Another run for a hobby horse

Another run for a hobby horse

Jun 3, 2016 | Change, Marketing, Sales

‘Account Based Marketing’ or ABM is rapidly becoming the latest three letter acronym to which all and sundry seem to be hooking their horses.

All sorts of learned crap is being published,  assuring me that ABM is the way forward, so I just googled it, 39.5 million responses.

I always thought that serving key and strategically important customers, the core of ABM, was what successful marketing and sales had always been about.

Must be deluded?

20 years ago as a newly minted consultant hanging out my shingle after a successful corporate career, one of my first products was what I called ‘SKAM’.

While it always got a laugh when I put it up, the acronym stood for “Strategic Key Account Management”.

Having now had a look at some of the ABM stuff coming out, they have done little beyond update the technology and call something that is core to sales and marketing success by another name. Then because they are calling it something new, try and flog it to unsuspecting and perhaps intellectually compromised people with too much money and perhaps not enough experience to understand what marketing really is all about.

Too snarky?

Perhaps, but it is this sort of nonsense that gives those of us who are thinking about this stuff, and have been for a long time, a bad name.

Those who read my musings regularly will know I have a corral full of hobby horses which I let out for a run occasionally. This is one of those occasions, so forgive my rant, but it is fun, and it is my blog!

The absolute best way to overcome objections to a sale

The absolute best way to overcome objections to a sale

May 16, 2016 | Customers, Sales

Over many years and considerable experience in developing sales programs, one of the regular stumbling blocks is how to respond to objections.

The single best way I have ever seen to overcome a sales objection is to articulate the objection before the sales target gets the chance to do so. That usually shoots it down in flames as a serious objection if the conversation continues past that point.

For example, a while ago doing an assessment of a client’s sales efforts I sat with one of their sales people as they made the initial contact over the phone after the lead had been qualified by a reasonably robust process. My clients product is a quality offering in  a crowded market that has a number of cheaper offerings without the value added capabilities and guaranteed longevity. The qualification process filters out many of those for whom the feature additions will add no or little value, so those with whom we were trying to have a sales conversation had been judged to be genuine leads with a need we could fill. However, in the early parts of the conversation almost always  price was raised as a problem, and often it ended the sales process before it really got started.

When we turned the scripts around so that the sales personal brought up the premium pricing, acknowledging it was not for everyone, as not everyone values the assurance that comes with the quality built in to the design and fabrication of the product, price was removed as a barrier to the sale.

It worked almost every time multiplying the ‘conversion rate’ which was in this case gaining  the face to face opportunity to demonstrate the product in an operational context. From there, the sales conversation rate was already pretty high.

Following is a list of the common other barriers to completing a sale I have seen. Being creative about the manner in which they are handled has a great impact on the conversion rates.

Lack of perceived value in the product

Lack of urgency in purchasing the product

Perception that an alternative is superior

Internal politics in your customers business

Lack of funds to purchase

Personal issues with decision makers

Conflicting corporate initiatives

A no decision no risk attitude

Lack of trust in your company

Lack of personal rapport with you

Your inability to communicate effectively with them

Now you have a list of the possible objections, workshopping the responses is extremely useful

In short, make a feature of the things that you think they will object to, and remove it as an objection before a potential customer has the time and opportunity to bring it up themselves.

7 steps before the close to double conversion rates.

7 steps before the close to double conversion rates.

Apr 18, 2016 | Sales

Sales people for 100 years have been coached on how to do a close, often after a mini close or two.

These techniques all have their place, and in the past have worked enough for them to become the default, after all it is a numbers game.

However, when you last looked at your close rate, what was it?

Most would be in single figures.

100 leads, converts to 50 warms leads, converts to 10 hot leads, converts to 5 transactions.

What if there was a way to double, even triple that rate, make the 5% 10% or even 15%

There is.

Every sale is a journey, has a starting point and an end point, what happens in the middle determines your conversion rate.

  • Identify the prospect
  • Qualify the prospect as a lead
  • Understand their buying processes
  • Provide social proof
  • Make sure you are talking to the decision maker
  • Gain the support of those who influence the decision maker
  • Ensure your offer is irresistible

Making  the offer irresistible means that you do not talk about the offer from your perspective, you talk about what the offer means to them, the outcomes of accepting your offer.

Conversely, the result of passing it up

If I was selling you a lead generation process for your product selling for $499, and I promised to triple the conversion rate from its current 5% to 15%, would you take it?

The maths becomes very easy, $499 is either a great offer or a pile of rubbish, you can make the choice.

However, if I just concentrated on closing you on a lead gen process for $499 using all the old fashioned techniques, I would almost certainly fail, as it is all about me, and my stuff for $499, not about you, and the return you will get for a modest outlay of just $499. (Be quick offer closes at midnight. Could not help myself, as time linked offers do make them more compelling irrespective of anything else)

In other words, focus on the outcome, not the process, at each stage of the process.

Sell the hole, not the drill.

 

Are Woolworths new “Essentials” really essential?

Are Woolworths new “Essentials” really essential?

Apr 12, 2016 | retail, Sales

Woolworths have announced a change of their ‘Homebrand’ range of housebrands to ‘Woolworths Essentials’ a more ‘upmarket’ housebrand.

If that is all that is happening, will this just be putting lipstick on a pig?

The strategic and competitive challenges facing Woolies run way deeper than the packaging on a housebrand offering.

However, if it is a signal that the changes are cultural, and the changes are to impact the way the organisation operates, it may be the start of a competitive revival. To be fair however, Woolworths’ financial performance over the decade up to only two years ago was outstanding and shareholders had been a very happy bunch on the supermarket side of things. However, the suppliers have recently decided they have had enough, and customers are becoming more open to alternatives.

Suppliers and customers are surely pretty important groups to a retailer.

Housebrands started as strategic move in Australia by Franklins in packaged goods almost 40 years ago, as outlined in this ABC podcast. They had been around in variety and general merchandise for some time before that, Marks and Spencer in the UK pioneering the idea way back in the 1920’s.

Franklins raison d’etre was customer value. They achieved this by a combination of low prices, aggressive promotions, and the widest possible range of products. The addition of a low priced housebrand range in heavily shopped commodity categories made absolute sense, so they started with ‘No Frills’ margarine in the late 70’s.

At first, many Australian consumers hid the No Frills products in the bottom of their trolleys, hoping none of their friends saw, as it was perhaps a social indicator that could see them accused of being cheapskates or down to their last bob.

The brands you buy were, and still are, an important part of your own self-image.

Pretty quickly however, shoppers discovered that some housebrand Sku’s s offered great value, so they locked in on them, and the presence of a housebrand in a trolley came to indicate a canny, value-conscious shopper. Conversely they also rapidly discovered the Sku’s that offered only price as an incentive to buy a rubbish product, and discarded them. Consumers are very quick learners, and make choices in discriminating ways.

Experimenting with housebrands

Since those early days, retailers have experimented widely with housebrands, coming up with sometimes elaborate words to support the introduction of fancy labels on the same stuff, or to simply copy the new products of a proprietary supplier before the category is established in consumers minds.

Fluff when substance is needed.

The strategy has changed radically from the Franklins’ original model of using housebrands to deliver value to customers, to one of capturing proprietary margins without the expensive, and long term work of brand building that requires an understanding of consumers lives outside a supermarket. Instead their control of what goes on their shelves has been used to squeeze the margins of the remaining proprietary suppliers while filling the now vacant space with their own “Faux-brands”.

Niche housebrand

Both Woolworths and Coles have leveraged their mass merchandising and supply chain expertise into liquor retailing.

Go into Dan Murphy’s and look at their range, particularly of beers, fancy niche names, many of them are just sold in Dan’s, with no marketing credibility beyond the shelf space and quirky name.

They are a Housebrand.

Both also have ‘cleanskin’ wines also housebrands, but unashamedly so.

 Market niches

Private Label quality has improved over time, some of them are pretty good, as good as proprietary brands, although usually a bit different in composition, packaging, or in some way at least moderately meaningful to consumers.

The problem is that the retailers are in the business of flogging stuff. Product to consumers and shelf space to suppliers. It is a high volume, multiple  transaction, low margin business. By contrast, suppliers are in the business of building brands for the long term based on consumer preferences, behaviour and emerging lifestyle trends. They are the ones seeing market niches emerge, and building new products to suit, but why take the risk when you know that the retailers will copy you in a short space of time, squeeze your shelf space, and screw you on margin and terms.

Where will the genuine, category creating innovation come from? Not from the retailers if the past is any guide.

Not all the blame for the innovation stagnation that is evolving goes to the retailers. Proprietary marketers are also in the gun. It is suppliers, albeit under considerable retailer pressure, who have allowed the categories to become commodities by transferring the innovation and marketing funding to price promotion, thereby destroying the value of their brands over time.

Years ago as a young product manager, I worked for what has become Meadow Lea Foods. Meadow Lea margarine had been built into one of the strongest brands in supermarkets, with a dominating market share well over 20%, in a crowded field. I have not seen ‘Mum’ being congratulated for probably 20 years, presumably the available marketing and advertising funds were swung from what had worked to build the category, into the retailers pockets.

What is Meadow Lea’s market share now? I bet it is in single figures with the rest of the commoditised products in the category, although I have not seen any figures for a long time. Building a brand is a journey that is never complete, and if you stop giving consumers a reason to buy yours, they will follow your advice and stop.

Selling is still social

Selling is still social

Mar 31, 2016 | Customers, Marketing, Sales, Social Media

Well may you ask, has it not always been so?

Sales has always been at least somewhat social, the old ‘not what you know but who you know ‘ sort of process. However, the last decade or so things have become so competitive that the numbers have taken over, and we often seem to put the social dimensions back into second place.

The numbers however, have hidden the essential truth that people buy from people  not from organisations. The social selling tools that have evolved have put another  layer onto the selling process that enables scaling of effort, but at the end, people still buy from people.

Most of my clients these days are B2B marketers, some have embraced the social platforms around, but most see them as a place to stay in touch with family and friends, and have a point of common dislike of all the cat photos infesting social media.

However, leveraging the social platforms as selling tools that span the numbers and the people aspects of selling can make sales efforts highly effective. The platforms provide leverage to your efforts and when used well can deliver significant results.

Following are a few  commonly asked questions, and my usual response:

Which of the social platforms are best to use?

LinkedIn and Twitter are the most common for B2B, but B2C is a different matter, where Facebook and Pinterest dominate, but the needs change. What is clear is that you  cannot be all things to all people  so it is more about figuring out where your major prospective customers may hang out when in a professional mode rather than a social one, and going there. No different to the old sales techniques where you joined the golf club inhabited by your target prospects.

How to I spend my time productively?

Social sites can be prodigious consumers of that most rare of resources, our time. In my experience if you join platforms based on where your prospects are, you will maximise your time by limiting it to a combination of  two networks. This implies that you have a clear view of the interests, habits and digital behaviour of your primary potential and current customers, which is a whole new topic.

How do I connect?

Connection is a two way process, you need to reach out to them, but they need to be able to see that you might be worthwhile them investing some time, no matter how little in ‘being reached. ‘ Even if you are just asking someone to accept a connection invitation, most people will make the conscious decision, Yes or No, and there are things you need to do swing the numbers to’ yes’.

  • First you need to make the choices well. If you appear to be somebody who just seeks connections at random, and it is apparent that numbers are your objective, the rejection rate will be high. Think of your own behaviour, you are more likely to reject a connection request if it is just a generic request from someone you do not know. If you appear to be discriminating in your connections, that the circles you have a may be of value to the person on the receiving end, and the request is personalised, you will significantly improve your acceptance rate. It also takes more time.
  • Second, your profile needs to be one that is attractive to a potential connection. There is lots of advice on the net about ‘personal branding’ and while much if it is just common sense and tosh, the foundation is right. Imagine you are at a social gathering, you are more likely to be drawn into conversation with someone who appears to share your values and interests than someone who is way outside your normal fields. This is human, so consider it as you fill in your profile.  Ask yourself what it is about you that might interest those with whom you wish to connect, and highlight those characteristics and experiences.
  • Third, answer the question of yourself  “what is the value I can bring to this connection?. If you have nothing, why bother, and why should they bother.
  • Finally, send them a personalised message, something that offers evidence that you have done a bit of homework, and have something of value to offer them. Better still if you have a mutual acquaintance to who might be prepared to offer you the courtesy of using their name as a referrer. Importantly do not try and sell a new connection anything.  Again, think of the social setting. When you are introduced to someone who just talks about themselves, or immediately goes into a sales pitch, most of us just want to get away as fast as possible, and it is no different on social platforms.

Having done all that, the work of sales starts.

The 3 dimensions of Lead generation

The 3 dimensions of Lead generation

Mar 28, 2016 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Sales

Virtually any B2B business owner I talk to, one of their key challenges is lead generation.

When you dig a bit, often it is the case that lead generation  becomes a problem where there is a shortage of sales, then they react in a short term manner.

Lead generation is a long term proposition, B2B and B2C, the techniques may differ a bit,  but when working day to day the only effective tool to get another sale is price, so you lose.

So it seems to me there are three dimensions to effective lead generation:

  1. The means by which you generate the lead
  2. The conversation rates at various points  through the sales process
  3. The time taken in the sales process

Lets look at them in a little detail.

Means. This is the essence of marketing, the game is to identify who might be a buyer, why, when, and the means by which you can facilitate and support the transaction then build on it for a longer term. Digital has exploded the techniques available to us but the rules have not changed: Understand how you add value to who, and walk them through the relationship building and sales processes to a transaction. Brand building by another name.

Conversion rates.  How do you calculate your sales conversation rates? Digital is now awash with numbers, marketing has changed from the fluffy to the numerical and we are belted over the ears to get with the program.

Marketing Experiments is a shop flogging the notion that marketing experience, creativity and intuition can be turned into a mathematical formulas, and in doing so they have done a fair job of nailing the variables in a digital sale to the extent that they can be nailed:

Probability of conversion = Clarity of Value proposition + (incentive to action – friction associated with the action) – Anxiety.

Whilst a bit convoluted, it does make some sense, and you  can weight the factors according to your market, but the essential message is that marketing can be measured. To an extent  it can be, but losing sight of the emotion involved would be a mistake, and emotion will always be virtually impossible to measure with any certainty. As Gary Vaynerchuk asked, “what is the ROI of your mother?”

Time.  Every business and market is different, as is every potential customer situation so there are no rules in this except one: Only a small number of your prospects will be ready to buy right now.

However, if you extend the time frame to a month, or a year, and there will be many more ready. The challenge therefore is to be talking to them in terms that they are comfortable with at that particular point in their  journey to a transaction.  Given the reality of this journey, the worst thing to do is make the effort ‘stop-start’. It has to be a continuous marketing effort to ensure that there is a flow of leads into and through the sales process. Take the foot off the pedal and you will have a hole in the sales. Keep talking, build a relationship, guide them through the process. Demonstrate credibility and expertise, so that when they re in the buying mode, you get the call.

Too often we concentrate on finding the few who are ready to buy now, rather than playing the long game. Patience rewards the skilled fisherman, same with sales.

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