers is highly profitable
• For rental and subscription businesses, upselling and cross-selling plays a significant role in reducing churn, by displacing competitor products and services with your own
• As long as the customer is happy, upselling and cross-selling builds customer loyalty and increases customer lifetime value
• Both upsell and cross-sell can be initiated and executed at any point of the customer lifecycle.

At this stage, (before you read further) have a think about how upselling and cross-selling might apply to your product or service.  What would your businesses upsell and cross-sell opportunities be?  Once you have one or two, read on and keep them in mind as we go through the points below.

What do I need to put in place to start a successful upsell and cross-sell plan?

There are a number of wider sales effectiveness areas that will contribute to a successful upsell and cross-sell plan.  These extend (but are not limited) to sales organisational design, sale skills competency, account planning methodology, product knowledge, reward plans and sales processes.  For today, we will imagine you have all those areas nailed and we’ll concentrate solely on the six areas directly connected to the upsell and cross-sell plan, which are,

1. For new sales enquiries, don’t be an order taker, be curious: When a customer expresses an interest or wants to buy your product or service, don’t just take their order, ask them some questions, here’s some examples,

• What do they intend to use it for?
• Have they used something similar before?
• What did they like the most about their previous product or service?
• Is it for them, or is it for someone else?

This will not only allow you to build a picture of whether or not the customer is suitable to be upsold and/or cross-sold, it also shows them you are taking a genuine interest in them, which they will appreciate.

For example, if we ask the person buying the MacBook “will you be travelling with it?” and they say yes, we should be cross-selling the carry case.  If they say no, it would be hard to justify the extra spend, it’s as simple as that.

2. For existing customers create an upsell and cross-sell target list: Compile a list of your existing customers and map out which products/service you have sold them and which you have not.  For organisations selling high value or complex products, this information should form part of your Account Plans and already be a day-to-day activity (known as “white space mapping’).

An interesting point here is that trying to upsell and cross-sell to existing customers is a great way to find out whether they are happy customers (who are delighted to hear from you)) or unhappy customers (who would rather not deal with you again).  If they are unhappy, you won’t be able to sell to them, but at least you will know they’re unhappy and get a chance to do something about it.

3. Don’t presume the customer knows your full range of products: It’s often the case (in my experience) that customers can associate your organisation with a single product, this could be something they’ve bought from you before or a product service you are best known for.

This may be because nobody from your organisation has ever tried to cross-sell them to another product or service.  So the reason they don’t buy more than one product from you is that they don’t know or associate you with any other products.  It’s your job to correct this situation, if you are relying on them to learn your full product portfolio, you’ll be in for a long wait.

4. Know how to match your product to their requirement: If you don’t understand (in detail) the product you are selling, you won’t be able to match the added investment of the upsell or cross-sell to the benefit the customer will receive from it.  This is called features and benefits selling; the more you know about a product or service, the more able you are to make the connection between what it can do and what the customer needs.

Ask yourself, how often have you decided to buy from someone because they knew what they were talking about and decided not to buy from someone who didn’t?  Features and benefits selling, (the discipline of understanding everything about your product, service and its capabilities) is becoming something of a lost art, again a subject for another day.

5. Sell the value of the differential

If I cross-sell you the carry case for the MacBook you have just bought from me, I am asking you to pay an extra £75, it’s a small amount to pay to ensure,

• You’re £1,500 investment in the MacBook is protected
• That there’s less chance of you having to pay to repair a cracked screen
• That there’s less chance you have to be without it due to it being repaired
• That it always looks good when you use it in front of customers, for presentations and meetings.

Any of the above could cost much more than £75, so isn’t buying that carry case worth it?

6. Be Honest: As mentioned earlier, you can’t implement an upsell and cross-sell plan to an unhappy customer, they want to see the back of you, not give you more of their money.  It’s equally as important that you don’t turn a happy customer into  an unhappy one by upselling and/or cross-selling them stuff they don’t need and that will not be of value to them.

So upselling and cross-selling only works if you know your products, can match them to your customer’s requirements and have the integrity not to try sell the wrong thing in pursuit of a quick sale.  This also includes knowing when to inform someone that your product/service might not actually be what they need.  Remember, a lifetime of value from a happy customer is always worth more than a single sale.

(Note: Sales reward and commission plans have a huge part to play here, but (again) that’s a subject for an article of its own on another day).

Final Word

If you do all of this already, well done, you’re maximising your revenue and profits, you’re also probably taking a lot of business that may well have gone to your competitors.

If you’re not doing all of this, consider putting it in place, you may be surprised at the results.

Read more:
Upselling and Cross-Selling:  Maximising your business’s revenue and profits

If you could predict with absolute certainty the exact moment each opportunity in your company’s sales pipeline would convert into an order, wouldn’t life be marvellous.

The Hollywood movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn is reputed to have said “never make forecasts, especially about the future’.  Whilst these may appear (especially in current times) wise words, if you’re running a large order complex business, Sam’s quote is unlikely to be an escape route from having to say, “What you expect to happen in the future”  when it applies to your sales (and cash flow) forecasts.

With that in mind, here are some tips that might help you get your sales forecast closer to right than wrong.

Measure your accuracy

If you work in an environment where your forecast accuracy is measured for you, be grateful that someone is helping you improve your forecasting ability.  If you don’t, start to measure it yourself.  Give yourself a (very quick) pat on the back for what you got right and then turn your attention to what you got wrong.

Take out any emotion or defence mechanisms around the things that were “out of your control” and rationally analyse what you would/could have done differently if you could turn back time to when you last updated your forecast.

Acknowledge that it’s important

A forecast is not an administration exercise, if you say you’re “doing your admin” when updating your forecast you may want to reassess your priorities.  Business plans, cash flows, your and your colleagues’ future employment are all based on your company’s ability to obtain orders from your customers.

Being able to forecast when these orders will arrive, how much they will be worth and when they will be invoiced is one of (if not the) most important set of numbers in any business.

Be honest

An accurate forecast depends on an honest appraisal of your sales pipeline, the less honest view you take, the less accuracy you will be rewarded with.  If you want to fool yourself that your sale pipeline is better than it actually is, it’s not very difficult to achieve, just be over optimistic about when your orders will arrive and what their value will be.

It might keep the management or the bank away from you or it might give you the blanket of false security you’re craving.  However, it will be short lived and the only person you are really fooling is yourself.  If your pipeline doesn’t look great, be honest and focus on what you need to do to improve it.

Learn and improve

Accurate forecasting is a skill; there is no fool proof methodology. If there was we would all know about it, I wouldn’t have written this and you wouldn’t be reading it.  Like any skill, the more we learn from our past successes, our past mistakes and the harder we work at it, the better we get.

So apply the learning techniques and the “purposeful practice* to forecasting that you would to any other skill you want to improve.

Find your perfect model and process

If your forecasting systems are not up to scratch, then find a way round them, through or over them: whatever you do don’t let them stand between you and having an accurate forecast.  If the model and process you are using does not work and you don’t know what to do, hire someone who knows what good looks like to redesign it for you.

Take responsibility

It’s your forecast, you own it and you’re responsible for its accuracy, it can’t be delegated, allocated or transferred to someone else.  This is particularly true for those in the sales and business leadership positions.  It doesn’t matter if your forecast is an aggregation of ten, a hundred or even a thousand other peoples’ forecasts; it is still your responsibility.

Of all the factors involved in accurate forecasting, buying into the fact that you are 100% responsible for your own forecast is probably the most important.  Forecasting accurately is hard work, it demands time and attention and a real desire to get it right.

Samuel Goldwyn might not have been interested in “forecasting the future”, but then again he didn’t need to, he was in the movies, he could make the future whatever he wanted it to be.

Read more:
Never make forecasts, especially about the future

When organisational transformation plans are announced, the first thing that happens is an emotional reaction in the people impacted by them.

The first question people will ask (and the only thing on their mind) will be: “How does this affect me?”

It does not matter what level of information you distribute, announcement you make or FAQ document you post: People want to know how the transformation you are planning will affect them.

This is due to the fact that people are primarily interested in three things,

• Who they are
• What they do
• What the future looks like for them.

(More often than not people define themselves entirely by what they do. On a personal note I think there is a real danger in this, but I’ll save my musings on that for another day).

Therefore, when organisations announce transformation plans, it is imperative that the reasons for any changes taking place can be articulated to those affected in a concise and authentic manner.

The key points of,

• Why we are doing this?
• Why we think it is the best option we have
• What will happen if we don’t make these changes?
• And, how these changes affect you?

Have to be at the heart of any Transformation communications plan.

One of the best ways that transformation messages can be delivered, is by presenting the narrative as a story that links the transformation to the goals and objectives of your organisation.

If these goals and objectives are already known by those affected, they provide an anchor point of credibility to which any specific changes affecting both them and others can be tied.

The presentation of the transformation as a story also allows people to visualise what steps the organisation has to take in order to execute its strategy and protect its future success.

The transformation story should start with the goals and objectives of the organisation, which hopefully are known to all. This provides an anchor of credibility, reminding everyone why the company exists and just as importantly why everyone is actually there.

The middle of the story should provide real examples of forces affecting the organisation, market dynamics, competition, the actual things driving the change, be they good or bad news. This sets a present day context, allows considered alternatives to be highlighted and shows why the changes are required. The use of models such as Porter’s 5 Forces and relevant graphs/diagrams can be particularly effective communication tools for this stage of the story.

The end of the story should describe (in as much detail as possible) the actual changes that will take place and by when they will be completed. This is the bit where people get to know specifically what the effect (of the transformation) on them will be.

It may be worth considering involving key suppliers and customers in the exercise, especially when continuity of “business as usual” is at risk.

The really important things to remember are that any transformation story seeking to explain why change is required will only have credibility if it is,

• Authentic
• Can stand interrogation
• Is the same story for every audience
• Is completed before any transformation plans are announced.

If gaps in the story are found, the resultant loss of trust will stop a transformation program dead in its tracks, damage the credibility of those delivering the story and of any proposed future transformation initiatives.

If you don’t have all the detail that supports the story, don’t announce the transformation. Moreover, if you can’t write the story (as outlined above), it’s unlikely your transformation plan is fit for purpose and ready to implement.

Authentic, credible and well-structured transformation stories are not difficult to write (as long as you have a plan and know what you’re doing) and they will always be fundamental to the success of your transformation projects.

The time and effort to write your story is worth it, not only for you, but also for the people whose lives may be impacted by the transformation plans you are about to implement.

Read more:
Tell me a story (about organisational transformation)

Business-to-business (B2B) sales — it’s pretty self-explanatory: they’re transactions between business, rather than transactions between businesses and consumers (B2C sales).

Businesses must generate and nurture leads to build its client base and make money. After all, how can it succeed if it doesn’t?

Clients matter in B2B

B2B clients really are big business. Often, they place big orders and will put a sizable amount of money your business’s way. If you can deliver the order on time and to their standards, they’ll continue ordering from you and you can send out large, regular invoices to the client. They may even stay with you for life. Not only that, they may also recommend you to others. Word of mouth referrals still carry a lot of weight in business.

The days of easy B2B sales are gone, however, and the sales cycle is much longer. It’s no more a simple question of sending out a salesperson to a prospect, having a quick chat with them and then sealing the deal. Buyers are researching more and more online, viewing lots of content and chatting to more people before deciding whether to part with their money or not.

This makes it even more essential for businesses to communicate well with their prospects. Communicate poorly at any stage in the cycle and you could lose the prospect easily to a competitor. There are plenty out there. If you communicate well with your prospects, however, you could bolster your sales and your revenue.

A good level of communication is needed between a salesperson and a prospect to avoid that prospect agreeing a deal with a competitor.

Attention to the details

One of the keys to making sales is to get as close to the decision maker (business-wise) as possible. If you can dodge the ‘gatekeepers’ and contact the person who has the final say directly, you can save a lot of time and frustration. You can also sell further products or services to them. This is why accessing direct contact information of the decision-maker is important to both businesses and salespeople.

Using a sales tool created by Lusha will help your business gain direct contact details from platforms such as LinkedIn which then can be integrated in your own systems to help verify email addresses quickly. Ultimately, the software allows sales teams to save time, boost their productivity and, most importantly, connect with prospects.

Tips for good communication with prospects

There’s a variety of ways to nurture leads and communicate with your prospects. Given the nature of sales funneltoday, solid content marketing plays a powerful role in this. Here are some ways to communicate and connect with your prospects through your marketing:

Communities

A community is a real chance to chat to your prospects and existing customers and show you appreciate them. You can build their loyalty towards your brand and develop their trust in you, as well as foster a sense of togetherness. A lot of businesses have communities on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter — the choice is yours, but be there for your people. Creating a community is an amazing opportunity to build your business further.

Email marketing

Email marketing is a stellar way to keep in touch with existing customers and potential ones. You can update them with a regular newsletter which provides them with an insight on events in the business, shares new blog posts with them, new offers or anything else you think will be of interest to them. The beauty of email marketing is that this is one-to-one communication with your prospects. If they sign up for a newsletter, you can send them an autoresponder email that thanks them for subscribing.

Webinars

Webinars are a tremendous way to showcase expertise and give you the opportunity to expand on blog posts, allowing you to repurpose the content. It’s an engaging visual medium and, often, will feature a presentation by a specialist on a particular topic. Generally, people sign up for webinars via email, which the business providing the webinar can use to follow up with the person, who may be interested in working with the business in some way later.

Meet face to face

Content marketing is all well and good, but the stakes are high in B2B sales. Both parties have a lot to talk about and some things just can’t be discussed in emails or over the phone, so it’s appropriate to meet up with your prospects. If your product(s) or service(s) align with their needs, meeting up with them in person to answer their questions and allay any concerns directly will build their trust. You’ll be a step closer towards the sale.

Meeting up with prospects is essential to hold a good level of communication, sometimes things may be misinterpreted via email or phone call, so a face-to-face meeting is useful for both the salesperson and prospect.

B2B sales require clear communication with prospects to build a relationship with them and earn their trust continuously throughout the process. Prospects spend a lot of money and will do so for a long time, but the communication has got to be superb, not to mention the delivery of the service or the quality of the product. Make that happen and you can make the sale and look forward to good times for your business.

Read more:
The importance of communicating well with B2B sales prospects

This final article in our series of six has been written to help boost conversations with your customers, both existing and new. This will unlock potential, build strong relationships and ultimately help you recover, as you and everyone else move into a new commercial reality.

You’re now Reaching Out, arranging second conversations and unlocking more time. The time is fast approaching when you’re going to be in a fantastic position to help with your customers’ needs, in a way that is mutually beneficial.

Therefore it’s now time to cover three areas:

1. Getting ready for the conversations after your initial Reach Out
2. Running a commercial conversation that is valuable for both parties
3. The virtual meeting/conversation – things that make all the difference 

   Getting ready for your conversations

How many meetings or conversations do you have with your customers in a typical week? We bet it’s enough to take up a significant chunk of time.

But the key question is how many of those meetings are you prepared enough for, in order to make them valuable for your customer and therefore valuable commercially for you?

Below are two very simple checklists to use to get ready. They can also be used across your teams, helping to reinforce your company’s identity.

Physically Prepare

• Agenda – 3-5 bullet points, no more. Sent before the meeting.
• Objective – where do you want to be by the end of the meeting, and where do you think the client wants to be? 
• Who’s going – from their side and from yours. Agreeing what roles you and your people will play is key e.g. who’s leading, note-taking?
• Logistics – this can often completely ruin meetings if not done correctly. Transport arrangements, booking meeting rooms, refreshments, IT absolutely nailed down and having a back-up plan should things go south.

Emotionally Prepare

This sounds a bit subjective, but being confident emotionally is key to deepening your conversations with your clients and therefore your relationships:

• Research – knowledge is power. Research them, their business, their competitors and their industry news in general. Even stuff outside their industry that you think could be useful.
• Questions to ask – Have 3-4 open questions tuned to what’s important for them now and in the near future, which you’ve researched above.
• Tough questions you may have to answer – knowing you can answer really difficult questions boosts confidence and the client’s confidence in you
• Rehearsing – great to do with a friendly colleague who’s willing to play the client.

Starting off by taking even just one or two points from the above lists will immediately begin to impact upon the way your meetings go. Let’s now turn to the meeting itself.

Running commercial conversations brilliantly

You need to ensure that both parties come away feeling like they got real value from the meeting. Enter our S5 Meeting structure:

The key word here is ‘structure’. Use the tips below loosely, as these conversations are organic and you can’t control everything:

Starting with Impact

Tick off these three things:

• Introductions – Names, titles and roles in the meeting. This gives real clarity on why you’re all there.
• A quick zap over the agenda to ensure that nothing new’s cropped up.
• Time check – Check whether they still have the amount of time that was agreed to when you arranged the meeting. This shows that you value their time 

  Situation analysis

If you’re exploring a project or anything that will then lead to putting together a solution, then you need to fully understand what the other party is trying to achieve. You need to find things out through open questions, for example

• Context – e.g. what’s the background to this?
• Outcomes – What’s the ideal impact of this project?
• Stakeholders – Who else is involved?

These types of open questions will enable you to start gaining broad understanding across these areas, before then being able to delve deeper into each area.

You can also bring some value here through putting forward your own experience, knowledge or hypotheses that are relevant and/or challenging. Clients definitely want to hear this from you.

Summarise

Summarising can be done throughout the conversation, and it’s crucial to do so. It shows that you’ve listened, and if you can summarise using their words, then you have definitely listened!

Solutions Co-created

It’s this part of the meeting that, if you get it right, can be the start or continuation of a collaborative way of working. There are two things you can do here that avoids that ‘salesy’ feeling and brings the client into the creation of the solution:

1. 1. You can introduce your service simply as your ‘first-pass thinking’, or ‘initial thoughts’. This shows that you have some ideas, which they should be keen to hear about, as this may help with their own thinking too, but it’s not a pitch. 

Once you’ve explained your initial thinking, it’s then time to make it co-creative, using this question:

1. 1. ‘What do you think?’

With this discussion-type approach the pressure is low-key and the resulting initial solution is genuinely co-created, with clarity and even excitement.

Steps forward

You all need to agree what needs to be done next. Here it’s important that you are as specific as possible about the next steps, using questions such as:

• When do you ideally need the response?
• What format do you need the proposal in?
• What level of detail do you want in the document?

Knowing exactly when and how to get back to clients, and then doing so, builds your reputation as a reliable partner.

The virtual meeting/conversation – differences and how to be human

Business reality has changed and virtual conversations are now key to many businesses. Here are some points for engaging at a human level when using remote platforms:

• Be more vulnerable – using this medium to communicate means that it’s more difficult to read emotions and body language, but you can’t ask them to show you more! So it’s important that you take the lead here and talk about your thoughts and feelings about the meeting and ask about theirs too.
• Be more human – on a significant number of occasions you’re likely going to be speaking to customers in their own home, so keeping it more informal in both feel of the meeting but also how you dress, helping make it more relaxed and comfortable for both parties
• There will be more small talk, get ready for it – sometimes these meetings can be a little awkward, and can also fall victim to various technical issues. Even such a small thing as having a few quips and small talk topics can help smooth the conversation
• Be shorter in your movements – your own movements and gestures are exaggerated in a virtual conversation and can take attention away from the topic. Be aware of how you move during these conversations, and reduce big movements. It will help keep everyone’s focus on point
• Staging – you’ve probably seen about a million different types of bookcases by now, as they’ve become the default background for anyone on TV doing an interview from their home. But it’s important to think about what background you have behind you. Is there anything that could distract? Is the light OK, or is it behind you making it difficult to see you? Small things like these can make the difference between a focused, time-efficient meeting and an annoying, confusing one
• More than one from your side? Better discuss and prepare for what your roles are going to be in the meeting. You can’t do hidden signalling!

Finally, you don’t HAVE to do all your conversations using remote or virtual platforms. Fatigue sets in for people just like when attending multiple meetings. Think about using the phone as well, some customers will find it a nice change.

There is a lot in this article that you can use straight away. This is the last one in the series, but we’ll be getting back to you periodically over the coming months on here.

What would be useful for you to cover that we haven’t already in this and the previous articles? We’d love to hear from you on anything that you come across that might be a concern, or an opportunity.  We’ll then steer future articles towards addressing those topics, as we want to make them as useful for you as possible.

Best wishes for your success.

David and David

Read more:
Boosting your sales conversations to recover faster post covid

In this fifth article of six David Armes and David Das, sales gurus to brands of all sizes and global reach are going to help you Reach Out and sell with laser-like relevance, because that’s what customers are demanding right now.

This means helping you with your hook that we challenged you on last time and looking at how it works as part of a ‘first conversation’ structure with a customer you’ve never met before. Let’s dive straight into it.

Structure over scripts

It’s really important to note that specific word, ‘structure’. In our experience, scripts just do not work in the vast majority of cases when contacting a customer for the first time. This is because they force you to come across unnaturally and can make you panic if the conversation veers away from it. You’re trying to develop an instant rapport with the other person, so you need to be listening and responding in a natural way.

In order to do this, here are some tips to think about before you pick up the phone or make first contact:

Tips on making first contact

• Know what you want to achieve, e.g. a meeting or second conversation
• Write down your first 12-20 words. Starting the conversation with the right tone is vital
• If you think a call is going to be difficult, or you feel nervous, find a quiet place and stand up
• Remember to smile – the customer will hear this in your voice

These are really simple things to help you to get physically ready to Reach Out with relevance.

With these tips in mind, you can now turn to the actual call. The following structure helps focus on the objective of the call, show relevance and come away with a date for a second conversation.

Structure of a great call

Again, this is deliberately simple. How long would you say a first call with a new customer should last for? Five minutes? Ten? Nope, we recommend that this type of call should last no longer than two-three minutes. That’s all.

That’s not to say that if the customer wants to talk more about what’s important for them, or they ask you questions, that you should cut them short and hang up. The critical thing to avoid is to start talking in detail about how you can help them with your reshaped offer. That content should be left for the second conversation.

Here are some tips for each step in the structure:

Show credibility from the start

This is the most basic tip out of all the articles. Surprisingly, even the most experienced people can sometimes miss this out, and we can understand why as everyone feels a little pressure right at the start of the call:

• Say hello
• Check you’re speaking to the right person
• Say hi again and then your name
• Say where you’re calling from
• Pause

The most often-omitted of these three things is your name, instead the caller says something like ‘Hi, I’m calling from PHD Inc, am I speaking to Sarah?’. This is mostly met with a wary ‘yeeesssss?’. Saying your name brings humanity straight into the conversation.

The pause is important as it begins to engage the other person into the conversation. Again, after you say your name and company and pause, you may be met with the same wary answer, but in the pause there’s the chance that they’ll say hello back.

It’s all about the hook

The very first thing to think about when putting together your hook is how to make it ultra-relevant. We covered the topics that make your hook relevant in the last article [something they’re working on, something they should be working on, fresh ideas]. With an idea of your hook in your mind, here are the guidelines to creating a hook that stands out:

• You need a clear ‘So What’ – customers are saying there’s no real drop-off in the number of people contacting them to sell things. The ONLY people they really give the time of day to though are those who are immediately relevant. Our question to you therefore is, you’ve got a new offer, so what does that mean to me if I was your customer?
• Your service or product is simple to use – anything seen as complicated to execute or needs considerable effort to deploy is not what customers are looking for right now.
• Know their context before you get in contact – don’t expect to impress if you contact them without knowing their situation as much as possible. This is your chance to cut-through all the other noise by demonstrating you’ve done your homework and can start the conversation far further along in their thinking.

Your hook must quickly lead to displaying relevance. Here are a couple of examples:

• We had an idea on how ABC Holdings could unlock that opportunity in the property market in the Midlands you’ve been looking into….
• You know the new regulations on XYZ? We think we’ve found a way to comply by changing only one of your processes, not fourteen of them…

You’ve probably noticed something that’s common to these examples and is common to every genuinely effective hook. That is, the content is focused on what’s important to them.

Build rapport

Rapport builds throughout the whole conversation, so don’t think of it as the second step in the phone call, rather be aware of it from the very start.

If your hook is strong, it’s rare that they will tell you to go away because they’re ‘not interested’. They may tell you to go away though, if they’re under time pressure, or are in a bad mood. If that’s the case, don’t be afraid to acknowledge it and say something like, ’it sounds like this isn’t the best time for you, when would be a better time to call?’

Information Exchange

The purpose of this part of the conversation is to bring them into it, as opposed to it being a one-way street. You do that by asking them a question based on your hook.  Using the example hooks from earlier, they could look something like this:

• We had an idea on how ABC Holdings could unlock that opportunity in the property market in the Midlands you’ve been looking into…and wanted to ask how important the area is to you now, given the situation?
• You know the new regulations on XYZ?  We think we’ve found a way to comply by changing only one of your processes, not fourteen of them…What did you think when you first saw them?

These types of questions are great as they give the other person the opportunity to speak. Lots of sales calls use hooks that are about their own business ‘I’m calling from XYZ and we do this and that’, which then leads to a question such as ‘Have you heard of us?’, which elicits a yes/no answer and then the caller carries on regardless of the answer. No rapport, no understanding. Basically, the type of call nobody wants to receive.

Asking the right question leads to a two-way conversation and once they’ve provided their answer, you can then exchange information back. Typically, this is in the form of your point of view, or something drawn from your experience.

In the example, it may be something like:

‘Where there’s been this amount of regulatory change in the past, we’ve found that we can help reduce the challenge to three steps, the first one being to….[insert your POV or experience here]’

You’ve just provided something for nothing bar a very short amount of time out of their day. However, a lot of people get this part wrong.

Because the other person has engaged in the conversation during the Information Exchange, you can sometimes feel relief that it’s going so well. So when it comes to giving your view, it can morph into talking about your wonderful service or solution in more detail.

However, in this first phone call, we want to show value and relevance, and minimise cost in terms of their time. So the moral of the story is to keep to your point of view and move on to getting the meeting.

Next steps

From the Information Exchange you can propose a second conversation where you can deliver more value. 

This is often called the close. There are different ways of doing this, but put simply our preferred ways give the other person a couple of options. For example:

• When would you be free over the next week or two to catch up?
• [If you genuinely are in the area] I’m in [town] for a few days next week.  Do you have any availability then?
• Are you free next Tuesday or Wednesday?

Once a time and day is agreed, send an email confirmation straight after the call.

We appreciate there is quite a lot of information here for such a short conversation. But getting it right is crucial to start building your relationships and unlocking new avenues of growth.

In the sixth and final article [for now], we’ll be covering how to run that second conversation and elevate it to a level where your customer is helping you to build the solution and is on your side.

Read more:
Speaking to your customers with laser-like relevance

You’re now at the stage where you have an offer that’s reshaped, relevant and ready to go. Now it’s time to take it to your current and new customers. This article is about how you can begin reaching out with confidence and a clear message.

We know that a lot people are uncomfortable about this stage. Reaching Out, or selling, is often seen as a dirty word, it can evoke massive highs and deep lows. There’s fear of rejection to fear of handling objections and so on. But then there’s also targets to be hit, survival of your business and driving success, so it has to be done.

So how do you start with a bang?

You need to re-frame how you think about sales.

There are two halves to this. Firstly, you know your product or service is now in the best possible shape to provide value to your client. If that’s the case, how do you think the customer would feel if you DIDN’T tell them about it?

Indignant? Hurt? Upset? Would they ask you “Why didn’t you call me about it?”, or shout “How dare you NOT call me!”. Therefore, the question isn’t why should you contact them, it’s why shouldn’t you contact them.

This is the first half of your re-frame. You know your offer is right, it would be remiss of you not to tell customers about it.

The second half of your re-frame is even simpler.

When you’re contacting your customer, you’re not trying to sell. What you’re actually doing is trying to unlock a bit more of their time and attention. That’s all.

Think about when you’ve been on the receiving end of a cold call. Most of the time we bet you couldn’t wait to get off the phone. But if that person’s opening couple of lines were engaging enough, you may have given them another minute to find out more. That’s exactly what you’re trying to do here. Less daunting, more engaging.

With these two halves of your reframe in place you can feel more confident in contacting them. The next question is how do you demonstrate relevance and value up front to them in your first contact? For the purposes of this we’re going to skip over emails and go straight to a first conversation, as this is where the most discomfort is felt. A first conversation could be a call, or at a conference or anywhere where you have the opportunity to speak to someone for the first time. Note this is mainly focused on a business-to-business setting, but you can still use these tips to help you in the business-to-consumer world.

We’ve found the following Frame-Behaviour-Result framework works really well when reaching out to someone for the first time and demonstrate relevance and value.

We’ve already covered your mental re-framing. The Frame in this instance is simply the reason why you’re calling them. However, as you have likely experienced yourself, sales calls tend to be focused on telling you about a product or service and its’ features and pricing, with little or no thought given to your existing needs or situation. They may ask you some questions about who your existing supplier is, or how you currently do what you do.

Frame – have the reason for your call completely focused on them not you

The issue with this type of call, and the reason why when anyone who receives one feels so negative about it, is that IT’S ALL ABOUT THEM, NOT ABOUT YOU. They are calling because they need to hit their targets, they want to get promoted, whatever. But it’s rarely genuine that they’re ringing because they want to see if they can help you. 

So the Frame is about making the call about the other person. Before you pick up the phone, think about if you were them, what would make you want to listen. From customer feedback, the most relevant things people ring up about are:

• You’re ringing about something they’re doing – maybe there’s an initiative you have a point of view about, or think you can help with. Maybe it’s an industry-wide issue that you know your customer is dealing with. 
• Something they should be doing – this area covers those developments or changes in your customers’ markets that are known about, but they haven’t done anything about yet. For example, dealing with new regulations, or a recent product launch, or a new competitor. You think they either aren’t doing what they should be about it, or they’re too busy right now to do anything about it
• Fresh thinking/something new – This falls into the category of ‘something not on their radar yet’. It plays on the Fear of Missing Out, FOMO. This could be about the new service your company has launched and you think it might help them.

With the first two points above, starting off the conversation referring to something that’s happening in their world makes you immediately relevant, and it’s highly likely that they will hang on for a little longer to briefly talk about it. We would recommend starting off with one of these first two topics as the general rule.

For the third point, well, your chances of success start out lower, particularly if it’s about your new service or product. Why? Because right then, they can’t see the relevance of it. But, if you start the conversation referring to something in their world first, then they are more likely to give a little more time and attention to you. The challenge at the end of this article will help get you started in this.

Behaviour – don’t fall foul of these

Under the types of pressure everyone can put themselves under when engaging in a first conversation with a potential customer, the resulting behaviour changes can betray the true feelings of the seller.  These changes can include:

• Speaking faster
• Higher tone of voice
• Tripping over words
• Barely hearing what they said
• Becoming too jokey
• Becoming overly positive

How you come across in this first contact is important, and something to be consciously aware of.

If you identify with any of these traits, then practice or rehearsal of the first conversation, with a friendly colleague or friend, works absolute wonders to become fully aware of the small tweaks to make before the real conversation takes place.

Result – focus on unlocking stages as opposed to one big win

We covered this at the start of the article. You are simply trying to unlock more time and attention. Thinking like this means:

• It keeps your focus on the other person, rather than your ourself [e.g. financial or meeting targets], meaning that your preparation before the contact will be much more valuable to the customer.
• It helps to ‘equalise’ your positioning in your mind with the customer. You’re not trying to sell or convince, and therefore potentially feel subservient, you’re calling to immediately demonstrate value and see if you can help them.
• It naturally limits the length of this first contact, as long as you don’t start giving tons of details about how you can help. This only about IF you can help.

With all this in mind, here’s a challenge for you.

In the next article we’re going to talk about the structure of a great first conversation. Part of that structure involves creating what we call a ‘hook’, those first 12-20 words that get the customer’s attention. A hook is a reason for starting the conversation that makes it compelling for the customer to stay involved. A hook is rooted in their world first, not yours.

What is your hook going to be?

Think about it, test it out and then write it down. Next time you’ll have the chance to slot it into a full conversation structure that greatly increases the chances of unlocking more time and attention from your customer.

Read more:
Reaching out with purpose

You’ve done your homework, invested in reshaping your offer and are now ready to Reach Out to your existing and new customers. You want to tell everyone about it!

But let’s face it, right now nobody wants to listen to what you’ve got to say. Fortunately you’re a Business Matters reader and you know that this is the third article in our series of starting to sell again amidst the disruption of covid. Article one centres around rethinking your value is here and article two, pushing you to focus on gaining pace to sell can be caught up on here. Ready? 

Even when there wasn’t a pandemic blighting the world, the amount of noise in your customer’s lives meant that it was getting increasingly difficult for them to hear about new or changed offers. How, therefore, do you put your offer out there so people DO hear it? That’s what we’re going to delve into today, getting you ready to effectively Reach Out.

From what we’ve experienced over the years, both working in customer-facing roles and speaking with hundreds of people about it in workshops, we believe getting existing and potential customers to hear your message boils down to two things:

How relevant your offer is to them

They have to NEED it. You’ve already done your homework in this area, having gone through the first step in reshaping your offer. There has to be an inherent demand from your customers for what your offer is. It’s much harder to try to create a need even in the best of times, and to get people to want to listen to why they should need something right now is, frankly, a pipedream. Have faith in your research as it forms the basis of your communications.

They also need to perceive that your offer is AFFORDABLE. This is about affordability in money terms and also affordability in spending their time and energy in acquiring your offer. The real question to answer here is ‘How do you make your offer easy to buy?’

Thirdly, they have to be able to see WHAT’S IN IT FOR THEM as an individual, as well as a company. If they can see the benefit for them personally (for example, it may help them keep their job, or they would be seen to be great in the eyes of their company, or even if it genuinely perks up their day), they’re far more likely to hear what you’re saying when you Reach Out to them.

How resilient they are in their market, and therefore their potential to buy your offer

As has been made so stark in so many markets and industries today, a huge number of businesses are struggling to survive let alone thrive right now. Facing up to this reality is crucial, as depending on which market you operate in you could spend your valuable time on customers where there simply isn’t budget available at this time, and no appetite to buy anything even if there was.

Ok, so far it feels like a tough journey, right? But there is a very positive outcome to this process to reach out which we’ll get on to now.

Using the above two points, relevance and resilience, you can segment your customers into those who you should prioritise with your communication about your offer. If you’ve got a moment, pull together your list of customers and potential customers and have a go at putting them into this straightforward segmentation:

The exercise here is to think about where you would place each one in the above model, and therefore how and when you will approach them. The following overview of each quadrant will help you:

Customer Exit

Your relevance is low to these customers and their resilience to the market is also low. They’re not in a position to hear you.

The number one thing to be here is RUTHLESS. This is the least likely group of customers to hear you when you Reach Out. This segment may be existing customers that are taking up a lot of your time and energy right now, but with little return on your investment in them, and low potential to spend any more with you. If that’s the case then you need to take the courage to take them out of your financial forecast and minimise time spent on them. This may sound heartless, but in doing this you are safeguarding your own business further. Be firm but empathetic about it, explaining the reasons why you cannot continue working in the same way with them. They may well be thankful for it, and in the future could build their resilience enough to become a more valuable customer to you.

Hold Position

This is where your reshaped offer has high relevance, but the client has low resilience and therefore low potential to spend more with you.

This can often be a danger zone, as you may think that because your offer is relevant to them, they are far more likely to spend with you and it sits in your comfort zone. But in reality they are not in a position to do so until they can build their resilience.

For example, you may have a big customer that you’ve worked with for years but they’ve stopped spending due to the pandemic, and you see that they are making redundancies, furloughing staff, reporting falling financial performance and forecasts. They are not currently in any position to spend, but you’ve worked with them for years or they’ve always been on your radar to work with. It’s a tough thing to accept that your time right now is better spent elsewhere, but adopting a ‘Hold’ position here will enable you to maintain the relationship whilst spending time where there’s real potential.

You can adopt the Hold position through utilising two strategies:

• Stay visible – be it through updates, emails or thought pieces and news on social media. This is to communicate that you’re there and your relevant for when the time comes that they’re ready to spend
• Be patient – there’s nothing here you can force through Reaching Out, and you may well even alienate them with any communication on a new offer when it’s well known that they’re not in a position to invest with anyone right now

The Hold Position should be treated as potential FUTURE income, to be reviewed over time. Don’t over-invest either in your time or energy. Be there through your marketing strategy and monitor this quadrant over time.

You’ve now identified customers that have the lowest potential to spend with you right now, and have a proactive way of managing your business with them. Let’s now turn to those who have potential.

Invest

High resilience in the market but you currently have low relevance to them. This means that there is potential to work with them if your offer is right.

However, you’ve just re-shaped your offer! This quadrant therefore is where you should be having ongoing conversations with existing and potential customers about offer development, what their needs are, and NPD. Investing some of your time in this space, perhaps some money in running a pilot with them or getting them to try out your product, will lead to your offer becoming more relevant over time, and lift them into the top-right quadrant, Reach out.

In other words, do spend some time with these customers, but know that it’s unlikely they will spend with you now.

PRIORITY – Reach Out

High relevance and high resilience, you need to Reach Out to these customers NOW. You are likely already doing this with customers, and/or feel ready to do so. In the next article we will detail how to start Reaching Out effectively, giving you the best chance of selling your offer. But you can get started before then by asking yourself two challenging questions:

• Why should your existing customers continue buying your offer or spend more?
• Why should potential customers take the risk to find out more about you and your offer?

We’ll explore this in more detail in the next article, when we fully move into step 3 of the React-Rethink-Reach Out-Recover model.

Read more:
Our sales gurus David and David guide you through the next step to being ready to reach out and sell

This is the second part of your Rethink stage in the four-step, React-Rethink-Reach Out-Recover model from sales gurus David Das and David Armes. It’s at this Rethink stage that things need to speed back up from the Reacting that we’ve all had to do in the last couple of months.

If you followed the first step of Rethink earlier this week you would have started to collect data and information from your clients and your market in general. That’s a massive tick in your plan to drive relevance in your market, and the first step in re-shaping your offer to be in as good, or better, position as we come out of this disruption.

However, we know that with increased speed it’s easy to sometimes miss things out as you go along. So we’ve put together your essential eight key points, to tick off that will see you in great shape to begin the Reach Out step:

1. Understand what your clients need – you’ve done or are doing this. You’ve just demonstrated your customer-centric focus, even in this time of great pressure.
   

2. Evaluate your offer

Being honest with yourself here is crucial to evaluate, hand on heart, whether your offer is still relevant or not.

The one question to use to evaluate your offer is simply ‘Does what I offer right now still match what my customers need and want?’

There are only three outcomes to this stage:

• Yes, my offer is still/even more relevant now
• Some parts of my offer are relevant and some now need to change
• My offer is not relevant enough anymore to continue generating enough revenue

For those who find their outcome in the last two, the next stages are critical to pivoting your business to an attractive position. For those whose outcome was the first, following some of the next points will still help to solidify your position, but also ensure a strong position in the market when things get back to normal.

3. What are the elements that need adapting and development

List them out. Use the research you did on your clients to work out how to adapt these elements, so that the end deliverable to your customer is valuable and relevant. What are the new things they’re looking for now, and what therefore do you need to implement, take out or change that will meet their needs? This stage is where your and your team’s knowledge of the intricacies of your service/product comes to the fore, and where some investigation is needed should further investment be required.

4. Evaluate against your competition

Now that you know what your offer should look like, find out who else offers something similar. Then identify what makes your offer better and unique. This is fundamental in the next step, Reach Out, but it needs to be defined now in order to help clarify what must absolutely be included in your developments in order to stand out from the crowd.

5. Start changing at pace

You know what to change and how. Now you’ve got to move quickly to implement those changes. This does take courage to do so, because you’re taking risks. It may mean investing at a time when you’re facing a free-falling market and collapsing sales. But if you do this quickly you’re already beginning to starve your competition of oxygen. Trust your research. Seek inspiration and insight from it, look outside your business to see if you can find inspiration from others. Use your network, go online, speak to people.

We’re going through the exact same thing. We’ve had to invest thousands of pounds into virtual classroom software, and a huge amount of time and energy in working out how to use it. But we have faith in this course of action, because we did the research with our clients. We had to operationally change how we did things, and pushed ourselves to make it happen. If you have a team, get everyone on board with it and drive a real sense of urgency and purpose.

6. Give your customers a date of when your offer will be live

This sounds scary because it is scary. If there’s one thing though that we know works in driving fast-paced change, it’s this. Make it challenging and realistic. Then externalise it by telling your customers. Not only will you be holding yourself to account but your clients will be too. And when you come through with your offer that’s valuable to them, not only are you massively increasing the chances of keeping your customers and attracting new ones, but you’ve just built up a whole lot of trust through demonstrating your reliability and customer-focus.

7. ‘Good enough’ is good enough

With your timetable in place, adopt the mantra ‘Perfection is the enemy of progress’. Nobody has ever got something 100%, never-needs-to-be-improved-again right first time. Dial it back. What is the good enough standard you need to get to in order for your clients to START getting value, and either keep buying or start buying? Updates, improvements, nice-to-haves can all come later, which also help with the longevity of your customer base.

8. Pilot if possible

When trying out new recipes, great chefs taste along the way and get others to do the same, tweaking the recipe until it’s a great dish. If it’s at all possible, test out your developments and changes with a small number of your customers, and ask them for their honest feedback. This is an important part of the process in creating as much value as possible and making sure nothing obvious has been overlooked. Yes, it may result in some frustration, but if you then tweak according to their input, you’re already increasing the chances of them buying it from you as well as knowing that you have something that is valuable and relevant right from the get-go. Your customers will also feel much more invested in your offer, having had the chance to help shape it from the start. It can even drive a real sense of pride in your customers. They may brag about the fact that they helped create it!

Although that’s the final step it doesn’t mean that it ends there.  We view the process as one of constant customer focus and continuous development:

Following the above steps may results in tiny changes or in sweeping shifts in your business. But if you take the chance and the courage, the outcomes of following these eight points is that you’re:

• Aligned with the demand in your market
• Offering something valuable and relevant
• Differentiated from your competitors
• Building trust throughout the process
• Now ready to Reach Out

You now know that you’re ready to start selling again. Which is where we head in the next article, as we will provide you with a framework for you to use to segment your customer and prospect base. This will help take all the hard work you’ve put in so far and target your efforts efficiently to unlock the greatest potential returns.

Read more:
Rethink – Time to get moving at pace to sell

David Armes and David Das are hired by businesses both big and small, from Dyson and The Body Shop to small financial firms and start-up agencies, training their teams to build a culture of on-going sales.

Business Matters turned to them for their advice primed right now for SME’s in a series of articles to lead you through the stages of recovery.

Business Matters asks: The biggest question we see people grappling with at the moment is ‘When is the right time to start selling again?’. What would your thoughts on that be?

For us, it’s when you’ve done your homework, found out what’s changed and discovered what value now looks like to your customers.

We’re currently advising clients to follow a four-step plan that helps you take back control in this time of crisis disruption. That’s right, we’re not calling it a crisis because that kind of extreme language can render you incapabale of doing anything. And right now there is a lot that you can be doing to support your clients and your business.

As business people you’ve all handled disruption before, be it a lost client, employees leaving, recession, broken supply chains, the list is endless. This is what you’re facing now. Ask yourself what you did to manage it then. You probably went into proactive mode and dealt with it. This time yes, it’s bigger, faster and harder than anything before but it’s still disruption, and that’s something you’re more than capable of handling.

So by now you’ve probably already nailed the ‘react’ stage and you’re ready to RETHINK your way into the next stage.

• REACT – what you’ve had to do so far to survive
• RETHINK – how you’re going to adapt your offer to get moving again in the new reality
• REACH OUT – who you’re going to talk to about your new offer and how
• RECOVER – start to see results

And just as everyone’s reality has changed so rapidly, so we’re going to keep progressing at pace through these four steps in these few articles.

In this article therefore, we’re going to focus on moving from React to Rethink.  And the first mini-step to take here is using the yardstick:

• How valuable is your service to your customers now and potentially in the future?
• What role do your clients want you to play in the future?

The answer to these questions is crucial to informing what you need to do to re-position or re-shape your offer, as it builds on your understanding of how your customers needs have changed or are likely to change. 

Simply put, we need to rethink how we continue to add value to our clients

What we’ve found, time and again over the last few weeks, is that what is relevant to our clients right now, and therefore of immense value, is whether or not we can help in two areas:

• I’ve still got a bucketload of things to do, can you help?
• Can you help me work out what I need to do next?

Obviously, the specifics in each of those two questions will entirely depend on your market. But the fact of the matter is, they still need to get things done. What was previously important to individuals ranged from things such as getting promoted, gaining recognition, having more time with their families [no shortage of that at the moment] and driving their reputation. But now, a lot more individuals have job security at the front and centre of their thinking. 

And this is where finding out new and existing needs begins to get tricky.

It is a human truth that whenever somebody feels more pressure, they inevitably think more about themselves than others.

Crucially though, just at the time when you might be thinking about all the disruption that’s happened and what it means for you, is the exact same time when you need to listen to your customer base in order to understand what it means for them and whether you can help.

Now, more than ever, your listening skills and emotional intelligence needs to be dialled right up. You need to be hyper aware of what is going on on the other side of the screen.  Remember, they may have experienced loved ones getting ill and worse too, they may have had a really tough time in laying off staff – all the things that mean that they too are just trying to get through this. You need to focus on them in the conversations if you want them to open up more and share what’s important for them right now. 

We know this is tough at the best of times. We recommend two things that will get you in the right frame of mind for your next customer conversation:

• Be vulnerable, open, transparent. Don’t be afraid to acknowledge the impact this disruption has had on you and your business. Trying to play it down and pretending you’re not scarred by the situation will only be viewed with a lack of credibility in their eyes.
• Shift your perspective – when you’re in conversation with your customer, see what they’re saying from their perspective. Easier said than done, as we naturally listen to what they’re saying and process whether there’s an opportunity for us in there.  Instead of that though, try to put yourself in their shoes and empathise with what they’re describing to you. Genuinely listening to them like this will help them feel more comfortable in sharing things with you.

If you can have these types of conversations that enable them to open up to you, you will gain a far deeper insight into what value looks like for them now. Then you will be able to answer the following questions:

• What positive impact [i.e. value] am I having on them and their business now?
• What else can I do to max out the value I deliver in this period and ongoing?

And a challenge question to really stretch your thinking:

• When your clients are out of this situation and have the time to reflect, will they see you as someone who stepped up and could be relied on?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you’ll then be able to rethink your offer and shape it to be of maximum relevance and value. Then, and only then, can you put together a proposal tailored for them and start selling again.

In the next article released on Friday we’re going to focus on the last part of the Rethink stage – how you go about re-shaping your offer. We’ll give you eight steps that, if followed, will greatly enhance your chances of bringing it to market successfully.

Read more:
Reality has changed, what value can you add right now?

Few people talk about it and it’s probably due to not many people knowing what it is…the customer journey.

And despite many businesses having the best intentions when it comes to their buying process,  generally, the customer journey is not customer-friendly.

As a Business, ask yourself the following questions;

• Do you know where your customer is coming from?
• What leads them to purchase?
• What stops them from purchasing?
• Is your conversion rate low?
• Where is the bulk of your traffic coming from?

This will help you to understand the ins and outs of the customer’s journey.

If you don’t, you’re doing a disservice to your business and most importantly, your customers.

In this article, we’re going to talk about why you need to know your customer’s journey, how you can improve your customer’s journey and what it entails exactly.

What Does The Customer Journey Entail?

First of all, let’s start with the definition from surveymonkey.com:

“The customer journey is the complete sum of experiences that customers go through when interacting with your company and brand. Instead of looking at just a part of a transaction or experience, the customer journey documents the full experience of being a customer.”

From the moment your potential customer becomes aware of your brand, they’ve started a journey with your brand.

Whether that journey lasts long is down to the customer experience you have in place.

The journey of each customer will vary but if you have automation and funnels in place, you can control the journey from start to finish.

An example of a typical customer journey:

1. Customer learns about your brand through a friend
2. Customer types in your brand on Google
3. Looks through your website and leaves without purchasing
4. You run a Facebook campaign targeting website visitors in the last 30 days
5. The customer sees your ad promoting your brand again
6. They return to the website and views a pair of shoes they like
7. They put the shoes in their basket and proceed to purchase
8. They are now a customer and they are added to your marketing list
9. Over time, they continue to make purchases from you 1-2 times a month

This journey may seem extremely complex, but with today’s digital marketing playground, this is a simple daily activity for most businesses and their customers.

If anything, the above is over-simplified.

Your customer goes through a range of emotions when they interact with your brand and ultimately, buy from you.

Common emotions in the customer journey include curiosity, trust, disappointment and maybe (hopefully), pure joy!

Of course, you would want to avoid all the negative emotions as much as you can and keep the journey as smooth and silky as possible without interrupting the journey of your customer.

One bad slip and you’ll pay the price with either a lost customer, an unsatisfied customer and something that can be detrimental for any business nowadays – a bad review.

Why You Need To Know Your Customer’s Journey

There are a number of reasons why you want to know your customer’s journey.

Here are a few to mention:

• Getting a bird’s eye view of your sales process
• Gaining knowledge about how your customers interact with your business
• Determining whether you have designed the customer journey in a logical order
• Differences between the desired customer experience and the actual customer journey
• Ability to put your focus on a customer’s particular needs at different stages of the funnel

Too many businesses get into the mindset and perspective of viewing the business from their own perspective rather than putting themselves in the shoes of what the customer is actually experiencing.

The move from businesses focusing on purely on profits without any regard for the customer has been flipped on its head with the introduction of the internet and social media.

Look at some of the most successful businesses today and you’ll see a pattern of businesses that are now customer-centric.

Just look at Amazon for example, they’ve paved the way for how business should be done and how they’ve raised the bar for what is expected by customers in today’s market.

How Can You Improve The Customer Journey

When thinking about the customer journey, businesses will tend to focus on the typical funnel of:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Conversion

This is not even half of what the funnel you should be focusing on because there are many more stages a customer goes through in their journey with you.

If we were to go more in depth, we’d find the funnel may look more like this:

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Consideration/Evaluation
4. Conversion/Purchase
5. Repeat
6. Loyalty
7. Advocacy

Despite the customer journey involving all departments of the business, we are going to focus predominantly on the marketing aspect of the customer’s journey.

Stage 1 – Awareness

Example 1: a potential customer finds out about your business through a family member who had a great experience buying from your business.

Improvement: this actually starts with the family member becoming aware of your brand, but ultimately, it comes down to you creating a great customer journey.

Example 2: Customer sees your Business from Google advertising.

Improvement: Create some intrigue and make your offering clear in your copy, headline and image.

Stage 2 & 3 – Interest + Consideration/Evaluation

At stages 2 & 3 you need to keep nurturing your customer by adding more value and keeping them engaged.

• Educate your customer about the product/service + overall business
• Showing how your solution can relieve their problem
• Show the customer how the value you provide justifies the price of your product/service

An informative blog that provides actionable advice is perfect for this stage and can help get customers to trust you and see you as a brand that knows more than anyone about the industry.

Stage 4 – Conversion/Purchase

Stage 4 is where all the work you’ve done pays off and the customer pays you for your product/service.

You can improve this part of the process by:

• Making it easy for the customer to buy from you. This is especially relevant for ecommerce stores – reduce the friction in the buying process
• A clear buy button – make it obvious for the customer where they have to click to buy. Such a simple improvement that not many businesses do.

Stage 5 – Repeat

At stage 5 you are looking to repeat stage 4 and get your customers to buy from you again.

• Upsell and cross-sell at the checkout stage or via email
• Run seasonal promotions that are directly related to the product the customer has purchased from you in the past

Make sure that if you do implement a up-sell or cross-sell that it is relevant so that you don’t annoy your customer and make them regret buying from you in the first place.

Stage 6 & 7 – Loyalty + Advocacy

At stage 6 & 7, you are now in a position where (hopefully) you have created an incredible customer experience that your customer is now telling everyone about you.

• Invite your customer to a loyalty program that offer discounts
• Sending a personalised email to thank the customer for their business

Website Improvements To Improve Your Customer Journey

Most of the customer journey is online and happens on your website.

Ask yourself the following questions to make sure your doing everything you can to improve the customer journey on your website:

• Is your main page attractive?
• Is it easy to navigate?
• Does it have a strong CTA?
• Do you have a blog that provides informative information?
• What is the bounce rate on your website?
• Do you have a fast website loading speed?

Conclusion

Take the time today to go through your customer journey by yourself or with your team and work through the various stages, from the awareness stage to the advocacy stage.

It’s important you include all departments with this stage because they all play a part in the overall customer experience.

At the end of the day, it’s all about putting yourself in your customers’ shoes and looking at your business from their viewpoint. Do this and you will gain a greater understanding of how to improve your customer journey.

Read more:
Why you need to know your customers journey

When it comes to buying decisions, customers are no longer settling for “good enough.” They expect an engaging, relevant purchase experience and are very selective with their time.

As a result, sales teams are under massive pressure to elevate their processes and techniques if they want to reach their targets and close more deals.

One of the main challenges companies need to tackle is creating and implementing a clear, effective process that will help senior executives and the sales team forecast sales volume and increase revenue.

According to a recent study from Pipedrive, UK SMBs are, on average, losing the equivalent of £15,000 in sales every month due to disorganised or inaccurate sales activities. Furthermore, 43 percent of businesses struggle with sales performance and 25 percent of sales professionals still rely on pen and paper to keep track of their work.

Using pen and paper in the era of machine learning and artificial intelligence might sound like the Stone Age for many professionals, but the reality is that for a long time CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platforms were cost prohibitive, slow, complicated, and focused on senior executives instead of the sales professionals who are in the trenches every day.

Automation for increased efficiency

Thankfully, technology has made significant strides in recent years, and now companies can choose smart, easy-to-use CRM platforms that will empower the team to increase efficiency and productivity.

To support the sales team in reaching their targets, an effective CRM solution should:

• Save time with admin tasks
• Provide clarity and foster better team collaboration
• Track sales progress and targets
• Keep the team focused on key activities and ensure leads are not lost

Pipedrive, one of the leading CRM providers, offers an AI-led platform that stands out in this overcrowded market. The platform is user-friendly, and allows sales teams to personalise various features and capabilities; track emails, calls, and progress of each deal automatically; and see a streamlined view of the whole team’s activity.

Having an agile, effective CRM system can boost revenue and enable the sales team to reach targets faster. However, if businesses want to connect with their customers, gain their loyalty, and leverage the full potential of their sales team, they must also empower them to communicate with prospects in an engaging, relevant way.

Presentation is key

Customers are exposed to anywhere between 4,000 to 10,000 ads each day, which makes it critical for salespeople to deliver compelling, impactful presentations that help them communicate with prospects more effectively.

When it comes to meetings, pitches, and presentations, Prezi is a very popular tool among successful sales professionals because it enables them to reinvent how they share information and inspire their prospects to act.

University researchers found that Prezi presentations are more organised, engaging, effective, and persuasive than either PowerPoint or oral presentations.   

At the core of Prezi’s appeal is its inherent flexibility. Prezi’s interactive format enables sales professionals to move freely between topics and adapt on the fly, without having to flip through slides. This conversational presenting approach allows them to focus on what really matters for their customers and keep them interested.

Prezi also provides access to a large library of templates they can personalise in a matter of minutes with a simple drag-and-drop feature. In this way, they can save time and effort, and focus on their prospects’ needs and priorities.

Digital revolution upgraded the sales process

Regardless of the solutions a company chooses for improving the sales process, the essential criteria they have to keep in mind is that they need to be user-friendly, enhance client communications, and make life easier for everyone. Another critical aspect that can have a significant impact on business outcomes is scalability. Today’s fast-paced business environment can change very swiftly, and organisations that want to remain competitive need agile solutions that can quickly adapt to new market conditions and demands.

The digital revolution has transformed the sales industry and the role of a typical salesperson. With admin tasks automated, salespeople are now free to focus on critical actions such as building stronger relationships with their clients, evolving their strategies, and looking ahead at market trends. Stop giving your customers “good enough” – equip your sales team with the right tools and start making an impact on the bottom line.

Read more:
How to elevate your sales process

The US Small Business Administration reports that there were 30.2 million small businesses in operation during 2018, representing roughly 99.9 percent of all businesses in the United States. All businesses — but especially small businesses — rely on marketing methods to develop viable sales leads.

Unfortunately, failure to generate the right kinds of leads (or any leads at all) can have dire consequences. The SBA states that one in 12 businesses close every year, with low sales being among the top reasons for closure. If your marketing techniques are lacking, you may not be able to survive in a crowded marketplace. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most common marketing mistakes that could be killing your sales leads before they ever get a chance to mature.

Your website isn’t optimized

SEO, or search engine optimization, isn’t a passing fad. It’s consistently among the most effective ways to ensure that customers can find your business without having to run ads or rely on standard methods of promotion. It’s a much more organic and relevant means of providing assistance to web users and ensuring that Google knows what your business is all about.

Your website should contain high-quality and helpful content, pertinent keywords, and an overall superior user experience. A bad website will make potential leads click that “back” button in their browser in a matter of seconds, while an unoptimized website will never even get potential leads to find you in the first place.

In today’s world, organic lead generation is incredibly valuable. By showing up near the top of the search engine results, you can bring traffic to your site. From there, you can convert these leads based on an offer. Someone who finds their way to your site due to the valuable information you supply will be more likely to sign up for your mailing list.

But you won’t have access to those leads if you don’t provide them with something of value. Therefore, SEO is a marketing component you can’t afford to ignore.

You’re still cold calling

Outbound marketing was once the way to go. Although there are some outbound marketing techniques (like email blasts) that can be effective, inbound marketing has definitely taken over in the digital age. Today’s customers don’t want to feel like they’re being sold to or courted. Instead, they want to work with businesses that provide them with a solution for a problem they’re having and that have values that align with their own.

Keep in mind that consumers are being constantly bombarded with information and sales pitches throughout the day. Spam emails accounted for 53.5 percent of email traffic worldwide in 2018, while there were nearly 48 billion robocalls made that same year.

Ultimately, that means that most consumers have neither the time nor the patience to deal with legitimate sales calls and emails. If you choose to go this route, you might very well end up being seen as an annoyance. And no one wants to do business with an organization that’s seen as out-of-touch or obnoxious.

HootSuite reports that 90 percent of top decision-makers never respond to cold calls. Basically, consumers (and even other businesses) are doing everything they can to make sure they aren’t bothered. Rather than casting a wide net and hoping to catch something, you should provide the bait and see for yourself the nibbles that will ensue. Stop wasting precious resources on cold calling and devote more of your marketing budget to inbound strategies that attract, engage, and delight potential leads.

You’ve created subpar social media ads

Embracing social media is a must in today’s digitally driven environment. And often, these platforms can be a great way to drive viable leads for your business. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could end up wasting a lot of time and money on leads that won’t ever pan out.

On Facebook, for example, you can easily run an ad to target potential customers. But while there are some customers who are willing to buy a product from an ad you run, many of these ads are the modern equivalent of the infomercial. It’s far more effective to create a conversation and an actual community that supports your brand, rather than to perform a hard sell that pushes products or services.

What’s more, you could be targeting a totally irrelevant audience who won’t be inclined to even click on your ad, much less make a purchase or supply their information to learn more. You might also have an unrealistic budget and see no results or use poor quality images that won’t bring any interest from leads.

In the end, you may not really know why your ad didn’t work. In this scenario, many brands blame the medium, rather than their own lack of knowledge. Whether you decide to outsource to an expert or devote some time to do some major research, you shouldn’t go into it blind. Otherwise, you won’t get the quality or the quantity of ads you want.

Small business owners can’t take a risk by ignoring digital marketing techniques, nor should they attempt to embrace them without doing their homework. In either scenario, you’ll probably become frustrated over your inability to generate leads. But if you steer clear of these mistakes, you’ll be in a much better position to compete in 2019.

Read more:
Marketing mistakes that could be killing your sales leads

Nowadays, the way businesses bring in sales is almost becoming information-driven. Whether you’re looking to win a contract or generate more business leads, your sales team should always have to communicate in writing.

However, if the team has poor business writing, chances are that they’re struggling with their sales efforts, which can lead to losing business to your competitors. If you believe your team’s writing skills should be polished to drive more sales, here are a few tips to consider for improving business writing:

Know your audience

Before you write anything, it’s essential that you know who your target audience is and the outcome you want to achieve. By identifying your readers beforehand, you can be able to communicate effectively, especially if you’re trying to market your products or services. Make sure you invest time and effort in defining your audience and know what their expectations are. Try to picture yourself in the shoes of your readers and imagine what it is like in their situation.

Keep it short but straightforward

These days, people are becoming less willing to read, which is why keeping your sentences short can go a long way to catch your readers’ attention. This situation is particularly true if you’re sending outreach emails and other electronic documents to your prospects. Below are the tips to keep your paper short but straightforward:

• Cut down the number of words to more or less 500 words.
• Refrain from using redundant or unnecessary adjectives to avoid long, meandering sentences.
• Remove windy phrases.
• Get straight to the point and let them know what you want to say in a professional manner.

If you want to get the most out of your business correspondence for bringing in more sales, it’s best to get your team to take a business writing class to improve their knowledge and skills in writing.

Use active voice

Using an active voice in your sentences can improve the sharpness of your business writing. That’s because a copy written in an active voice is usually shorter and more precise than the ones in the passive voice. If you want to gain more leads and turn them into customers, you should be decisive in your business communications. By writing sentences in the active voice, you can build trust and confidence in your readers.

Write from your customers’ perspective

In business, writing from your customers’ perspective always makes sense. You can do this by describing the specific attributes you like about them rather than bragging about how good your company is. Remember, the overuse of the pronouns “I,” “me,” or “our company” in your business copy may cause your customers and prospects to go away. Instead, equip your business correspondence with “you” or “your” to generate more sales.

Be careful with names, titles, and genders

There’s nothing more embarrassing calling someone “Mr. Anderson” instead of “Ms. Anderson” throughout the copy. If you don’t want to drive prospects and customers away, you should pay attention to names, titles, and genders.

Not knowing the spelling of someone’s name, job title, or even gender isn’t an excuse to address them improperly in the document. So, you better check with someone who does know the information you need. When it comes to gender, practice the use of gender-neutral language like “they” and “their” to be safe.

Write in a conversational tone

Again, it’s crucial that you always know your audience before writing any marketing communications. If you want to make more sales, you should learn how to write in a conversational tone. Don’t be too formal unless you address your business correspondence to someone who prefers formality. When you market your products or services, make sure your copy is as engaging and personal as possible. Craft the document as if you’re having a friendly conversation with an ideal customer. The more you engage many readers with your writing, the more sales you can make over time.

Include a call to action

Aside from being informative, a business document is written to achieve a particular purpose. Thus, don’t forget to include something that your audience is expected to do with the information you’ve given. Remember, you can take advantage of your marketing communications if you have call to action right from the beginning.

Don’t forget to proofread

You may commit errors when writing, and if they’re not appropriately addressed, it may cause trouble for your company. If you don’t want your marketing copy to look stupid due to typo errors, get that document proofread right away. You can use spell checkers or check the material carefully to spot missing words and other mistakes.

Conclusion

Having effective business writing skills can be a valuable asset to your organization. Although it may require talent that not all of us may have, you should always keep in mind that good writing remains to be a learnable skill. If you want your business to inspire more customers to buy, follow the tips above to improve your writing in the best way possible.

Read more:
Your sales team is struggling? Maybe bad writing is to blame

In recent years, digital marketing has become a rage among the business persons.

Also, it has become the best thing in order to lead the business and reach among the target people. Despite facing heavy competition, people are handling the business in a better way without experiencing any difficulties.

The main reason is digital marketing require several strategies. Well, with the support of best strategies, you can easily carry your business and make benefits and profits that whenever you want. This could be the necessary thing where most of the business people are looking for marketing things.

When it comes to marketing, we should know that online as well as offline marketing making the waves among the business people. Also, it helps you to find a better business to deal it with. If everything is handling in a better manner, then you may experience the good result for sure from your business. At the same time, you don’t need to spend much while focusing on online marketing.

On the other side, offline marketing is also going to be helpful in terms of bringing more customers to your business.

Use offline campaigns for business

If you are managing your business, then offline campaigns apart from online are also highly helpful for all the business seekers. Generally, offline campaigns are mainly said to be traditional marketing. Also, one should know that offline campaigns are completely less expensive once you start to utilize the speaking opportunities.

But the thing is when it comes to managing the offline marketing, it requires proper strategies to utilize it. Based on this thing, one can develop a business and make profits than expected. Also, it has the potential to achieve the target in a better way.

Most of them are also focusing on the online as well as offline marketing and bring together for handling the business in the right way. By just integrating them, one can see the difference in business. Yes, the improvement will be seen for sure.

So, whenever you are looking for the business to reach among the respective people, it is essential for you to follow some of the tactics that support business to its maximum. People who want to manage the business apart from online marketing, but then with offline, make sure to utilize the speaking opportunities.

Attend trade shows and conferences

Generally, when it comes to conferences or trade shows, you can witness huge crowd gathering in these kinds of events. Well, usually business people may utilize this great opportunity for their businesses. Once started utilizing it, you can witness that leadership quality will be raised for sure.

So, whenever you are looking to utilize the trade shows or conferences, make sure to use it to its potential without any hesitations. Also, while sharing the stuff related to be the business, it is always important for you to provide strong content and at the same time, it must be high quality on the whole.

Also, while sharing your speech regarding the business, it is always important for you to share the stuff that should be engaging. Based on the engagement factor, there could be a chance of bringing more customers to your business for sure. Usually, you may bring viewers to your business with the support of the right strategies.

However, it also has the potential to convert the viewers into customers that whenever required. So, whenever you are looking for the business to promote, then this is the right way to make use of it.

Handle with demonstration

By just doing demonstration, it is also possible to bring more customers to your business. Well, doing demonstration will help to bring more confidence to your viewers. So, this could be a better chance to convert the viewers into customers in a short period. If you are looking to promote the business, then the demonstration is always playing a crucial role among the business people.

On the whole, you can easily manage your business with the support of offline marketing that whenever you want. Well, based on these things, one can reach the goal in a quick manner. So, whenever you are planning to market your business that provides the best service, make sure to follow offline marketing for a better result.

Read more:
Offline campaigns for brand marketing

Networking is an inseparable part of your life as a professional.

Whether you are a business owner or an employee working in a particular industry, meeting new people, connecting with industry experts, and expanding your network are crucial for your future.

Networking is an ongoing thing, but you get more opportunities to expand your network during conferences and industry-related events. When you are attending a conference, there are certain things you can do to further enhance your network like a pro. We are going to review some of the networking strategies you can employ in this article.

Set Up Your Presence

Many conferences allow corporations and businesses to set up their own corners and showcase their products. This is an opportunity that you don’t want to miss since it allows you to get a head start with your networking efforts. This isn’t just good for the business; it also helps set up your presence in a more prominent way.

There are a number of things you want to prepare if you are getting a dedicated area. Roller banners like these are great to display key information for other attendees to see, or even just to make finding you a little simpler. You can go a step further and use exhibition stands to achieve a greater effect.

Be Interested in Others

While the goal of doing networking is to expand your professional and business network, the best way to achieve that goal is by showing interest in others. You can’t expect people to come to you. You will have to explore the conference to find interesting people to connect with.

Prepare a bundle of business cards and explore the venue for opportunities to connect with others. If there are many stands and booths, take the time to visit them and learn more about other industry players. Don’t just visit the stands to introduce yourself; again, you need to be genuinely interested in others to get others interested in you.

You’ll be surprised by how many new opportunities you can discover when you really take the time to get to know other businesses and industry players. Companies that you thought were rivals can easily turn into partners in the future.

Diversify

The temptation when doing networking is to climb the professional ladder and only connect with industry leaders. This isn’t a bad approach to take, but there is a better way to expand your network effectively: diversification.

Don’t worry about whether you can capitaliseon the new connections you make during a conference. That is not the point of networking at all. The focus should always be connecting with people that share the same interests.

Diversification is also the reason why you need to consider attending events that aren’t always industry-related. General commerce events, business owner gatherings, and other networking opportunities are just as interesting to explore as your next conference.

Follow Up

One thing to avoid when doing networking at a conference is not following up on the leads you receive. Reaching out doesn’t have to be complicated at all. You can send an email thanking the person for the pleasant conversation you had during the conference.

Include details about the meeting and the circumstances of that meeting. Small details add that extra personal touch that really strengthens the relationship you’re trying to build. Again, be genuine inyour efforts to create a lasting impression.

Now that you have these strategies in mind, networking should not be as difficult as you imagine. All you have to do now is prepare for your next conference and utilise the tips we covered in this article to help you expand your professional network successfully.

Read more:
How to network like a pro at your next conference

The benefits of a networking event speak for themselves.

For those who want to connect with people in the same industry, develop their personal skills or for those who are alumni of a certain University, networking events can be a perfect way to make contacts and expand their horizons both professionally and personally.

But sometimes those with a demand for networking will consider creating a networking event themselves – that is how a lot of these events begin. But how do you organise and run your own? We offer some tips as to how to prepare and run a networking event successfully.

Drum up interest

Before the actual day of your networking event, be sure to advertise it well. If no one knows it is going on, then the number of attendees is bound to be at an all-time low.

Make use of social media, it’s free! Post on your company and/or personal social media accounts with all the details of your event; when, where, what is it and so on. Use websites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for the best social reach.

Consider using local, targeted advertising to get your networking event’s name out there. The key to local and targeted advertising is to get the message to the right people at the right time and the likes of Facebook allow you to target regions and a specific mile radius. This will be more cost-effective and you do not waste people’s time who would clearly not be interested.

Using sites like Eventbrite and Meetup allow you to formalise your networking event, post it out on social media and capture information from attendees. It also adds some credibility to your event and allows you to sell tickets if you wish to charge.

Choose a venue

A very important piece of the puzzle is to find the right sort of venue to host your networking event in.

If you are on a small budget, it can be tempting to cheap-out on the venue in order to provide other incentives. However, it is important to understanding the pulling power that a great venue can have. Avoid cheap venues like a community hall or a room in the back of a Pub – you need somewhere exciting and also accessible to public transport.

It is far more attractive to provide people with a new opportunity to visit a place they may not otherwise have gone. Note that where you choose to hold your event can seriously have a big impact on your attendance. For every industry, there is always a “mecca” and place where people want to visit.

For tech and digital people, something like Google or Amazon’s new office has great pulling power. For dentists, the Eastman Clinic in King’s Cross and for politics, it could be the House of Commons.

A good place to hold an event in the evening for professionals is a WeWork. They are scattered around London and Manchester, so you can choose one which is the most convenient for you and the attendees. Plus, you are likely to catch some people who are already working there and might want to stay at the end of the day.

Consider things like whether there will be a bar or caterers at your venue. These are both attractive qualities to have at a networking event. Perhaps consider having a free drink provided upon arrival or even a free bar if you have the budget.

Is there a hook?

Other than the chance of networking, what else can make people attend? A great venue is key, but also having a guest speaker to open the event or a panel of speakers can attract a crowd. Local celebrities or well-known business people (think Dragons Den and The Apprentice) can always fetch a crowd. But this might come with extra costs, such as staging, microphones and video equipment. (Source: Alistage)

Other opportunities include ways that companies can showcase their business by handing out samples, goodies or even speed-dating with people to understand their business and make sure that everyone meets each other.

Will you charge for attendance?

At your event, will you require a fee from everyone who attends? If so, how much will you charge? Make sure it is not high enough to put people off but enough to cover costs, if only partly.

A fee for attending can put some people off, but it can show quality too, making them think there is real business to be done and high quality people will attend – this is what happens at the high-end tech events.

Select a good time and a day

It is going to prove impossible to pick a time and a day to suit everyone, but consider your core demographic and think about what might work well for the majority of people. For example, if you are organising an event for working professionals – it may be best to go for a breakfast event or one which is in the late evening so not to impinge of their working day.

On the other hand, people who are younger may not be willing to get up early for such an event and may prefer a drink in the evening.

Usually, mid-week tends to be the best for everyone before they start thinking about the weekend. It also means that they are not taking up their days off with networking.

The follow up

After the event, why not consider putting out a newsletter which provides more information. This will keep people in the loop and if you ever want to hold another event, you can reach people that are likely to attend.

It can be useful to include the name and contact details of all those that attended the event and also put out a teaser for the next event. Who knows, you could end up creating the biggest networking event in the country!

Read more:
How to run a networking event

Today’s marketing largely revolves around digital channels. However, did you know offline marketing can be just as crucial as online marketing?

Leaflets are a classic example of how effective and cost-saving traditional marketing techniques can be.

Here, we’ll look at why leaflet marketing should be included as part of your multi-prolonged strategy.

A cost-effective way to reach local customers

One of the best things about leaflet marketing, is that it provides a cost-effective way to reach local customers. Although the internet has become important for reaching local audiences, it still can’t beat offline local marketing techniques such as leaflets.

This is because through companies such as Leaflet Drop, you can choose to send leaflets to highly-targeted households. That is, households who are more likely to be interested in your services. This ensures you aren’t wasting your marketing efforts and ensures a much higher conversion rate.

Enabling you to deliver more information

Of course, another benefit of leaflets is that they enable you to deliver much more information than you could via social media for example. This increases the chances of making a sale.

You will need to make sure you’re only adding relevant information however. If you bombard the consumer with too much information, it could actually have the opposite effect.

Visually pleasing designs

Another benefit of leaflet advertising, is that they’re better able to grab your audience’s attention. They’re visually pleasing and come in a wide range of designs, shapes and sizes. You can use them to create attention-grabbing headlines, provide colourful images and give the consumer facts and statistics which will make them want to invest in your product or service.

Think of it like a book. Although e-Books have largely taken over, there’s still a lot of consumers who prefer the feel and smell of a new book. The same can be said for your customers. Some may well prefer a more digital approach, but there’s still many who would appreciate a more traditional form of marketing.

So, when you’re creating your marketing strategy moving forward, you’ll definitely want to consider adding leaflet marketing. The most effective marketing strategy includes a range of different methods, both online and offline. You should also monitor how well each of your chosen platforms is performing. That way, you can ditch the efforts which aren’t providing significant returns, and focus your attention on the ones that do.

Read more:
Why leaflet marketing should be included as part of your multi-prolonged strategy

One of the most brilliant aspects of Amazon’s Alexa technology is the ease with which it allows us to make purchases.

Need more coffee? Just speak up, and it’s on its way. Synced with Prime, Alexa may represent the single most frictionless sales conversion experience to ever exist.

The rest of us can only stew in jealousy over Bezos and company, because no matter what we’re selling and no matter how we’re selling it, there are going to be friction points. A certain percentage of our sales prospects are going to think twice, or get frustrated, and they’re going to drop out of the sales funnel.

Sales friction, those pesky factors that deter people from completing their purchases, has a major influence on conversion rates for all business models, from B2B to ecommerce to offline retail. According to Aberdeen, 92% of organizations have below-average sales conversion rates simply because of some kind of friction in the customer journey funnel.

Imagine a customer visits a retailer’s landing page, excited to shop for a new jacket, but becomes annoyed by the retailer’s popup box asking her to subscribe to the shop’s email list. In some B2B situations, a prospective client might feel that the landing page is too long, and stop scrolling halfway through. Or perhaps a shopper has loaded up his cart at a local grocery store but ultimately leaves it and goes home empty-handed once he realizes how long the checkout queue is.

These instances of sales conversion friction plague even the most savvy businesses. And there are plenty of tech solutions out there to help you win back sales from abandoners. But a lot of friction is avoidable from the get-go if you optimize your purchase experience with the following principles in mind.

Make Sure The Experience Sparkles With Trustworthiness

Lack of trust is one of the most deadly types of sales friction. According to a recent study by HubSpot Research, only 3% of us trust salespeople. Thanks to “snake oil” salesman techniques that have taken advantage of customers in the past, businesses now have to work twice as hard to earn their prospects’ trust.

How can you change the narrative in a world where consumers are more likely to trust a lawyer or a barista than a salesperson? The answer comes down to authenticity and transparency. If your customers don’t believe that your message is genuine, your trust will fall down the drain. One of the most effective ways is by including educational content on your site that will help answer customers’ questions and attest to your expertise. Creating a knowledge base is a great way to make sure your customers have easy access to the information they’ll need every step of the way. By telling clients’ truthful stories in testimonials and success plugs, you can tie content to a positive customer experience.

Streamline the Mobile Checkout Process

Depending on what kind of product you’ve got and how your audience finds you, optimizing your checkout experience for mobile may or may not be a major game-changer. Today, in most situations, people use their smartphones to learn about products and seal the deal later, from their desktops. But that’s changing quickly.

An unacceptable contributor to sales friction is how difficult the final purchasing step is on many websites. Thankfully, companies like BigCommerce have made it their mission to optimize the mobile checkout process and reduce frustration. Data points to the growth of global ecommerce reaching $4.058 trillion in annual revenues within the next two years. That’s without B2B ecommerce, mind you, which many estimate to be an even larger market force. And 75% of consumers will already abandon their purchass if a site isn’t easy to use on mobile.

BigCommerce has rolled out a solution to the mobile buying conundrum with their Buy Button, which enables consumers to purchase products straight from newsletters, social media posts, and just about anywhere else you can think to embed them.

This type of solution can work well if you’re selling products and services with higher price ranges via email drips that nurture relationships with leads to the point of sales readiness. Otherwise, given the in-the-moment aspect of the mobile user experience, the Buy Button is best used for impulse purchases.

Provide Superior Customer Support

Forrester estimates that nearly two-thirds of US online shoppers are unlikely to return to a website if their customer experience fails to meet expectations, and nearly half abandon their baskets if they can’t find a quick answer to their questions online.

Image source: https://twitter.com/Tesco

Many companies are finding that chatbots are the answer to speedy, efficient, accurate and scalable customer service interactions, and though it may seem high, Gartner predicts that 85% of customer service interactions will be handled by chatbots by 2020. Today’s customers are going straight to social media seeking quick, easy customer service, and the brands that reply vigilantly and helpfully to these often publicly visible queries can score big wins. Automation can help a great deal in this regard.

For those not sold on chatbots yet, maintaining active Twitter or Facebook Messenger channels with human representatives is critical. Either way, you can ease the path to purchase by positioning your brand as one that’s available, attentive, candid and helpful.

Let the Customer in on Their Savings

When consumers visit many online stores, the first thing they see is a popup with a lead capture CTA accompanied by the promise of a discount. Sign up for the newsletter and get $20 or 20% off of your next order. For shoppers on the fence about making a purchase, these offers can make the deal.

Image source: https://www.cheapmonday.com/gb/

Depending on your audience, however, this kind of interruption might be a bad idea. If someone isn’t interested in necessarily purchasing right away, then you’ll only turn him off with aggressive discount offers. In cased like these, though, you can still alleviate friction by displaying discounts in the checkout process, reminding your customer of the extra value he’ll unlock by completing the purchase. This type of visual reminder can work well in B2B situations as well.

Map Out a Transparent Process

Some 28% of abandoned purchases can be attributed to over-complex checkout processes, according to Baynard Institute’s research. As discussed above, minimizing the number of steps involved with buying can help a great deal, but it’s also about managing expectations.

People feel less confused, and are therefore less likely to abandon their purchase flows, when they feel like they’re in control. By displaying a dynamic progress bar, with labeled nodes along the way, you can circumvent a lot of conversion process unease and increase sales.

Image source: https://www.parkerpen.com/

It might seem like signposting overkill, but there’s a big difference between clicking that “Confirm” button when you know you’ll have a chance to review all of the details later and when you don’t. Likewise, it’s a lot easier to deal with six order detail screens when you know that they’re coming.

Offer a Variety of Payment Options

The rise of mobile spending has given way to mobile wallets like Apple Pay and PayPal One Touch. One-click solutions are crucial when it comes to making the sale, as people will abandon a purchase if they don’t know their credit card information off the top of their head. Below, UK brand Sour Cherry offers PayPal One Touch to ease in the completion of a shopper’s purchase.

Ease of checkout is hardly the only criterion to pay attention to when choosing a payment processor, though. It doesn’t matter how quickly PayPal One Touch-powered transactions can be executed if your prospect doesn’t have a PayPal account. With the popularity of cross-border ecommerce growing, merchants need to know which payment processor options to offer to which audience members.

Simplicity and Transparency are the Antidotes to Sales Friction

For customers to successfully complete a purchase, payment needs to be as easy as possible. Buy Buttons and enabling PayPal One Touch are excellent ways to ensure this, especially on mobile. Saving money is a big plus, so keep your consumers thinking about how much you’re helping them save. And if you want to keep customers hooked, don’t ask them to create an account. (If you must, make sure they can do so seamlessly with social login.) And of course, make sure your customer experience emits trust signals every step of the way.

Read more:
How to remove unnecessary friction from your sales conversion process

Deciding to use a brochure for advertising is easy. The difficult part is deciding what goes into the brochure.

Before you start thinking what elements to include in the brochure, it is important to identify first what makes a good brochure. If you know exactly what can make a good brochure, it is easy designing one.

Relevant story

The information presented in the brochure should tell a story. It must be well-crafted. Brochures provide detailed information about the company or the products it offers. There should be a context to gain the interest of the readers. The ending must be a call to action to ensure that people will buy the products offered.

Balance of information and persuasion

In distributing brochures, you have two goals – to inform the people and to persuade them to buy the products. There should be a perfect balance between these two. You can’t just keep on advertising or else it will be annoying. On the other hand, if it is just information, they won’t know what to do after reading the brochure. It might be a huge waste of time and effort.

Persuasive words

Unlike leaflet printing or banner printing where images speak a lot, brochures are more about words. Brochures usually come with many pages because there is information that should be explained to the public. It means that the words must be carefully chosen. They have to be appropriate. There must still be images to give time for readers to breathe, but words are still the most important aspect. Edit the information well and remove anything totally unnecessary.

Use the right tone

You need to speak to your audience directly. You must know what information your audience is interested in and how you can relay it to them. Your approach must be suitable to their needs. Engage with them. Use a conservative and friendly tone whenever necessary. Most of the time, you should be authoritative. Otherwise, it might be difficult for you to sell what you need to sell.

Dealing with brochure printing is a complicated process. You can’t expect something great overnight. There are a lot of details you need to take into consideration. If you want to get the attention of the people you should also find the best printing services for high quality results. Edit the information until it’s perfect, don’t settle for anything less. Let’s admit it. Not a lot of people read brochures these days. The same is true for exhibition stands and pull up banners. You need to have great content to avoid people losing interest.

Read more:
4 qualities of effective brochures for advertising

Britain’s struggling supermarket chains, seeking ways to counter the rise of discounters, are stepping up efforts to draw the UK’s 3 million Muslims into their stores during Ramadan, reports The Independent.

UK market leader Tesco expects £30 million in extra sales during the month-long holiday, when Muslims cook feasts after daylight fasting ends. As the festival got under way this week, Wal-Mart Stores’s Asda said sales of Ramadan-related products were running 12 per cent ahead of last year’s pace.

“Ramadan is one of the most significant events of the year for supermarkets and it’s a big opportunity to boost sales,” David Gray, an analyst at Planet Retail, said by phone.

“In the current deflationary climate, anything that brings shoppers into stores is a good thing.”

Over the last five years, discounters Aldi and Lidl have upended the UK grocery sector, dragging the established rivals — Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury and Morrison aupermarkets— into a price war that’s squeezed profit margins and led to store closures and thousands of job losses.

Aldi and Lidl keep prices low by restricting their product ranges. That’s a disadvantage during religious holidays, when consumers seek specialized goods, and gives the established supermarkets a chance to fight back.

The UK’s Muslim population, often ignored by other retailers, is an attractive market for the supermarkets because it’s been expanding by about 4 per cent annually since 2011.

Read more:
Ramadan could help supermarkets win the war against discounters Aldi and Lidl

This would usually end in two ways. Either you went with their recommendation and also came away with some giant speakers as part of an offer, or you left thinking that your current TV set will last another year!

It’s amazing how things change. The digital shopping experience has transformed how we engage with brands and make decisions. However, our natural instinct to turn to others for recommendations still prevails. Consumers might ask friends or family, but increasingly they check out online communities and review sites to get the lowdown on what’s hot and what’s not.

There’s a reason why sites like Which? and Amazon get so many visitors. They offer consumer driven and respected independent reviews, recommendations and star ratings. With social media and online shopping part of our everyday lives, retailers and manufacturers like Bang & Olufsen and Sony have created online forums and communities for consumers to research and gather information to support purchasing decisions.

Create a customer community

A community is the place where customer service reps, existing customers and prospects can talk about certain products and services informally and share knowledge. It’s also an area for customers to provide feedback on products and services, as well as write reviews. This means community managers have sight of the customer journey and can gather insights on what they are looking for and tailor services accordingly.

For example, the Team Titleist community provides golf enthusiasts with direct access to product experts, including fellow golfers and Titleist employees. As well as sharing information on events, tips and product knowledge, consumers also use the community to research products by asking for peer and expert opinion before purchasing. Providing this environment for customers and prospects has helped the company significantly boost sales.

Another large US electronics manufacturer previously used community for product support. Until they discovered that buyers were also using the community to make buying decisions. A little more research uncovered that buyers active in the community spent ~25% more than buyers who did not use the community and nearly $35M of revenue was attributed to the community.

Next, identify what potential buyers need 

It would be great if every member in a community bought something, but this doesn’t always happen. There will always be browsers that are less willing to part with their cash. So, how do community managers spot the buyers? Assessing each member on the below criteria is a good place to start. Those that score highly will be more likely to spend:

• How often are they visiting the community?
• What questions are they asking?
• What content are they reviewing?
• How often do they visit the community? 

To answer these questions requires some effort, but it is no different than managing any other digital campaign. And while this will help to identify the most active members, there are ways to increase these numbers further such as tying the community more directly with other campaigns across your website and social media channels. In the second part of this article, I’ll discuss these in more detail so stay tuned.

Rob Howard, VP Social Communities, Telligent, a Verint Company

Read more:
One way you can drive more sales

Marie Despringhere, UK Country Manager for Optimizely, explains how e-commerce websites can increase their conversion rates and run better A/B and multivariate tests with these five top tips.

Keep shoppers focused with a prominent breadcrumb

Shoppers frequently move from an exploratory (evaluating what the website has to offer) to a task-oriented (such as adding products to the basket and checking out) mind-set as they progress through e-commerce websites. The product page is a key middle ground where shoppers are exploring their options, but will need to focus their decision-making attention before they add their product(s) to their basket and move on to checkout.

One device for keeping shoppers focused is a site breadcrumb on all product pages. The breadcrumb gives users guidance on how to explore a set of products they’ve already shown interest in. Users that lack a focused path through an e-commerce site are less likely to convert to purchases so remember to test navigation methods like these at key points in the user journey.

Confirm when shoppers add a product to their basket

Capitalise on your visitors’ interest and help them stay focused on the task at hand by making the next step obvious. One way to guide shoppers from product pages to checkout is to show them confirmation after adding a product to their basket. Showing a preview of the current basket alongside a checkout call to action reduces the effort required to take the next step and begin the checkout process.

Prioritise your A/B tests wisely

There are dozens of factors to A/B test in order to influence your conversion rate and generate more value from your digital customer experiences. Traffic, or the volume of visitors to your site, is a finite resource that can dramatically influence how you plan to A/B test, and should be factored into the prioritisation process for organising experiments.

Plan to execute a good mix of tests on different types of pages: the homepage and category pages, as well as product pages and the checkout funnel. Top of funnel tests, for example, will provide good insight on how changes along the path influence behaviour down-funnel. Likewise, tests that are closest to your primary conversion event give value because the goals assigned to such tests will most likely be aligned to key success metrics, and will enable you to more accurately communicate how variation changes create business value.

Don’t just redesign; iterate and test

“Redesign” is a word that carries enormous weight, loaded with both optimism for a better user experience and increased conversions, as well as a tremendous investment of resources. Should you test small changes, or a completely redesigned experience?

To streamline the tedious process of testing element variations one-by-one, consider grouping related elements in a multivariate test. The elements that you group should all have the same goal on the page (i.e. drive CTA click, encourage form complete, etc.). A multivariate test will run all possible combinations of variations to provide very specific insight into how elements do or don’t complement one another.

Test when visitors need to register

An email address is key to extending the customer relationship beyond the time on your website or mobile app, be it through remarketing when a shopper abandons their basket or emailing a promotional offer to bring them back to your site.

A trend currently being witnessed in e-commerce is requesting the email address at multiple stages of the funnel, including at the end when a user has advanced to checkout. Email credentials are then requested to create an account instead of letting visitors complete a purchase as a guest. Additionally on mobile, try to avoid many steps or modals layered on top of your site experience. Instead, direct users to a page that has only one task: registration.

It’s important to note that every funnel stage, across every device, should be taken into consideration when optimising an e-commerce site. When executed correctly, optimisation can increase conversion rates and enable better and more effective A/B and multivariate tests to be carried out.

Read more:
Five e-commerce best practices to stand out from a saturated market

Each brand has to find the sales process that work bests for it. William Buist is founder of xTEN Club has advice on how to create a successful, sustainable sales process:  

Look where the brand needs to go

Don’t develop a sales process backwards by setting goals based on current performance. True progress is seen when visionaries look towards the end goal and map a clear path to get there. Leaders don’t waste time with small changes when big adjustments are needed.

Business Model Clarity

The key here is clarity: about the core purpose of the business; who you seek to work with; how you reach them; and the problems that you solve. Sales success correlates with the level of clarity within the business. 

Pinpoint exact prospects (and build personas)

Know exactly who is buying the product and what motivates them to purchase. Sales professionals should be intimately familiar with the pain points of different personas and they should be able to give a detailed pitch that explains precisely how the product, or service, meets those needs.

Sales are made when the sales team can form a relationship with the prospect and present the product as the answer to their problems. 

Understand where a particular prospect falls and tailor the approach 

Once the sales professional knows the persona of their prospect, they will be able to customise their selling approach. For example, a security software company should have a different approach for a company that recently experienced a devastating security breach versus a start-up company looking for basic security for their equipment. 

Take precise measurements of the process 

The sales process should be measured regularly in order to gauge sales team success: 

1)      Measures 

Measures are the things you record and analyse in order to judge progress. For example, the number of calls, the number of appointments, etc. Track these to see how well sales representatives are reaching their goals. Helping under-performing representatives can help boost the bottom line for the entire company.. 

2)      Conversion rates at each stage of the funnel 

The sales funnel process includes all of the key phases you require to move customers from first contact to delivery of the product or service and sometimes even beyond that.  By looking at the rates of conversion from one stage of the sales funnel to the next, companies can find even more opportunities for improvement. 

3)      Time spent on core selling vs. time spent in aggregate 

Monitor how much time is spent on core selling. This will tell you where the priorities of the sales team lie. It can help eliminate sales waste and improve efficiency. Consider carefully the balance between core sales and admin and look at whether the tasks that are blocking success could be done by others.

Clarity, the key to sustainable sales.

Linking the brand to customers, through the right channels, and in the right way makes sure that the customer buys with clarity as well as ensuring that you sell with clarity. When that’s done the sale is powerfully sustainable. Customers get what they bought, delivered properly, on time and at a cost that they value, whilst the brand can make long term profits. That’s why sales processes have the power to make or break a brand.

Taking the time to perfect this system can increase sales, boost the bottom line and even reduce costs. The steps described above can help companies improve their sales systems from the top down to help them reach goals and grow the brand.

Read more:
The hidden secrets of powerful sustainable sales

Ecommerce is the fastest growing business in Europe. According to data, this industry brought in £132.05 billion in UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Netherlands, Italy, Poland and Spain in 2014.

The desired action could differ depending on your objectives. Here we talk about the desired action being to get your visitors to buy your products or services on your ecommerce website. There is a lot of competition in the ecommerce market; with customers becoming meticulous about the products and services they want. If your business is not careful, you might end up losing customers to your competitors.

In this article, we will look at how you can optimise your ecommerce website to cater to your clients’ needs and ensure you are competitive enough to take advantage of this lucrative industry. We will provide you with a few tips on how your business can turn this online traffic to sales.

Basic information

Your ecommerce site must have all the basic information such as your address, name of your business, products or services you offer and your contact information. Your potential clients have to be able to find this information with ease on your website.

Use “my” instead of “your”

This might seem innocuous, but your wording plays a pivotal role in how your potential clients think. “Click to view the delivery price of my product” will have a bigger impact than “click to view the delivery of your product”. The word “my” emphasises on ownership. A potential client will feel a sense of owning the product before they buy it. People are more likely to select the product when they feel the sense of ownership.

If the product is free, highlight it to your customers

Customers usually do not spend a lot of time on a single ecommerce website. It is crucial to make sure when you have a free offer, your customers will see it. Words like “100% free”, “get started for free”, and “own it for free” will go a long way to boosting your sales.

Insist to your clients on privacy

Your business has to insist on its website that any information a client gives is confidential. This gives customers peace of mind knowing that their information is safe with you.

Use orange buttons

However strange this might seem, customers respond to colour orange. Experts at CNN credit the popularity of colour orange to online stores such as eBay and Amazon. Many people seem to respond to orange colour on buttons. Your business should use such buttons to boost its sales.

Placement of content

Most of your customers read from left to right. It is important to make sure when your client is going through your webpage, they see appropriate information. Your ecommerce website design should have images and videos on the left, and the call to action on the right. This tweak could have a huge impact on your business sales.

Long videos are unwanted

Videos are a very good tool as they visualise to your clients what your product or service is about. However, just as how videos can be used to attract customers, it can also be a deterrent to your ecommerce sales. If you have to use a video, make sure it is short enough. Customers tend to get bored after 90 seconds and if you have not made it clear by then, you may lose them.

Build trust with your clients

Customers will feel comfortable buying your product or service from your ecommerce site if they trust your business. One way to build this trust and credibility is by including genuine customer testimonials on your website. Make sure you include how the product or service you offer benefited this customer.

Another method of enhancing credibility is including your experience or expertise in the industry your business is involved. This will make your client confident that you have what it takes to solve their problem or cater to their needs.

Your headline should include benefits

Often, the first thing your ecommerce site visitors see is the headline. If it does not impress them, chances are your visitors will just shift to another site. Therefore, it is important that your headline grabs their attention with all the necessary information.

A good headline will have the problem your potential client is facing, and show how the product or service being offered is the solution. A client has to know what the product is and what it does for them.

Use images

If you are selling tangible products on your ecommerce site, you should use images. They will make the product seem tangible and your clients can envision themselves using it. If you offer a service that cannot be reduced to a picture, a video can be used as an alternative.

Format and change appearance of your business website

Most visitors will not read every word on your website. Usually, the human eye will scan as you scroll down the page, reading words or phrases that stand out. It is imperative for your business to make sure “scanners” will get the most from your website. You can do this by changing the format and appearance. You can catch the attention of scanners by doing the following:

• ine You can use bold and italics to emphasise the most important benefits of your service or product.
• for for For the paragraphs not to look like a block of uniformly formatted text, you should vary their lengths.
• use use Use sub-headings to emphasise your key message. This will tempt the scanner to look at the bottom paragraphs
• use Use bullet lists (like this) to stress on key points or benefits.

Follow up strategy

Depending on the product or service you offer, customers may not necessarily buy from you the first time they visit your website. It may take several contacts between your business and consumers before they eventually buy. It is crucial to set up automated email (auto responders) for your subscribers.

In the follow up emails, state your offer to new subscribers, letting them know the benefits of what you sell. Digital marketing experts recommend at least a month’s worth of emails, sent every three to five days. This strategy could also be used on your existing customers. It will allow you to build relationships and give you the opportunity to sell backend products.

In summary, ecommerce is a thriving business with huge revenues all across Europe and globally. It is very important for your business to optimise its website in order to improve the ecommerce sales. This article has provided a lot of tips that could be useful in turning your online traffic to sales.

As technology becomes available in almost every household in the world, your business has to position itself, ahead of your competitors, as the number one ecommerce site for products or services in your industry.

Test each one of the tips we have given you and see how it might work for your website in relation to improving sales. Lastly, ecommerce sales in Europe are expected to grow by 18.2% in 2015. Optimising your website will enable your business to be part of this growth.

Read more:
Boosting ecommerce sales

But too many luxury retailers are being held back by old ideas. Today, high-end brands need to gain more control of their relationships with consumers by going direct-to-consumer online.

The primacy of the brand

Recently, ecommerce provider Digital River commissioned a study of 1,000 consumers. Our research revealed a startling fact: when shopping online, 89 percent of shoppers visit the website of the brand they’re considering. This fact should give retailers pause. Even in the ascendancy of online marketplaces like Amazon and Taobao—even in the era when much shopping takes a micro-moment rather than an afternoon—the vast majority of online shoppers take the time to go straight to the brand when they’re looking to make a purchase.

There is no substitute for the enduring luster of the brand itself. That’s especially true for consumer luxury goods, where brands are particularly known for their prestige, status and quality. Now here’s a good question for upmarket brands: If eight or nine out of every ten of your prospective online customers visit your website, what do they find there?

Many makers of fine goods like accessories and high-end electronics have been slow, some even reluctant, to seize the direct-to-consumer ecommerce opportunity. Far too often, a consumer will encounter a brand website that amounts to nothing more than a glossy catalogue of unpurchaseable products. Making an actual sale is out of the question.

This high-end resistance to direct ecommerce is short sighted. Consider another sobering finding from our research. While almost nine out of ten consumers will visit your website when shopping for your products, 31 percent say they will change brand allegiance if they can’t buy directly from you. If you’re not selling your products directly to the consumers who visit your website, you’re losing about one out of every three potential online sales to a competitor. Brands are powerful—so powerful, in fact, that brands that won’t sell directly lose sales to other brands that will.

The heavy cost of making a sale

Sales aren’t even the most important benefit of direct-to-consumer ecommerce. If you don’t sell your products on your own website, you’re not only losing revenue to third parties: you’re also losing customer insights, customer relationships and customer loyalty.

To see what I mean, consider the experience from your customer’s perspective. Someone who’s interested in your product visits your website, but can’t buy what they want directly from you. About a third of the time, that customer will run straight into the arms of a better prepared competitor. But even if your customer decides to stick with your brand, you’ve left them little choice but to click away to a channel partner or a marketplace like Amazon. Now your customer can buy your product, if they still want to—but that same product gets presented to them in an endlessly scrolling parade of competing items from other brands – or worse counterfeit knock-offs of your products – all of which (your customer is informed) they “might also like.”

Even now, you still could make the sale. After all, many luxury accessory and electronics brands have been getting along on such third-party online marketplaces for years. But that kind of sale comes at a heavy cost. With third parties, you have little or no control over how your brand is presented and experienced. More importantly, you’ve lost the opportunity to build and develop a loyal relationship with a consumer who wanted to buy your products directly from you to begin with. Isn’t it time to let them?

Myths about high-end brands and digital commerce

To help clear away the obstacles to direct online selling, I’d like to strike down a pair of outworn ideas that are holding back some of the world’s most prestigious brands.

Myth: Direct online sales aren’t for luxury brands.

For many luxury brands, there is a fear that direct online selling to customers will somehow cheapen a brand that has taken great effort—centuries of artisan craftsmanship, or millions in painstaking research and development—to build. That’s why some high-end brands believe their websites should be nothing more than catalogues of unpurchaseable goods. But our research shows this is not the case.

Far from diminishing the luxury allure of a high-end brand, direct online sales preserve, deepen and even protect the brand experience. Consider the alternative: pushing online visitors to third-party retailers or marketplace sites leaves your brand vulnerable to lax or absent adherence to your brand guidelines, uncontrollable customer experiences and the possible introduction of counterfeit merchandise, which has been estimated to cost the global economy upwards of $250 billion a year.

By selling your products on your own website, on your own terms, you preserve the equity you’ve built in your name and reputation—and build intimacy and loyalty with your customers, which can fortify your brand for years to come. You can provide the convenience that only online shopping offers while still extending the white glove service your clientele have come to appreciate from your high street shops or other offline settings. And you can protect your customers from counterfeit merchandise, ensuring your site is the default destination for authentic items through strong control over your inventory and distribution channels.

Myth: Ecommerce is too costly and distracting for high-end brands to consider.

The most prestigious and sought-after brands rise to the top of the market by making exceptional products, not by making websites. Building the infrastructure it takes to sell products online directly to consumers is, in fact, a complex and demanding enterprise, and luxury retailers are right to be wary of taking it on. For emerging and traditional luxury brands without an established distribution channel, working with an ecommerce partner to launch online operations can be the most cost efficient path to garner the attention required to kick sales into high gear.

Fortunately, luxury brands can reap the benefits of direct online sales, efficiently and quickly, without mounting an expensive and distracting effort to master ecommerce in-house. The right ecommerce partner can build an online store surprisingly quickly, in a way that shields your business from risk—while allowing you rich insights into your customers’ intentions and behaviors, and guarding the luster of your brand.

At Digital River, our empirical research corroborates our long experience: for consumer brands, particularly at the upper end of the market, there is no substitute for selling online directly to consumers. For a reasonable investment, you can reap lasting rewards—better sales, total control over your brand experience, deep customer insights and rich opportunities to build lasting loyalty. And deep loyalty, after all, is what high-end brands are made of.

You can download a copy of Digital River’s market report, “Are all your customers being served?”.

Marco Vergani is Vice President and General Manager of Europe and the Middle East at Digital River, the leading global provider of Commerce-as-a-Service solutions. Based in Digital River’s London office, has led customer-focused international sales operations for more than 25 years.

Read more:
Why high-end brands should sell online directly to consumers

The world of sales is fundamentally changing, driven by technological advancements and shifts in the way that purchasing decisions are made. The stereotypical image of sales people sitting in an office making cold calls does not reflect the reality in most organisations. The modern sales team has a wealth of different methods and tools at their disposal, which is not only changing the way that selling is done but also the role of salespeople. Here are four of the key trends currently occurring in the sector.

Traditional sales methods dying out

The traditional sales approach of cold calling and hard selling is dying out simply because it is no longer a successful way of selling. Buyers are increasingly empowered and informed, often having most of the information they need before even beginning the purchasing process. Studies have found that the average B2B buyer is 57 per cent of the way through the purchase decision before engaging with a supplier and that 80 per cent of buyers know what they want before even contacting a vendor, while a majority of buyers view aggressive salespeople or unsolicited approaches as their biggest frustrations. This suggests a change in the dynamic of the buyer-seller relationship, with buyers now holding the upper hand and armed with more information than ever before.

Social selling

While cold calling is in rapid decline as a method for successful selling, the opposite approach of social selling – developing one-on-one relationships with buyers using a range of communication channels – is growing in prominence, helping businesses improve their sales figures. Social networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn provide sales professionals with a platform to reach out to buyers and build relationships while also shaping their own reputation and credibility by sharing content and commenting on industry stories. Modern buyers are digitally connected and mobile, so salespeople need to be too so that they can leverage the power of social media.

Data, and lots of it

Advancements in CRM and reporting systems are giving sales representatives – both office-based and field teams – greater access to information about their customer base. Not only is there a lot more data around but it is cheaper and more accessible than ever before. Again, this is contributing to the demise of traditional sales methods as it allows sales professionals to be more targeted and efficient in their approach. CRM systems that are optimised for mobile and wearable devices provide field sales representatives with the same resources that office-based teams enjoy, enabling them to better manage customer and prospect relationships. Technology also offers sales management better insight and analytics into sales staff activity and performance, allowing them to identify weak spots and ultimately boost sales.

Salespeople as consultants

The role of the salesperson is changing from one of direct prospecting and selling to a more consultative and advisory role. Because buyers have often done research and know what they want before engaging with a seller, the traditional methods are less effective. This does not mean that salespeople are becoming less valuable, though – far from it. Salespeople need to engage with buyers throughout the whole purchasing process, adding their expert knowledge and providing advice on the best solution for the customer. Buyers want to work with sellers who have in-depth knowledge of the products they are selling and the industry in which they operate, and who offer recommendations and deals that are relevant to the company’s needs. People expect a more personalised buying experience nowadays, and salespeople are in a strong position to offer this with the tools and data they now have at their disposal.

Technology and shifts in the way that buyers make decisions are changing the role of salespeople and the relationship between buyer and seller. With traditional selling methods dying out, salespeople need to respond to these changes and position themselves as trusted advisors and consultants.

Read more:
The top four trends in sales

David Langdown, Sales and Marketing Director at Focus7 International, a business development company providing creative expertise and business growth support to SMEs, and an expert in brand strategy, looks at some of elements that make up successful corporate branding and when you should consider a brand refresh.

“The single most important thing to remember about your brand is that it isn’t about how you see yourself, it’s about how other people see you. Yes, that means a great logo, colour schemes, choices of typefaces and so on, but it goes deeper than that. The best brands stand out because they consider everything including tone of voice, choice of imagery, method and style of communication and so on. They develop not just an image, but also a culture that reflects their values in their marketing activity and through the whole organisation.

“A failure to participate in the brand results in a disconnection with the customer. For example a grumpy customer-service experience completely undermines the position of “The World’s Friendliest Bank.”

“Authenticity is therefore key, and there’s nothing wrong with being the most efficient or the lowest cost if that means you can’t be the friendliest or the highest quality. In many cases, it’s the personality of the business leader that sets the tone for the brand. Virgin Atlantic and British Airways will both fly you from London to New York for the same fare, so why is one seen as youthful, fun and adventurous whilst the other is stuffy and corporate and reliable? Surely the fact that one is led by a long haired maverick who started out in the music business and risked his life crossing oceans in powerboats and air balloons is a very significant factor? That creates a series of values that run through the business.”

“We can’t all be Richard Branson but we can be authentic. People deal with people who they relate to, so make sure you reflect yourself in your brand.”

“All brands need to refresh as time goes on. Even giant brands like Google and Unilever undergo subtle branding changes to fit the way their businesses are evolving. Timing is important when planning a brand refresh so how do you know when the time has come?

Look at your logo, website and marketing literature: When you set your business up it may have all been visually cutting edge, but fonts and colours go out of fashion just as much as haircuts and clothes, so are they now starting to look tired or dated? Ask your peers and colleagues for their opinions on your branding, and if you want really honest opinions, ask your customers!

Has your business diversified since you started out? If it has, then you may need a brand refresh to reflect the change in products and services. Some businesses may have diversified their product portfolios so that now, even the name of the business doesn’t reflect their activity. For example Apple changed their name from Apple Computer to Apple Inc as they expanded their range of products. Have the courage to make the change!

Are you expecting to grow your business? If you are planning a merger or partnership with another business, you will need to revisit your brand strategy in line with any changes in your target market. Business transition provides the ideal opportunity to create a new brand, because it also gives you the opportunity to talk to your customers. “You’ll have noticed we’ve changed our name and logo – here’s why and by the way, check out the new website…

Is your brand doing its job? Maybe initially it worked but you may have widened or narrowed your key target audiences or you want to create a slightly different feel for it. Make sure you get your messaging right if your customer base is changing and ensure that your new branding reflects how you want to be perceived by that core audience.

“Branding is essential to your business strategy and it is therefore vital you get it right. Make sure you think through changes carefully and take expert advice to avoid costly mistakes.”

Read more:
Is your brand in need of a refresh?

The social network has announced a partnership with commerce hubs Demandware, Bigcommerce and Shopify to make buy buttons available to the brands whose e-commerce stores are powered by the platforms. The buy buttons will surface both in sponsored tweets from the brands, as well as alongside anywhere a product link is tweeted.

For Flash Tattoos, a Bigcommerce brand, that could mean major conversion if Beyoncé chooses to tweet about her collaboration with the temporary metallic tattoo brand. Now, she likely won’t — the superstar hasn’t tweeted from her account since 2013 — but Flash Tattoos is betting that a collaboration with her name attached will attract plenty of social media buzz. Beyoncé and Flash Tattoo fans who catch the conversation on Twitter will find an instant buy button anywhere there’s a link.

“Our brand grew out of social media conversation,” said Flash Tattoos founder Miranda Burnet. Burnet added that while Instagram is an important platform thanks to the tattoo’s visual nature, the team is hoping Twitter’s buy buttons give the brand another avenue for growth.

“A core part of our marketing is that organic word of mouth — fans wearing and sharing the product,” said Burnet. “So Twitter is the go-to platform to get that real-time feedback, encourage the conversation and convert customers.”

Twitter’s Buy Now integration, powered by universal instant-buy platform Stripe Relay, aims to make purchasing from tweets frictionless. Users will enter their credit card and shipping information once; after that, they’re one product page and two clicks away from purchasing directly within Twitter. In addition to the three platforms, PacSun and Adidas will also be implementing the buy buttons.

Man Crates, an online retailer that specializes in curated gift boxes for men, is another Bigcommerce brand that will be integrating click-to-buy buttons on Twitter. According to founder Jon Beekman, the brand is looking to be an early player in linking social and commerce. He called it the “way the world is moving.”

“Even if, a few years from now, we’re talking about something completely different than buy buttons, this is the first step in bridging social activity and purchases,” said Beekman. “This is where we’re seeing that initial innovation.”

For many brands, buy-button technology raises concern: In order to facilitate transactions on a third-party platform like Twitter, brands must forfeit both consumer data and control over the buying experience. Both Flash Tattoos and Man Crates — small, growing brands — said that the allure of gaining new customers trumped any hesitation.

“Those logistics aren’t as big of a concern as making the product more widely available,” said Burnet.

Beekman added that while Twitter is a great starting point, Man Crates is open to testing buy buttons on other platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, as well.

Instagram, for its part, recently opened up its buy-button platform, which is only enabled in sponsored ads, to all brands. As a result, less-than-visually-appealing ads from perpetrators like Walmart began popping up in some feeds at the dismay of those who carefully curate their Instagram followings.

Read more:
Small brands are embracing Twitter’s buy-button integration

However regardless of all the research showing the potential of social media, and recognising the importance of networking more generally, there is a lack of research that goes beyond such generic, headline advice.

For example, the distribution of SMEs operating in particular industry sectors is by no means uniform across the UK. As research offered by Hiscox highlights, different business sectors are subject to very different geographies and densities of concentration. This has direct relevance for any discussion of networking.

There is, after all, little point in a boiler manufacturer spending valuable time and energy courting the attention of a local shoe manufacturer. Networking is necessarily a more targeted activity than simply casting one’s net willy-nilly. And if there are only a limited number of potential suppliers and/or prospective clients in the immediate vicinity, local networking efforts are unlikely to be overly productive.

The Hiscox heatmap shows, for example, shows the South East of England as a region in which the information and communication industry is dominated by larger organizations – only 25 per cent fall into the SME category.

These may offer opportunities to the SMEs on their doorstep, but as we have implied already, those larger concerns are going to be less interested in spending speculative time with what they will inevitably see as boutique or niche outfits.

Entering into a partnership with an organization that operates on a greater scale can represent an opportunity to scale up a small business, but it can also put serious strains on the junior partner.

Different cash-flow cycles and issues of scale on the production side can present log-jams to the ongoing management of the business. It is, in short, all too easy for the junior partner to be swamped to the point where its margins are trimmed and its processes are compromised to the sole benefit of the bigger partner.

The Hiscox figures perhaps disguise the level of SME activity in a given region. The presentation of percentages of SME activity as against larger concerns tells us little of the number of actual concerns involved. In the case of the South East – hardly a commercial desert in terms of information and technology firms – the proportion of SMEs as against larger concerns is less rendered largely immaterial due to the sheer number of businesses involved.

In contrast to the South East, for example, the West Midlands and the North East of England both show 100 per cent of Information and Communication businesses falling within that SME bracket. Clearly, this is not a reflection of the amount of activity – merely the make-up of the constituencies involved.

What the Hiscox research does point to, however, is the importance of SMEs targeting their networking efforts geographically as well as in terms of scale. Whether that is done on the basis of social media or more warm-blooded interactions is – in the first instance – not the key concern.

What is important is to target the concerns that are capable of delivering the optimum return on the effort involved. Networking may involve the currency of time rather than cash but it nonetheless operates on the same logic of investment and return. As such it is an activity that merits taking seriously.

Read more:
Casting the net wide is not how networking works

When you are running a business, most business owners are focused on three things:

1)      Getting more customers

2)      Increasing sales

3)      Earning more profit

But when these things aren’t happening many start “reacting” and a lot of random approaches start creeping in to their marketing activity.

According to Shweta Jhajharia of The London Coaching Group this is because we forget that these three areas are only important at the time of setting goals – but not when it comes to the day-to-day operations and marketing of your business.

The really important considerations are the items that lead to these outcomes.

The main thing you need to get into the habit of is measuring and managing the Five Levers that lead to the outcomes you want (customers, sales, profit):

• Number of Enquiries
• Conversion Rate
• Number of Transactions
• Average Sale Value
• Margin

You can download a one-page PDF of these five levers of growth here, with an explanation of each one. You should print this out and stick it up on your wall to remind you constantly of where your focus should be.

But the real key to managing these figures is to ensure you have a Weekly Business Dashboard where you are gathering and monitoring these important stats.

Jhajharia believes a business dashboard is important because:

1) It allows you to have a weekly overview of the measurements that matter in your business, and lets you catch any problems before they become catastrophic.

2) If and when you get a business coach, business mentor or investors to take a look at your business, having this habit in place will ensure they can get a quick and meaningful look at the business’s performance. This will allow them to help you identify what is and is not working, where you should be focused, and the areas where you can improve in order to get better and faster results.

If you do not have a weekly business dashboard, then the truth is that you are not staying on top of what is happening in your business – and may not spot a problem until it is too late.

Here are a few of Shweta’s must-have elements on your weekly business dashboard:

• Revenue
• Gross Margin Percentage (or “Ratio”) (Gross profit divided by Net Sales)
• Orders Taken
• Average Value Sale (Revenue divided by Orders)
• Leads Generated
• Cash in Bank
• Debtor Amount (the amount of money owed to you)
• Creditor Amount (the amount of money that you owe)

You will notice that this list of elements does not include things like conversion rates – which lend a deeper, richer analysis. That is because the weekly dashboard is not intended for that – you should be using those in your monthly dashboard. On a weekly basis, you want to review these eight pieces to get a quick overview of what is happening, and ensure you are on track.

Ideally, you should be measuring these against the targets you set within your strategic plan.

Keeping your dashboard maintained is time well spent as it really is the perfect way to keep on top of your business.

With the coming of age of a few businesses dashboard specialist companies, which allow data in businesses to be measured and reported event on a real-time basis, there is really no excuse not to have a dashboard in your business.

Read more:
Why every business needs a Business Dashboard

whenever I think of pithing events I can’t help but think back to the my days at school. On stage explaining to my peers why they should elect me as one of their prefects, and consequently being ripped to shreds by the Politics teacher. The lesson I learnt, be prepared.

As a small business, success or failure can rest on your ability to bring in much needed money. So, why give a half hearted attempt when your in front of the people that might be able to provide you with that much needed cash boost?

Here are my tips for pitching…..

Know your business
I’m sure we have all watched optimistic businesses walk into the Dragons’ Den hopeful that they will be leaving with a big chunk of cash in their pocket, only to watch them get shot down on the basics. There is no excuse for not knowing your figures. Before going into any pitch make sure you know your business basics inside and out. Why would an investor trust you with their money if you can’t remember how much you turned over in year 1.

Have a plan
SME’s write and rewrite business plans, a pitch is no different. Think about what you are pitching for, is it money? Are you selling? Is it an award? Pitches will include different information dependent on these factors, tailor the content to suit the panel and the function.

Have a structure but not a script. Recently I watched an individual pitch their business with a video and a script, when told they were running out of time they merely sped up their reading speed! Think about what you need to get across to the panel. If you have a time frame how can you structure the information to stay within the limit? A video that explains the business but takes up half of the pitch may be fancy but potentially has limited use.

Once you’ve built your plan, learn it. You shouldn’t have to rely on a script or in-depth powerpoints to get your information across. However, don’t rely on your ability to wing it, many have tried and frozen. Create a small set of notes or flashcards with key points for each section.

Practice makes perfect
The phrase is true! Don’t just practice till your confident, practice till your blue in the face and you’ve bored all of your friends, get them to fire questions at you and put you through your paces until you and they can’t take anymore.

Remember the panel is human
The people that are sitting opposite you are not super villains or trying to trick you up however, they are looking to make the best decision, whether that be where to invest their money or deciding who to crown the winner.

Remember pitching doesn’t need to be a daunting task, the more you do it the easier it becomes and when you make it through with the investment you need or the award you’ve been chasing it will be worth it!

Had a great or awful pitching experience? let us know in the comments below or tweet @r_mjones

Read more:
The importance of pitching

Research completed by the British Promotional Merchandise Association concluded that as much as eight out of ten people agreed that branded promotional items increase a brand’s overall awareness.

The goal ultimately should be to outperform another company or brand and to do this by always evolving and trying to improve upon current techniques.

Promotional Marketing
Promotional marketing is very necessary when you want to get your brand out to the public. Attracting new customers can be done in a number of different ways and utilising more than one method is very beneficial. No matter what product or service you are looking to promote it is wise to have a good promotional marketing strategy in place.

This helps put your company or brand out into the public in a positive light for both new and returning clients and customers.

Promotional Merchandise
When you put your logo or brand name on something simple like a pen, magnet, key chain or notepad you are giving people something they will use in their everyday lives. As time goes on your brand becomes more familiar to them and even if they do not need your services now they may remember you later on when they would need you.

Promotional Items
The amount of promotional items that can now be branded with a name or logo is very vast. At one point all you would really see is some pens or t-shirts floating around. Today you can get items such as:

Tote Bags
Magnets
Chip Clips
Rulers
Plastic Bags
Laptop Cases
USB Accessories
Stationary

Choosing what items you want to purchase for promotional purposes may be tailored to the group of people you are looking to market to. If you have a product or service that mainly applies to the elderly community then it might not be beneficial to hand out laptop bags or USB accessories.

You might be better off with simple items like pens and paper. A good quality promotional marketing company will not only provide you with the promotional items that you need but also the support that teaches you how to properly use these items to your benefit.
Promotional Giveaways
Promotional giveaways are nice because this allows people to sample a product or become acquainted with a brand without having to spend any money. In store promotions and giveaways not only entice people to come to your location but they also give you the ability to market yourself and gain clientele. Giveaways can include discounts, product samples or promotional items such as t-shirts, bags, pens, etc.

With 66 percent of people purchasing promotional merchandise saying that they would remember a brand for as long as one full year, this investment is extremely worth it for a company or brand. The majority of these products are very affordable and the pennies that are paid for a small item pays off greatly in the future with brand recognition and continuing business.

A company such as Outstanding Branding can help your business get to the next level and help make more of the community aware of who you are. The staff at Outstanding Branding can help you not only with the purchase of promotional merchandise but also with creating and implementing promotional marketing campaigns.

Read more:
How Promotional Marketing can help your business

The report shows that the rise in e-commerce in 2014 has been driven by female shoppers, with the research also finding that women were the main spenders online across the Chrismas period with 64 per cent of women shopping online for at least one item, compared to 50 per cent of males.

The most popular item brought by women online was clothing with 81 per cent of UK females having brought clothing online in contrast to 73 per cent of men.

The data suggests that new online retail start-ups should consider these findings when developing new sites:

“Today’s “New Man” doesn’t seem to have evolved as much as he might think. It’s still left to women to buy all the presents for friends and family. Women buy on behalf of their husbands, their partners, their kids, and even sometimes their work colleagues. Small wonder they are turning to the web to save a lot of legwork.’

“Even for video games, sites can no longer be designed and aimed at their traditional audience of young males. For every form of internet retail, from booking parcels to buying furniture, our figures reveal the customer is Queen.”

Read more:
Women spend an average £460m a week online shopping

You only get one chance
The old adage that you only get one chance to make a first impression succinctly describes ecommerce websites; if your content is bland and uninteresting, looks sloppy or is difficult to navigate, then your visitors will immediately career back off into cyber-space, never to return again. The average website has only seconds to entice a potential customer into staying to look around, so make sure the first impression you create is a good one.

Go it alone, or hire a professional?
One thing you may be considering is whether to hire someone to design your website, or to go it alone, building your own using a web hosting platform. This is a choice that ultimately boils down to how much money you are willing to spend. Hiring a web designer is not cheap, but it is often money well spent. They will provide you with a professional-looking, superior product that is easy to navigate. Not only that, but it will be uniquely built to your personal specifications, presenting you with the opportunity to stand head and shoulders above your competiton.

In comparison, the web designs featured on hosting platforms are generic, and used by hundreds of businesses. However, they are most definitely the cheaper alternative, and there is no denying that for small or new businesses, this could be the determining factor. Furthermore, with only a little web savvy and research it’s possible to tweak existing website themes to make your own unique design. So if you know your way around the basics of HTML you can likely make a great, individual website using an existing platform like Tumblr or WordPress.

User-friendly homepage
To keep your readers around for more than a few seconds, your homepage should pique their curiosity, satisfy their initial requirements and impart an overall impression of quality. The design needs to be uncluttered and simple, with muted colours and a readable font. Blazing reds and tiny writing in a contrasting colour may look cool, but they will play havoc with the visitors’ eyes. The homepage center-piece should be you: who you are, what your company stands for, and what you can offer them above your competitors.

It is also a good idea to include your contact details, as this automatically raises the trust of your visitors. Other information included should be pertinent, useful and brief. Don’t bamboozle visitors with too much information in one go. Navigation tabs should be clear, and if you include a search box, place it in a prominent position.

Clear and easy navigation
There is simply nothing more frustrating to visitors than viewing a website that is difficult to navigate. They don’t want to hunt for the information they need. Try to keep the navigation tabs in the same place on each page, as this will allow visitors to find relevant information and products quicker.

Similarly, make the titles simple and unambiguous. This is one instance where less is definitely more. If you need some clues with regards to easy-to-use navigation, visit the site of an established competitor. Check how easy it is to move through their website, considering what works well and what you would do differently. Thinking as a customer, rather than a business owner, should offer some clarity over what is most suitable for your own customers.

A customer focused approach
Customer service and communication are an integral part of an online business, just as they are in physical commerce. That said, it is difficult to replicate the positive effect of a smiling shop assistant in the virtual world. What you can do is concentrate on the ways you do have of communicating with your customers. For example, make it easy to get in touch with you, by providing several alternative methods of contact. This way, problems can be resolved more effectively. Maintain your customers’ interest by sending out regular emails or newsletters, and set up pages on social media sites where you can share your business’s latest developments and answer any queries.

Providing excellent customer service goes beyond an easily navigated site and open communication; it is also about adequately protecting your customers’ sensitive personal information, especially with regards to processing payment and credit card details. It’s essential that you use a secure, reliable online payment solution such as the ePDQ options from Barclaycard.

The importance, and potential impact, of your website can’t be stressed enough. It’s your way of connecting to existing and new customers. Competition these days is rife, so if you fail to impress at the first hurdle, your business is going to suffer. Your failure is your competitor’s success. Getting it right, by offering your customers a pleasant, straight-forward experience, will ensure that they gladly return for repeat business.

Read more:
Building an ecommerce website for your SME

The report, ‘Generating Social Capital’, which was undertaken by the Business Schools of the Universities of Surrey and Greenwich, analysed data gathered from a survey of over 1,000 successful SME leaders, as well as from focus groups and in-depth discussions with 25 individual owner-managers.

It reveals that, while nearly all of SMEs questioned considered direct referrals important to their continuing success, most regarded social media as “a necessary evil”. Meanwhile, although SMEs considered LinkedIn to be of equal importance to traditional networking events, and nearly 90 per cent used networks and social media, over 35 per cent of SMEs did not consider their use of these to be effective.

Professor David Gray of the University of Greenwich, who co-led the research, explains: “Successful SMEs are mindful of both the potential benefits, and dangers, of spending time networking on social media. While they value LinkedIn for showcasing their business and establishing their brand, they are wary of getting too sucked into discussions, losing sight of the need to find new customers. The same is true of Twitter – it can be a highly effective tool for SMEs when used in conjunction with other social media, such as the business’ website and blogs; but there is the danger that tweeting may replace genuine business activity.”

Meanwhile, the findings are clear that social media are not a substitute for face-to-face networking and events. Face-to-face networks are highly valued by SMEs, both to supplement a social media presence and in their own right. But the research shows that it is vital to be selective about these so as not to suffer from ‘event overload’. Having a clear strategy for networking events is just as important as having a marketing strategy.

Indeed, successful SMEs network with a number of different communities, integrating a combination of both offline and online methods. The challenge is how to integrate the two so that one complements the other.

Study co-director, Professor Mark Saunders of the University of Surrey, comments: “Our research shows that SMEs need to be strategic in their use of offline and online activities to maximise their effectiveness and avoid falling into the time-wasting trap. Social capital – the quality of goodwill created through these activities – provides information and influence from which SMEs can yield valuable business development opportunities.”

Sir Michael Snyder, Senior Partner of Kingston Smith, who commissioned the research comments: “In an increasingly connected world where virtual relationships are valued more highly than ever, it is essential that SMEs take a co-ordinated approach which combines traditional face-to-face networking with online tools such as social media. Devising a strategy that incorporates both online and offline activities is central to SMEs’ business development, particularly if they are to compete with their larger counterparts.”

Snyder concluded: “I hope this report will challenge SMEs to seize the opportunities these networks offer, as doing so will undoubtedly yield strong economic benefit in the future.”

Read more:
SMEs must get better at networking, research shows

One of the most common questions asked by directors and managers is “why is salesperson x under performing?” closely followed by “and what can I do about it?”

The most common reason for sales under performance is a basic lack of motivation. As a manager or director, how often have you hired a salesperson based on their CV and their performance at the interview, only to find out very quickly the person who is now on your payroll seems like a different person entirely? The person who said “long hours don’t worry me, I’m not afraid of hard work” but is never in the office before 8.59am and leaves at 5pm, so much so that you can set your clocks by them?

The person who said “cold calling?  I love it!  You give me the phone, I’ll close the deal”, yet now seems to hide under their desk or never be around whenever you mention doing some pro-active calling? This doesn’t only apply to new sales staff.  How about the existing sales team that have been in place for a while?  If they’re starting to feel like their job is monotonous, or that there’s nothing new or fresh in the role, then the likelihood is they’ll be demotivated and probably just going through the motions.  This will be even more the case if they’ve been passed over for promotion, missed out on commission or a pay rise, or they feel let down in some way.

Sometimes, underperformance can relate to their lack of desire. What I mean by this is the want or the will to do something, or to make something happen.  Most salespeople can perform well when things are going well for them.  The test is, when things aren’t going so well, how do they react?   If they’re cold calling and someone puts the phone down on them, what do they do next?  Pick up the phone and keep going?  Or hurl abuse at the phone, or stomp around the office, telling everyone within a 10 metre radius how rude the person was and go off for a cigarette or a coffee?

Often missed by sales managers, a change in personal or work circumstances can lead to a salesperson underperforming.  From the personal side, perhaps a new baby that leads to sleepless nights?  A stressful house move?  A new marriage where the new wife/husband expects the salesperson to spend less time concentrating on work? Now whilst I agree that on the whole we shouldn’t bring personal stuff into work, but we’d be naive to expect that it wouldn’t affect someone, at least on some level.

From the work point of view, perhaps sales targets being increased?  Or how about the commission structure changing?  Or that the salesperson feels undervalued or unimportant?  The work examples we have some control over, but it often amazes me how often a commission structure or target change is brought in by management, without any thought as to how it will affect the sales team.

Many salespeople also suffer from a lack of belief – in themselves, their company, the market, the industry, their role and so on. Constantly facing rejection, the salesperson now starts to believe the things said to them by prospects.  Having been told “that’s too expensive” enough times, the salesperson now starts negotiating with their boss on lowering the price for their customers.

In another scenario, having been told enough time that their product “isn’t as good as company x’s product”, they now start to believe that’s the case and give up almost as soon as they hear that company x is also pitching for the work. This is also one of the biggest reasons for salespeople leaving a company, in that they think that if they go to a different company, it will be easier to sell their products – often to find out too late that that’s not the case.

If you want to keep your salespeople motivated, you must engage them and get them to buy-in to any changes.  If you can get them to see the positives in any changes, you’ll find they embrace them and go out and sell more because of it.

You must make them feel valued by making sure you see or speak to each member of the team on a regular basis, one to one.  Ask them how they are getting on, and don’t just be fobbed off with their first answer, look at their pipeline; ask how you can help them convert more business and how the business can best support them.

You must stay positive. Whilst I agree salespeople should take responsibility for their own motivation, the team will take the lead from the sales manager or business owner.  If you can’t stay positive about your company and what it offers, how on earth can you expect your salespeople to do so?

And finally, you must reward effort as well as results. Sometimes, when the salesperson has put in lots of effort but not reached the result you both wanted, you may choose to reward their effort.  After all the last thing you want is for them to feel like when they put in that amount of effort, they don’t get any reward.  If they’ve been working late/early, or done something special that for some reason didn’t get the business, consider rewarding them in some way to encourage that behaviour in the future.

Follow the tips above and watch your sales (and that of your team) soar.  I look forward to hearing about your sales successes!

Read more:
Why salespeople under perform & what to do about it

The world is inundated with sales tools: worksheets, playbooks, sales scripts, software, brochures, and so forth.

But all of those sales tools put together are insignificant if you don’t have the intellectual and emotional tools that truly create success, says Geoffrey James.

Here are seven sales “tools” you need to develop:

1. Patience

If you’re patient, you let customers decide at their own speed. You realise that nobody ever got a plant to grow faster by pulling at the leaves of a seedling. If you lack patience, you’ll be frustrated whenever things take longer than you’d like. Customers will sense your frustration and hesitate to buy.

2. Commitment

If you’re truly committed to both your customer’s success and your own success, you’ll do whatever it takes (within legal and ethical bounds) to get the job done. You’ll banish all thoughts of ever giving up. If you lack commitment, you’ll consistently fail to follow through–and will often drop the ball at the worst possible moment.

3. Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm is contagious: If you’re enthusiastic about yourself, your firm and your product, your customers will “pick up” your enthusiasm and believe in your ability to improve their lives. If you lack enthusiasm, however, you’ll always find yourself surrounded by naysayers and endless “objections.”

4. Curiosity

Curiosity is essential to growth–and if you’re growing as an individual and a professional, you’ll spend time each day learning something new to better serve your customers. You’ll read books, listen to audio training, take courses, and network with peers. If you’re not growing, your ideas will become stale; your career will languish and your ability to compete will slowly drain away.

5. Courage

If you’ve got courage, you take the necessary risks to expand yourself and your business into new areas–even when you’re facing enormous odds. You’ll see setbacks as learning opportunities rather than failures. But if you lack courage, you’ll freeze up when things get weird, turning small failures into big ones.

6. Integrity

If you’ve got integrity, there’s no disconnect between your stated purpose and your real motivations. Because there’s no hidden agenda, customers sense the honesty and feel comfortable working with you. If you lack integrity, however, customers will have a nagging feeling that something is “not quite right”–and tend to balk rather than buy.

7. Flexibility

Life is all about change; nothing stays the same. If you’ve got flexibility, you can observe what’s working and what’s not and change your approach to match changing circumstances. If you lack flexibility, you’ll pursue brittle strategies and tactics long after they’ve ceased to work.

Read more:
The 7 Most Powerful Sales Tools

Consumers now have access to a plethora of trusted information everyday via the Internet, which can be accessed anywhere, anytime as no longer do you have to sit at a computer desk to access the web and this puts consumers at a much higher power when it comes to them evaluating brands and making their purchase decisions.

With the onset of the Internet era, consumers are turning to the web for product and service information, reviews of like-minded people and user ratings before making a purchase decision.

As Jessie John, from Mans Media explains  this not only empowers the consumer, it also places them in a position to make or break a brand.

Be Attractive
With the extensive reach, speed of communication and the widespread availability of mass media, brands have more opportunity to create awareness through digital marketing. However, with this also comes increasing competition and smarter and more conscious consumers.

You can attract the consumer’s attention towards your brand by being ubiquitous.  This can be achieved by first determining the target audience for your brand based on research of their demographics etc and then by ensuring your brand is where your audience is through digital marketing such as display advertising, social media ads, email and text messaging.

Of course, consumers do have the choice and the power to completely ignore you if they choose to as they can switch channel while ads are running, set up spam filters, online ad blockers etc.

However, this creates a greater need for a brand to be attractive and keeps marketers from sticking with just one form of digital marketing. Switching strategies and tactics up is crucial and there are many choices and platforms open to the marketers; one just needs to identify and evaluate them accurately.

Be Interesting (Pull Advertising)
Just capturing consumer’s attention is not enough; brands need to arouse the consumer’s interest and make them curios. A smart digital marketer will anticipate the needs of the consumer even before the consumer can elucidate them and place itself at the right platform where the consumer can find his product easily.

Being at the right place at the right time and enabling social interaction is important. Blogs, interactive portals, search and review portals all enable the correct placement for specific business and aid the consumer to find your business as per his/ her needs.

Furthermore, with search engine optimisation you can bring forth your brands name through web pages – website and blogs, internet links, interesting videos and banners.

Be Talked About
Creating a buzz about your brand and getting opinion leaders to talk to about it not only enables it to be in the limelight, but also garners trust. Reaching out and interacting with your consumers is easier than ever and can work to your advantage. Social media and interactive platforms help to create and retain interest in your brand, make your consumers feel that their views are valuable, and increase word of mouth referrals.

Consumers now have access to a plethora of trusted information everyday via the Internet, which can be accessed anywhere, anytime. No longer does one have to sit at their computer desk to access the web and this puts consumers at a much higher power when it comes to them evaluating brands and making their purchase decisions.

With the onset of the Internet era, consumers are turning to the web for product and service information, reviews of like-minded people and user ratings before making a purchase decision. This not only empowers the consumer, it also places them in a position to make or break a brand.

Read more:
3 steps to successful digital marketing

In order to help your potential customer make a decision you need to approach the process through their eyes. It’s essential to think about their needs – not yours.

So how do you create a successful sales process that is designed around your customer’s needs? Richard Edwards from Quatreus Ltd designs sales processes for companies, and he has some top tips…

1) Don’t sell
Customers do not want to feel they are being sold to – they want to be in full control of the information they receive, and how they go about purchasing items and services.

In order to design a process that truly fits your customers’ needs, you need to recognise the ‘customer’ as an individual person, and create a process that adapts to them. At the forefront of your mind should be customer satisfaction, not sales.

A salesperson’s ultimate role is to present a solution to a problem, or a perfect fit for a desire. The end result is ultimately the same – the customer chooses you and you make that sale.

2) Active interaction
With so much information at our fingertips, people now have the power to research, query, and find feedback relevant to what they seek from a number of independent sources.

As a seller, you need to keep a watchful eye on what information is out there, and ensure the information you are putting out is directed at, and being seen by, these potential buyers. Communicate with them in the first stages of their buying process, not as a seller but a receptive and useful source of information.

3) Share the load
The responsibility of researching the customer is not restricted to the sales department within a company. As social media and e-commerce increasingly dominate Internet and mobile usage, customers, be they B2B or B2C, are looking to other channels to get the information and, ultimately, the service that they require.

This is why you need a focus on internal collaboration. With this in mind, it’s perhaps best not even to think of selling as a ‘sales’ process or something exclusive to the sales team and alien to the rest. Consider ways in which to improve internal communications within your company and gain specialist training and skills development to help your staff remain customer focused. The sales process could even be redefined as an ‘engagement process’

The new ‘engagement’ process

What would an engagement process look like?

To create a customer needs focused process, we need to identify both the sales and the customer buying process.

Restructuring your sales process to suit customer needs can really improve your business. Not only can you create more harmonious relationships with your customers and your staff, a revamped sales process can produce tangible results.

For example when financial services company CEB changed its sales process to a customer engagement model, the results were a 71% increase in the average charge volume per transaction, 30% increase in average revenue per sales representative, and a 59% improvement in planning for effective commercial interactions.

A sales process designed around you customer really does lead to happier customers, more collaborative teams, and a measurable increase in business. What more could you need?

Read more:
How to create a successful sales process

Every second of every day, a salesperson somewhere in the world is giving a customer something that the customer simply does not want. When this happens, it’s always because the salesperson doesn’t know the following four facts:

1. Customers Don’t Want More Information.

Your customers already know more about your product category than they really want to know. Pick any product category and you’ll find its customer base is drowning in a sea of information.

What do customer want instead? Simplicity rather than more complexity.

2. Customers Don’t Want To Be Challenged.

Customers already face plenty of challenges. They don’t want you to create new ones, especially if you’re just reframing existing challenges to fit whatever solution you’re selling.

What do customers want instead? Your help rather than more stuff to worry about.

3. Customers Don’t Want Your Opinion.

You may deeply believe that your company is fabulous, your products are wonderful and your service unparalleled. But your customers don’t care what you feel or how you view your industry.

What do customer want instead? Real proof rather than empty promises.

4. Customers Don’t Want You To Sell To Them.

While your customers know that your job is to sell, they resent it whenever if feels as if you’re trying to sell them something. They stop listening the second you sound like “just another salesperson.”

What do customers want instead? They want to buy rather than to be sold to.

Read more:
4 Things Your Customers Don’t Want

Even though we may be officially out of recession, many business are still experiencing ‘recessionary conditions’ which therefore means they’re selling in a tough market  A tough market for other companies might mean that they’re selling against a lot of competition, or that potential prospects are beating them down on price – meaning lost margins and lost profit.

Whichever of those situations is affecting you and your business right now, here are some tips on how to sell more in tough market conditions…..

Andy’s Sales Tip 1 – Increase Your ‘New Business’ Efforts

My first tip for anyone selling in a tough market is to increase their ‘new business’ or ‘prospecting’ efforts.  The first good reason to do that is if people are taking longer to decide whether to buy or not, having more prospects is a good exercise in ‘risk mitigation’.  A second good reason would be that the more prospects you have, the ‘choosier’ you can be who you work with.  A third would be that you can then prioritise your prospects, based on who can make quick buying decisions – which mean quick sales!

For most small businesses I work with, their levels of ‘new business’ or ‘prospecting’ just aren’t high enough.  Which means that in a tough market, they sit there and think ‘if only the phone would ring more’ or ‘I wish I got more enquiries over the web’.  It’s time to take some action and to get some prospecting done, instead of waiting for it to come to you…. Because it probably won’t!

Andy’s Sales Tip 2 – Increase The ‘Interest’ From Your Network

One of easiest things to do for more sales, more quickly, is to increase the levels of interest in you and your business from your network of existing contacts.  The progress of Social Media has made this very easy.

How are you communicating with your prospects and existing contacts over Social Media?  Now I’m not saying that all social media is useful (there are plenty of so-called ‘Social Media’ Gurus peddling that kind of rubbish), but I am saying that you need to be where your prospects are and communicate with them.

Are you posting success stories for your business?  Your new business wins?  Examples of how you’ve helped people?  Positive feedback and testimonials from customers?  If not, now would be a good time to start!

Andy’s Sales Tip 3 – ‘Ring Fence’ Your Existing Customers

When you’re selling in a touch market, it is VITAL that you ‘ring fence’ your existing customers, in order to stop them going to your competitors!

Think about it, you’ve invested time and money in getting that customer to buy from you in the first place!  So why on earth would you let them go without a fight?

Surveys have told us for years that the biggest reasons customers leave an existing provider is because of supplier apathy…. They just didn’t feel like their business was valued… that we didn’t care…. So they took their business elsewhere!

Can we afford for that to happen in a tough market? I don’t think so!  So make sure you ‘ring fence’ your existing customers as a matter of priority….

Andy’s Sales Tip 4 – Look For Additional Sales Opportunities

Sometimes there are additional sales opportunities sitting right under our noses!  And often we don’t spot them, or sometimes even think of them in the first place!

One of the most effective sales questions of all was simply ‘would you like fries with that?’.  Simple, effective, and even broke some of the rules of being a ‘great’ question, but did it work?  Of course it did!   Responsible for millions of dollars of additional sales all over the world!

Now, if something as simple as that question can have the impact that it did, what could you introduce in your business to have a similar effect?

It’s simply about spotting the additional sales opportunity at the right moment, or even preparing for it in advance like the ‘fries’ question.  Think about the process a customer goes through when buying from you.  What opportunities are there for additional sales that you’re not taking right now?  Or not taking consistently enough?  And if you did, what kind of difference would it make to you and your business?

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar!  I look forward to hearing how you get on….

Read more:
Small Business Sales Tips – How To Sell More In A Tough Market

In a recession, you can’t afford to take your eye off the ball – business is tougher, existing clients beat you down on price, and you risk losing valuable profit.

Customers are afraid of making a wrong decision, so take much longer to decide whether or not to proceed with your proposal. Even people not directly affected by the recession start to hold onto their cash ‘just in case’.

So, are your sales skills sharp enough to cope?
Most small business owners I speak to are not traditional salespeople, haven’t been through weeks and months of rigorous sales training, and don’t continually practice their skills by selling full time. In fact, these small business owners would hate to call themselves ‘salespeople’, and because of everything else they have to do in the business – strategy, leadership, production, distribution, delivery, accounts etc, sales is traditionally only a small part of what they do.

Therefore if you want to thrive, or even survive, the economic conditions we’re experiencing, you’ll need to look at your sales skills, at the very least in the following areas:

Sales Skills Area Number 3 – Cold Calling or Follow Up Calls

I know. You hate cold calling don’t you? Most of you probably have avoided doing it altogether, or only done it when times are hard and you’re more desperate.

The question is, what else are you doing as a pro-active new business development activity. When I’ve asked this question to business owners in the past, people have said to me ‘oh but Andy, I have a website’, ‘I get all my business through networking’ and ‘I don’t go after new business, I just deal with my existing clients’.

Aha. Those would be the people that will be struggling in the current conditions, wouldn’t they?! Incoming enquiries are drying up, people are putting off making purchasing decisions, you’re being driven down to almost no profit on your prices, and you’re still sat there, wondering if the phone is going to ring?

You’ve got to do some sort of pro-active new business development activity in the current market, but how prepared are you to do good follow up calls, let alone cold calls?

Sales Skills Area Number 4 – Questioning and Uncovering Needs

Most professional salespeople are poor at questioning, so this is another area where you need to take a close look at your current skill levels. Most business owners I meet commit the ‘cardinal sin’ of talking too much about their product or service too early in the sale! The end result being is that most decision makers switch off from that sort of sales approach and the business owner wonders why more people don’t buy from them!

In addition, most business owners only ask information based questions of the potential client, questions that give the business owner more idea if they can sell their product or service to the potential client, but have little or no value for the decision maker whatsoever, resulting in the decision maker being bored at best, or having very short meetings at least! Again, neither of these is a great result for the business owner!

Sales Skills Area Number 5 – Closing

Now this is the biggie! The most misunderstood and poorly executed part of selling, closing and closing skills will be one of the biggest things that causes success or failure of many businesses in the current climate.

Again, even professional salespeople struggle with this part, so business owners will definitely need to work on this area. However, most of them find this part a challenge, as it’s not something that comes naturally to them or they don’t feel a huge amount of confidence in doing.

The challenge is, if you can’t master the closing part of the sales process, you’re probably missing out on a lot of deals. This isn’t a big problem when you’ve got a huge amount of prospects, or lots of business is coming from existing clients. However, in the current market conditions, not many people are lucky enough for that to be the case. The problem is, it may have been a few months ago, but now you have to adapt.

If you struggle with closing, clients will procrastinate over making a buying decision, more so now than ever before, because their fear of taking risks has risen in the current economic conditions and also they’re looking to hang onto their cash more – all bad news for you if you’re trying to get business off them.

In summary, in a negative market, if you don’t work on your selling skills and keep them sharp, you’re virtually handing business to your competition on a plate and allowing yourself to struggle to survive. When would be a good time to work on your sales skills do you think?!

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you got on.

Read more:
Small Business Owners: Are Your Sales Skills Sharp Enough To Cope? Part 2

Customers are afraid of making a wrong decision, so take much longer to decide whether or not to proceed with your proposal. Even people not directly affected by the recession start to hold onto their cash just in case. Are your sales skills sharp enough to cope?

In a recession, sales skills come to the fore. More so than in any other market conditions, right now if you’re struggling to win profitable business then it’s probably down in no small part to your lack of sales skills. Most small business owners I speak to are not traditional salespeople, haven’t been through weeks and months of rigorous sales training, and don’t continually practice their skills by selling full time.

Most small business owners I speak to would hate to call themselves salespeople, and because of everything else they have to do in the business – strategy, leadership, production, distribution, delivery, accounts etc., sales is traditionally only a small part of what they do.

Therefore if you want to thrive (or even survive!) the economic conditions we’re experiencing, you’ll need to look at your sales skills, at the very least in the following areas….

Sales Skills Area Number 1 – Objection Handling
How good are your objection handling skills? Most full-time salespeople are not great in this area, so as a small business owner, how do you rate yourself? Are you used to dealing with rejection and objections? Are you prepared for objections like “we don’t have the budget for that at the moment” or “call me back in 6 months”, “that’s too expensive or “leave it with us and we’ll come back to you when we’re going ahead”?

Then, can you deliver credible answers to those confidently and with certainty, bringing the conversation back on track, position more value and then close with conviction?

Sales Skills Area Number 2 – Negotiation
You know people are going to negotiate with you in the current market, because your existing clients have already started to negotiate with you, haven’t they? In market conditions like these, clients become more price-focused than ever, and start to look around more and evaluate other options before making a decision (or putting it off entirely!).

You know you’re going to get existing clients and potential clients negotiating with you, particularly on price and payment terms in the current market – are you properly prepared for this? Or do you find yourself ‘caught out’, suddenly caught in the middle of a negotiation before you realise what’s happened?

That is only going to result in a poor end to the negotiation for you – either you don’t get the business, or you end up giving away most of your profit in your desperation to at least ‘win’ the deal. Neither of those is a great result for you.

Sales Skills Area Number 3 – Cold Calling or Follow Up Calls
Now I know, I know. You hate cold calling don’t you? Most of you probably have avoided doing it altogether or only done it when times are hard and you’re more desperate. Right now would be one of those times (or very shortly!).

The question is: what else are you doing as a pro-active new business development activity? When I’ve asked this question to business owners in the past, people have said to me “oh but Andy, I have a website”, “I get all my business through networking” and “I don’t go after new business, I just deal with my existing clients”.

Aha. Those would be the people that will be struggling in the current conditions, wouldn’t they?! Incoming enquiries are drying up, people are putting off making purchasing decisions, you’re being driven down to almost no profit on your prices, and you’re still sat there, wondering if the phone is going to ring?

You’ve got to do some sort of pro-active new business development activity in the current market, but how prepared are you to do good follow up calls, let alone cold calls?

Stay tuned for part two coming soon where I’ll talk you through following up calls, asking the right questions and closing deals!

Read more:
Small Business Owners – Are Your Sales Skills Sharp Enough To Cope?

While the longevity of commercial value with Facebook and Twitter continues to be questionable, there is no question that LinkedIn is here to stay. It’s perfectly reasonable. LinkedIn is designed for professionals to connect, so they can do business.

However, many struggle with using the platform tool effectively. People gather connections like colorful Easter eggs and never actually have any sort of meaningful interaction. They join groups and never engage or read the feeds. Others are just intimidated by the volume of feeds, groups, endorsements, and constant interactions.

You don’t have to be a social media maven to benefit from this (mostly) free gift of modern technology. Follow these simple tips and with little effort, make LinkedIn your new power broker for success.

Have Clear Purpose
LinkedIn is a tool and like all tools it serves a specific purpose. If you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish, then the tool will be useless. You have to drive the process.

Decide if you want to expand your network inside your industry or beyond. Are you looking to explore new careers or create new business development opportunities? Perhaps you are looking for mentors or peer groups?

It’s okay to want all of this, but the more you focus your efforts, the easier it will be to get a specific and successful return.

Refine Your Profile
Would you walk into a sales meeting telling your buyer that you are job hunting? Not unless you want them to believe you have no confidence in your company and will be leaving soon.

Yet, this is the sort of inconsistency that appears in every LinkedIn profile that sounds like a job application. Your profile is public and should send a message consistent with your description on your company website. It should demonstrate your background and experience in a way that exudes confidence and opportunity for people who might engage with you. It should be brief, engaging and accurate. It should show that you cared enough about it to fix the typos, post a thoughtful picture and be grammatically correct.

Your profile is a first impression for many, and for those of you who don’t take care it will be certainly be the last.

Pick Groups That Matter
There are three good reasons to join a group. First, to stay in touch with peers you are already connected to through organizations like fraternities, service, or alumni. Second, to learn about an area of interest. This could be academic, social, or trade. Lastly, to stay abreast of happenings in a particular industry or area of commerce.

Joining a group in hopes of promoting your services will be a waste of time and often offend other members. There can be value in discussions, but any group has discussion hogs that clog the feed. It takes effort to sort through the noise; so don’t spend a lot of time trying to keep up. Select truly relevant groups, set your digests for weekly and weed them constantly.

Then you can spend 20 minutes on Friday and engage where you feel it’s appropriate.

Use Your Network
Being on LinkedIn and having 500+ connections does not make you a networker. Solid networking is still done through face and voice contact. But LinkedIn can be a great tool for enhancing those lunches and meetings. Before your next lunch meeting, review the connections of the people attending and identify two or three of their connections you would like to meet.

Ask your lunch-mates for introductions and watch the fun start. They’ll be pleased you took the time to explore their profiles and may be surprised at the people you mention. (Be aware, they may not actually know them.)

Offer to connect them with anyone they find in your list as well. Make sure you both have specific purpose in mind and report back any benefit received.

Dig Deep Into Your Connections
Count how many meaningful interactions you have initiated with your connections. Every week, identify five connections out of your list that can bring you real value, and send them a brief but personal message to connect by phone. Look for ways you can help them in their journey. If they are local, grab a drink, or lunch and do what networkers do best, connect and create mutual benefit.

Personalise Everything
Yes, Everyone is busy. It’s nice that LinkedIn provides an auto-phrase for interactions, but it simply conveys you are too busy to be a meaningful connection. When requesting a connection, review their profile and tell them why it’s worth their time.

If accepting someone’s invite, review their profile and suggest a simple way you can help them. You wouldn’t be effective at a networking gathering playing a recorded, canned message. Don’t do it here.

Be Generous in Your Interactions
The upside of social media tools is that it’s easier to connect than ever before. The bad news is that marketers have bombarded the channels with noise that makes everyone cynical.

Be a giver in the community. Don’t spam. Share information that truly has value to your connections. Ask yourself “Would I consider this to be thoughtful, relevant and presented with care?” If not, don’t post it. When approached to connect, give of yourself selflessly and abundantly.

If you can’t, then don’t connect. Build a manageable, deep network that you can service and cultivate, then the benefits will come back tenfold.

Read more:
Seven ways on putting LinkedIn to work for you

Good salespeople know that asking questions is the most effective way to learn about the needs of your customers. But you’ve got to ask the right questions. Otherwise, you risk scaring prospective customers out the door–or simply annoying them so much that they decide to buy elsewhere.

1. What brings you here today?
When someone enters a business, the salesperson often asks something along the lines of “What can I show you today?” But that question makes it far too easy for your customer to say, “Nothing, I’m just browsing.” That reply gives you no information–it doesn’t help you meet the prospective customer’s needs. When you instead ask, “What brings you to our store today?” (or, “What prompted you to call us today?”), you get deeper insight–and the opportunity to start building a mutually beneficial relationship.

2. Why do you want this product or service?
When a customer asks whether a company offers a certain product or service, many sales reps have a tendency to reply with a simple yes or no. Next time, try immediately following up your “yes” by asking what prompted them to seek out this product or service the first place. I once used this question when a prospect asked me if we had a product comparable to one of our major competitor’s offerings. “Well, we’re throwing your competitor off the account,” the man answered. That knowledge allowed me to explain that my company not only carried the product he wanted but that we could also meet the needs of this large account.

3. How will you go about making this decision?
In any sale, it is important to thoroughly understand how the purchase decision will be made and which key players are calling the shots. If your prospect answers this question truthfully, the knowledge you gain lets you tailor your approach. I once asked a materials manager how his company was going decide what to purchase, expecting him to say, “We’re going to choose the product with the lowest price.” Instead, he told me that the head of engineering was making the buying decision, which allowed me to adjust my strategy and focus on the company’s engineering department.

4. What is your timeline?
It’s amazing how many salespeople will push forward with a sale even thought they have no idea how important the purchase actually is to the customer. The answer to “What is your timeline?” is a good indicator of how urgent the prospect’s need is. Then, you can match his level of urgency. This helps the prospect see that you understand him–and increases the chance that he’ll choose your product or service.

5. What would you like to have happen next?
This powerful closing question is easy to use and–crucially–isn’t intimidating for the prospect. When you ask the prospect what she’d like to have the next step be, you’re basically asking for the sale in a non-pressuring way. The answer will uncover any still-unanswered objections the prospect has, and if there are none, you’re clear to bring the sale to a close. This final question is especially helpful when a purchase decision has been repeatedly delayed.

Read more:
5 questions to close a sale