Jan 23, 2015 | Customers, Sales, Small business
Courtesy Geoff Roberts http://tinyurl.com/o2mcd4p
Over the years working with B2B clients, it has become evident that the sales personnel are often tied up doing other stuff, things that have nothing to do with selling.
Following up unpaid invoices, checking inventory, trying to shuffle production schedules to accommodate something that has already been stuffed up, doing forecasts, filling in annual budget forms, chasing slow paying debtors, the list goes on.
Sales people are employed to sell, and a large percentage of this other stuff is not customer facing, but just admin that somebody thinks may be necessary, and often is, but is not contributing to the next sale.
My answer is to rename the sales function “Revenue Generation” and to ensure that every activity that is not directly related to “RG” is moved elsewhere, automated, or best yet, eliminated. Sales has become just a generic functional term, it no longer carries the urgency and importance so necessary to keep everyone in jobs, and customers coming back. Revenue generation by contrast, seems to communicate that necessary urgency and importance.
When you have done all that, you will have freed up typically 30-50% of a sales persons time, and logically, that enables them to sell more (or perhaps you need less of them).
However, there are 3 further steps to be taken:
- Only have revenue generators who genuinely love what they do, and understand and can articulate the value they and your products can deliver for their customers.
- Only have revenue generators who are committed to doing what they say that will do
- Have everyone in the organisation recognising that irrespective of their role and function on a chart, their real job is to contribute to the process by which revenue is generated, and who will not let any superficial, political or shiny new thing, get in the way.
This is all pretty easy to say, but hard to do in the face of a culture that dictates the way things are done, but clarifying ‘Why” things are done always helps.
Need help? Drop me a line.
Nov 20, 2014 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business
Success these days is hard won, how do you go about winning your share?
Most progress of a sales prospect through the sales funnel happens with some sort of design in mind, rather than accident, even though the actual process is usually chaotic. As the one setting out to engage, there are things that need to be done to maximise the leverage that can be applied without exerting any “hard sell” pressure on a prospective customer, poison in this day of sales mobility.
There are three headline of questions that you can ask yourself, and then reflect the answers in the manner in which you communicate, in every way from the published ads, to the website, location signage, the words your staff use, and the way you follow up any contact.
What is your Share of Attention?
- The world we now live in is one where everyone is bombarded with messages almost every moment, from every imaginable device and location from the sophisticated and targeted offer on your own mobile phone to the ad on the back of the dunney door in the shopping centre. Those marketing their goods and services are in life and death competition just to get noticed, and extract the few seconds it takes for someone to skim a headline, and hopefully be sufficiently intrigued to take some action. Usually that action at the first point is just to read or listen to the rest of the message.
- Who is it for? Nothing can be for everyone, and but too often this simple and basic fact of marketing life is ignored. The targeted ad to a mobile phone number is way more challenging to assemble than the general ad in the dunney door which can only discriminate by gender. Gaining a share of attention of someone in the market for a new car has to involve recognising the personal circumstances of that person. Setting out to sell a two seater sports car to a lady with one child and another on the way is usually a waste of effort, better to focus on delivering a car that will meet her particular needs, more likely a 4 door sedan that fits her budget and preferences. The process of answering the question “who is it for” will always throw up uncomfortable choices. In days past, as someone who spent millions in advertising on the 80’s and 90’s, the typical target audience was something like ‘women 25-40, with children” It was about as good as we could do in those days, with a bit of U&A added. Nowadays, that broad description is so inadequate as to be laughable.
- How are you going to reach them, to create an awareness that you are in a position to meet their need or solve their problem, when and f it occurs. The tools of the web have been absolute game-changers here.
What is your Share or engagement?
- Why should a prospect be giving you some of their most valuable resource, their time? To be worthy of peoples time, you need to add value in some way to build a share of their brain, to get them to think about what it is you have to offer and how that offer can be of value to them.
- Why should they buy from you? In almost all cases, a buyer has options when it comes to buying something. Being clear about why the chosen vendor should be you is fundamental to getting the sale. To continue the analogy above, a car dealership that has some female sales personnel, and who have as a part of their marketing efforts a pick-up and delivery service from the local day-care centres is more likely to make the sale to our pregnant Mum than a dealership full of men emerging from the workshop with grease to the elbows, calling prospective female customers “Luv”.
- In sales with long lead time, there is a process that most prospects will go through, from initial awareness of a need through often several stages of engagement, before a sale can be made. Tactics vary through this sales funnel, but one thing remains consistent, the sale goes to those who are constantly working all points in the funnel, being available to the prospects, and . Perhaps the best salesman ever, Joe Girard who sold 13,001 new cars over a 12 year career in one dealership, a feat that sees him in the Guinness book of records. Joe not only never missed an opportunity to engage, and develop a relationship, and once you were on his radar, he created opportunities to speak to you, all in the days before the internet. Once you had bought a car from Joe, you got a post card about monthly from him, always thanking you for your business, congratulating you on a birthday or promotion at work, and offering help in some way. When it came time to buy Another car, Joe was the only salesman most people spoke to, as they knew him, trusted him, and understood he would be there for them.
What is your Share of Wallet?
- Share of wallet is an absolutely vital and often overlooked measure. When you have created a customer, ask yourself how much that customer buys over a period that you could supply. If they spend $1,000 dollars a year on products similar to yours, but you sell them only $200, your share of wallet is 20%. To continue the story of Joe Girard, he knew that the average time between new car purchases was about 3 years, so sales cycle his typical customers “wallet” was about $20,000 every three years, and he stayed in regular contact, so that when the purchase time came around, his share was high, I have been told as high as 60%. Given some people moved away, some died, and some just changed car brands for any number of reasons, that is an astonishing figure.
- Defining the wallet is usually a challenging exercise, what to include, what to exclude, and over what time frame. My advise is always to calculate the wallet over the average purchase cycle time, for cars, 3 years ago it was about 3 years, for refrigerators it may be 10 years, for womens fashion it may be a couple of months. A friend of mine, a professional woman shops almost exclusively at a particular retailer. They know her sizes and preferences, offer her an exclusive first look at anything new that comes in that they think she might like, deliver on a few minutes notice, collaborate with the shoe shop, and accessories retailers in the vicinity to ensure everything is matched, and do a number of other small things that ensure she simply has no reason to go anywhere else. I suspect their share of my friends considerable wallet is very high indeed, and they have defined it to include the things that go with their products, on which they make no money, but it adds to he service they provide.
None of this is easy, there are no formulas that work for every case, but there are general rules that can be applied. In addition, today, everything is measurable, every time you reach out to a customer or prospective customer you can measure the effectiveness of that action. Joe Girard would have been in hog heaven.
Nov 10, 2014 | Communication, Marketing, Sales, Social Media
courtesy www.copyblogger.com
Much of Email marketing has become a bit like the electronic version of the letterbox stuffing junk mail. Marketers are aggressively and creatively finding ways to collect email addresses, then directing traffic to the addresses in the expectation that a few will be opened, and a few of them will then lead to a transaction.
However, this misses the essential point that email marketing has in its favour. An email can be personalised and directed, just like a snail mail letter from the “old days”, it is just that most do not do the hard work necessary that puts in place the “necessaries” to get them opened.
To improve your open rate success, there are six things you need to do:
- Add value. An email that is just seeking to extract value from the receiver will not get much time given, usually it will be deleted assuming it gets through the spam filters. On the other hand, an email that explicitly sets out to add value to the recipient will have a way better chance of being opened and acted up on in a meaningful way.
- Be optimised for however the receiver wants to see you. Mobile is growing exponentially, so ensuring you are mobile optimised is a must do.
- Be personalised. When was the last time you opened an email directed at “Dear Mr Andrew Bloggs” or even worse, “Dear customer”? Been a while right? The email has to be directed to the person as if it came from their best mate, not some automating system. We may all know it is automated, but knowing and having it demonstrated by a stupid salutation are two different things.
- Be contextual. A personalised email is good, but if it is of no interest to the receiver, it will be discarded. Recognising the interests of the reviver in the subject line is immensely important. However, being able to do that assumes you know a lot about them, their interests, habits and lives. Without wanting to be at all spooky, it is possible to collect information on individuals and reflect that in the subject lines of the email.
- Be focussed in the subject line. You get a split second of a receivers attention when they first see the email. Typically people look at the subject line, if it is of interest, they usually look at who it is from, and if it is still of interest, may open it, or perhaps put it aside for a better time. Miss out on either of these two things, “interest”, and “who”, in that split second, and you have probably lost them.
- Measure and improve. The analytic options available that enable continuous improvement in open rates are myriad, often free, and your competition is using them, so there really is no excuse.
Of course, once the email is opened, the marketing game begins. When you need help with that, get in touch to access the StrategyAudit experience.
Oct 13, 2014 | Branding, Marketing, Sales, Small business, Social Media
When looked at from the “helicopter perspective ” there seems to be three points of threshold competitive activity that you simply have to get right, or all else is irrelevant. Having a few meaningful measures at those three points is essential to understanding the effectiveness of a marketing investment, and testing ways to improve.
- Share of attention of your target market
- Share of engagement from your target market
- Share of wallet from your target market.
Traffic to a site is a useful measure, but really is not all that important, it is what happens then that is important. Just counting traffic is like counting people walking past a pet shop, they may even see the dog in the window, but that does not mean they are in any way likely to buy one. Your conversion rate to sale of this casual traffic would be miniscule. The challenge is to get the attention of those who for some reason are in thinking about how nice it would be to have a dog. When those people walk past, and see your doggies, you have a chance of getting their attention, which is why there are always some cute pups in the window, to grab the attention.
Having seen your doggies, those who walk into the shop for a closer look have given you a share of their engagement, you have the opportunity to talk to them, find out what sort of dog they may like, a pet for the kids, companion for an older relative, or something to keep the bikies away. Whatever it is, you need to know in order to be able to make an offer that meets their needs. They may also be looking elsewhere, so the share of engagement is important, are they serious buyers, or just filling in 5 minutes to look at some cute pups?
To get a share of their wallet, you need to be able to make an offer that persuades them to buy from you. There are many alternatives to a pet shop, breeders can deliver a very specific dog that will fill a purpose, with all the vetinary stuff done, or you can go to the kid down the road whose dog is just about to have a litter after a night of indiscriminate passion with some unknown stray, and comes with all the risks of the unknown. Alternatively, you could just go to the pound and find something that takes your fancy and needs a home. Share of wallet can also include the share of the ongoing costs of having the dog, food, accessories medicines, vet services, even in time a replacement. Measuring each of these situations delivers knowledge you can use not just for this sale, but on an ongoing basis.
Back to our e-marketing challenges from the doggie shop. Following are some simple metrics that you could consider.
Share of attention.
- Social shares, from any social platform
- Bounce rate and visit time. These two go together, how long the landing page hold attention, and what did the visitor do then, leave, or go to another page, followed by another…
- Pages per visit. Clearly if just one page was visited, there is less attention given than if the visitor had gone to 3 or 4.
Share of engagement
- Click through rates for your call to action tags.
- Comments made, on the blog, and/or in conjunction with the social shares. It is easy for someone to click the twitter share button on a website, but it takes a greater level of engagement to click the button, then take the time to add an endorsing comment, and this social proof can be marketing gold.
- Downloads of information from your site
- Questions that come back seeking information and clarification
Share of wallet.
SOW is one of the most powerful measures on the success of revenue generation efforts, and almost always requires qualitative input. How you define the wallet shapes the numbers that will be generated. Our pet shop owner may choose to define his wallet simply as the share of sales of pets he generates, in his area, or he may include the accessories and food after the initial sale, and if he has a vetinary surgery service as part of the enterprise, he may or may not include that, depending on what is important to his understanding of the returns coming from the investments made.
- revenue per customer, or “basket” size
- Purchase “basket” contents,
- Customer return visits that deliver a transaction
E-marketing is the shiny new thing, different and potentially seductive, but in the end it is only the set of tools that is new, the principals of marketing still apply, the toolbox is just bigger and more complex. When you need help sorting the complexity, the experience of the StrategyAudit team is at your disposal.
Sep 10, 2014 | Change, Governance, Management, Sales, Strategy
Courtesy Hugh McLeod
http://gapingvoid.com/2014/02/26/how-to-be-successful/
In life, and all its aspects, business, social , relationships, there are no shortcuts, just easier and simpler ways of doing things. It is just that it takes time and effort to find the easier, more productive, and value additional way.
The rules for success are the same in every context.
- Understand the selling process. Business, pleasure, social, you are always selling, a point of view, activity, feeling, yourself. Always selling!.
- See through the eyes of the other person. Again, customer, partner, casual acquaintance, it does not matter, it simply is better to see yourself as others see you, rather than just as you see yourself.
- Have a deeper understanding of whatever it is you are talking about than those to whom you are talking. If listeners are to get any value from listening, they need to think that there may be something of value for them, and that you know something they don’t, otherwise, why would they spend their valuable time on listening. Another of my old dads pearls of wisdom: “If you can’t say anything useful or sensible, keep your trap shut.”
- Seek ways to simplify. Our world is increasing complicated, finding ways to simplify even small bits of it are enormously valuable. Finding a way to reduce the friction to get a better, more valuable to someone outcome is the competitive advantage of the 21st century. Most things are done the way they are done because that is the way they have always been done. Not a good idea for the future.
- Start anything you do with the end in mind. This enables you to manage by compass, rather than by a map, which enables flexibility, agility, and room for the unexpected, serendipitous, and wonderful to emerge.
- Be nice. Nobody likes being around jerks, so be nice.
Sounds easy, but in fact it is very hard, that is why so few people are able to find the success they would like, and in many cases, deserve.
Call me for a confidential discussion about how to best leverage your opportunities.
Sep 1, 2014 | Communication, Marketing, Sales
Think of the average presentation you sit through.
If I can summarise: Boring, potentially useful information quickly forgotten.
Am I right?
Now think of the best presentation you have ever sat through.
You remember not just the occasion, and the presenter, and probably those with you, but also the information.
What is the difference between these two presentations?
Chances are the first was a wooden recitation of facts that were also on a powerpoint showing behind the speakers head, even worse, the speaker was reading the slides.
Chances are the best was a three dimensional “performance” by the speaker, there were moments of quiet, of passion, of visual conjuring from the verbal, of a simple point made that tied the whole thing together in a take-away message. The presence of props was limited to a very few photos, drawings or physical props that emphasised the point being made, the presentation was dominated by the physical presence of the person on stage.
The speaker brought emotion to the presentation, a physicality and personal engagement with the message being delivered far more than is possible with just the words.
Years ago before my first major public presentation, it was to an industry conference with an expected attendance of about 1500, (the “Foodweek” conference about 1988) I undertook a training session with a presentation coach. I do not remember much of that training, although it was well used on the day I was told, despite the almost terminal case of nerves, but I do remember the trainer saying again and again:
“it is not a presentation, it is a performance”.
That statement is as true today as it was then, perhaps more so because we are awash in messages, and increasingly those messages are visual, recognising we are a visual animal, so to be remembered, the bar is now set very high.
There are plenty of coaches out there, this session by Doug Stevenson is probably as good as it gets. My thanks to Mitch Joel for bringing it to my attention.
