High Speed Business Networking Event (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The idea that you’re doing something for money horrifies many people.  Yet we ALL do it in some shape or form, and then justify in whatever manner we see as “right”.  Depending on how you perceive the process of networking it could be seen as just a necessarily evil to avoid at all costs or social way of developing your business and getting out of the office.

If it wasn’t money though we’d find something else to focus on, just like the emotional needs of certain artists to be adored, laughed with and to leave their fans amazed no matter the genres or media.

No one approach, is a greater or lesser moral than the other.

You work because you need money, you get an education so that you can get a job and earn money, you perform a particular service because you need money, you build a business because you need money, you watch how you spend your money because you need to maintain your money, you’re nice to your boss and peers because you want a pay rise because you need more money, you invest your money in order to make more money.  Yet somehow when we do something for money and it has something to do with business many perceive it to be dirty or sleazy.  Networking is no different.

We all NEED something, and in our current financial system a large part of that is money.

Many of us are fortunate to have family and friends who we spend time with (a form of networking in itself) and believe that our actions are not motivated by anything in particular, or so we believe.

Yet if you look behind the emotional garbage, you’re still fulfilling a need by making the choices you do, and it could be more money motivated than you think.  Networking is no different.

It’s a question of behavioural economics which deals with the irrational way that people behave (despite their belief in self control and logical thought) and how that affects economic transactions.  This opposes the general framework of economics which basis its methodology on the premise that people employ rational thought when making decisions.  Ha!

To really understand economics, and money, you must understand people, and then find the middle ground where the social norms and market norms collide (there are no norms as we know from the ups and downs of economic history and the ever changing world we live in).  It’s just the same with networking.

Just think about the last time you offered to pay your family for inviting you round for dinner ? That would be like injecting a market norm into a social norm, getting you into trouble along the way as people would believe that you had somehow devalued the relationship.

It’s the same in networking and because family and friendships are seen as the social norm, when it appears that we’re injecting a market norm (business and money) into the situation we suddenly come across a “moral” or “irrational” stumbling block.

The whole thing comes down to how you frame a thing and your ability to alter your perspective depending on the circumstance as long as what you are doing in the long run is to maintain the positive balance.  As Bruce Lee once said, you must become like water.

If you’d like to dig further into this realm of psychology and business, here are some books you may like to read:

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CEO of General Electric Jeffrey Immelt speaks about jobs.

You may not be aware of the fact that we launched a business development manager jobs board a couple of months ago and it’s already starting to see some interest as shown in the graph below. This will be increasing over the coming months as traffic to this site continues to increase.

It was launched without any warning or update to readers of this blog so I thought I’d take the opportunity to give people an overview, as its potentially a useful resourced for both job hunters and recruiters.

Tools For The Business Development Manager Jobs Recruiter

The most useful of tools on the job board is the ability to post a job for display on either the Nic Windley job site or network wide across the whole Job Thread international network of sites.

This is important for two reasons, firstly that unqualified candidates make up nearly 50% of most job responses and that the “perfect fit” is probably already employed somewhere else and unaware his dream job could be up for grabs.

So to eliminate online recruitment inefficiencies the JobThread network provides targeted advertising that attracts ideal job candidates in less time and for less money.

You can tap into a powerful network of influential web publishers, blogs and niche sites to find the “Perfect Fit” for your role.

As we also touch on sales, marketing and technology on this site you should also know that targeted verticals within this network include

• IT/Technology
• Digital Media
• Marketing/Advertising
• Green/Sustainable
• International Relations
• Legal
• Diversity

That’s a whole lot of talent that you could be tapping into.

Services For The Biz Dev Jobs Applicant

Are you doubting whether you should be putting yourself through all that pain of applying for jobs on those mass untargeted job boards ?

Well you’re not the only one and here why:

1. Mass job boards get deluged with candidates who are mostly unsuitable.
2. Many of the advertised positions are probably out of date or even hooks just to get CV’s.

All of which significantly reduce your chances of actually getting your profile noticed by the right people and at the right time. You’ve only got a limited time to find that next job so why waste it in the wrong places.

Instead why not check the jobs board for live active roles that recruiters are currently seeking applicants for or if you prefer you can follow our jobs twitter feed to receive the latest opportunities instantly and directly to your twitter messaging inbox.

Either way you can save yourself a ton of time by avoiding all the junk and getting directly to the roles that are most suitable and live.

Here’s to your job hunting and landing that ideal business development manager role.

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Deal or No Deal (video game) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You’ve probably been staring at that sales deal on your forecast now for months. As each month goes by and each quarter merges into the next, for some reason that deal keeps getting pushed out. Every time you call them up they keep telling you it will be next week, or soon, or some other date in the near future, yet its just not happening and its getting a little embarrassing.

One of the best excuses I heard during a sales meeting was that the person who signed off the PO’s had…..wait for it……gone moose hunting. Guess what, that deal never came in.

Sales people are tasked with delivering numbers and usually within a defined time. That’s great in an ideal world, however few things happen as we want them, especially in the beginning with sales and until you’ve got enough opportunities on the go.

Learning About Your Deal

Every sales opportunity that presents itself should be going through a cycle and assuming its passed your qualification and the “real deal” tests its now a matter of continuing to confirm what is really happening.

During your discussions with this customer (new or potential) you would have been learning about whether a problem big enough exists to justify change (motivation), that your solution fits into their current business without significant impact (risk), delivers enough value (return on investment) and if so how it will be financed (money) and what’s involved in getting it signed off, who’s involved and they’re level of involvement and agreement (process and people) amongst other things.

As well as determining the controlling factors you also want to learn about the real time scales. It’s easy to assume something and for other to say something to try and please others. Fact’s though, rarely lie though.

Not only will there be individual factors that will be controlling this deal, there will also be cultural factors that will affect how things happen. Some businesses take more time to make decisions, whilst others have a greater risk appetite. Your job is to determine the factors and culture and create a picture of this deal and how things should unfold within a given time frame.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Factors That Can Impact Your Sale

If you raise your expectations against the evidence and start pushing when the timing is out then things can start to unravel before your very eyes and the deal you worked so hard to bring together just falls apart in front of you.

Likewise if you and your team is not responsive enough to the people involved you can have the same result as your buyer loses faith in your ability to deliver and begins the search for an alternative source of supply.

Just like most things in life there is no “do this” or “do that” and you’ll be guaranteed results. Instead you’ve go to spend time doing the research and building the facts than you have in guessing and hope-casting what might happen.

Sometimes, its something simple that is slowing things down like the size of the deal or investment (risk) so by carefully finding a way to create a smaller deal as a test or provide some level service before investing could help you take a small step towards concluding that bigger deal and you have a closed sales increasingly the likelihood that they’ll spend more money if all things pan out. However, this will impact your overall sales cycle and it should therefore be factored into the equation.

It could be that they’ve just forgotten about this deal because something’s cropped up and its no longer the priority it was, or the decision making team has changed or even a takeover or merger.

Complex sales and even smaller deals to a certain degree require you to be more like an “investigator” or “analyst” to determine the facts and build the scene. Until then, never assume, just test until you’ve got your timing about right.

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Its a concept that the industrialists of our past put to good use when they created the industries that made England famous worldwide and helped to bring many out of poverty, dramatically improving the standards of living and futures of countless people while bringing forth innovations that were to change the world forever.

Being a socially aware business was good for everybody.  Yet back then we were unaware of the overall impact of our industrial activities, though, as our knowledge has expanded from these roots we now have a much clearer understanding of these implications and this will drive tomorrows focus on better and cleaner technologies.

Todays big businesses like John Lewis and the Cooperative have continued to employ ethical working practices towards their staff and suppliers and their longevity and support has been consistent for many years.  Yet for many big businesses this has not been the case.  People are more aware, want better choices and see the need for change.

With the extensive array of technology and knowledge now available at our finger tips we are at the cusp of yet another wave in our social evolution.  Some may say for the worst, others for the better.

Business will play role in that, and will evolve itself into something different than what we understand today.

Our challenge right now is to unleash the ideas that will address the big ethical and social issues we now face and to do that at a time where we are financially constrained and with such severity.

Project like O2’s ThinkBig (from the O2 business) is helping to stimulate some of these initiatives amongst younger people.

We must go further than that, and challenge the conventions of today.  With the help of big name and brands like Richard Branson’s Virgin Unite we take yet another step in that direction.

In fact Sir Richard has launched an international competition offering people with great ideas that are “giving the finger to business as usual”, the chance to win a money-can’t-buy connection trip to South Africa with his non-profit foundation, Virgin Unite.

The aim of the foundation is to encourages business to become a force for good, putting people, planet and profit at the core of what they do.

Image via CrunchBase

When asked Sir Richard said: “We’ve got a shot at really pulling together to turn upside down the way we approach the challenges we are facing in the world and look at them in a brand new entrepreneurial way.  Never has there been a more exciting time for all of us to explore this great next frontier where the boundaries between work and purpose are merging into one, where doing good, really is good for business.”

As part of the prize, the winner will get to meet frontline leaders who are making a difference, share ideas with young entrepreneurs at the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship, South Africa and then get to spend several days with Sir Richard and the rest of the group, experiencing the beautiful wildlife of South Africa at Ulusaba, Sir Richard’s private game reserve.

Finally, they will have the opportunity to discuss their business ideas with Sir Richard himself and be featured in his next book.

Anybody can enter by uploading their ideas online at the Virgin Unite website, either as short videos or written pitches. Already hundreds of creative and innovative business concepts are piling up from today’s ethical entrepreneurs. An entry can be a story or brief description of a business or social enterprise in action anywhere in the world. An inspiration – in words, thoughts or on film – that shows a new way of creating or transforming a business, or will create a consumer movement that will create demand for better products or services.

Every month, the top five entries with the most social shares (votes) will each receive a prize and the top 10 ideas, as voted for by the online community, by 17^th April 2012 will be evaluated by an Independent Judging Panel who will select a grand prize winner.

So, if you want to be part of the revolution get your thinking cap on and get your entry in without delay.  I may even give it a go myself .

However, if your shy, need some help developing ideas or are looking to team up with others then why not leave a comment below and maybe it will connect you with other like minded people and lead to bigger things.

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Its moving fast, has become hyper dynamic and is forcing us review the balance between both the “big” (think country or company) and the “small” (think groups and people) and so as businesses or entrepreneurs we’ve got to reconsider our approach to developing and growing new companies and ideas when finding ourselves in these new evolving states.

All too often it used to start (and still does) with a product or service idea and then a business plan which is ultimately designed to support the ideas of the entrepreneur, when actually what we need is a business model based around fulfilling a need, want or desire which can be tested and experimented with until we know what works, not what we think might work. In the world of trading (such as shares and currencies) there is a famous saying that “the market is always right” and this is becoming more and more true of business today, let the market show you what will work and what won’t.

No longer should it be about betting the farm on a fixed idea, and bashing it until “it” (or you) dies, because it’s not aligned well enough with the market (end user or customer). Instead we can test and evolve a model with the market in real time, letting the market decide the outcome. The need for integrated marketing that allows for the testing of marketing ideas (and therefore product/service concepts) which can be feed  back into the development process is crucial.

Usually businesses and their ideas mostly fall into two categories (a bit like marketing) which are either too creative (that includes being too emotionally attached to something) or too business focused (overly analytical, process and profit orientated), ultimately failing to blend together all of these components into a workable system that touches both hearts and minds of people and which can be evolved. Yes, business models, systems and experimentation is a very creative process.

Businesses also need to shift their mind-set from product or service orientated views into ones which are far more customer centric, designed and built around the market and its inhabitants. In much the same way that marketing is now evolving to be more centric and “inbound”. It’s about the people and the relationships and conversations.

As somebody who’s spent time at different stages of the idea creation to realisation and delivery process (and not always successfully) the concept of modelling and experimentation is a liberating approach to developing a business and gives us the opportunity to do things without losing a ton of money and time on ideas that won’t take.

Here’s how other companies, among the leaders in this field are using these concepts such as IDEO.

As much as I love engineers and scientists (its my background after all), often I find myself confronted with people who want absolute perfection. Yet the perfection they seek, is perfection of their own mind, not the markets or the customers and it will kill the company or that idea if too much time is spent on tinkering to get it just right or perfect instead of letting the market decide in real time and evolving it as you start your relationship with the market.

How To “Learn And Launch” – Experimenting With A Business Model In Real-time

Lots of companies have what’s know as “lunch and learn” sessions where different groups or individuals talk others through their experiences on a project so that others can see how it was handled in the real world and not just down on paper or conceptually.

Planning is great, however the real learning and delivering is achieved in the doing and so we need rules or guidelines give us direction as well as the flexibility to change direction when necessary.

Likewise, business is really done in the doing, which is why failure is so important and even more so today. You’ve got to be prepared to fail more and let go of emotional ties to things until you’ve been proven right or wrong and as quickly and cost effectively as possible. What you think has no relevance when its comes to success, its what others think that will determine the ultimate success of your idea and the organisation that supports it. However there are things or guidelines that will help you understand if you are headed in the right direction;

• Don’t over plan – do execute and have system of measurement in place
• Keeps your planning simple – just a single page or hypothesis
• Let a few in on the idea – get their input for improvement
• Create a prototype – set a date to review
• Define what success will look like – give it a metric
• Take on-board what you’ve learnt – adapt and re-launch a few times
• Benchmarks results against each launch – again your planned definition of success
• Repeat the process – continue to scale and evolve

Please tell us about your own experiences of launching and learning.

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The other day I stumbled across a couple of videos which gave me a real slap in the face.

Make of these videos what you will.  For me, this is a great lesson in attitude, personality and the power of the story in sales.

Here is a series of recordings of this salesman, Kenny Brookes, in action.  Watch and learn.

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Considering you can study for a PhD in marketing, there are millions of books, webinars, websites, courses, associations and suppliers its unsurprisingly a very broad, complex and often misunderstood world that blends together art and science.

For the outsider, which in most cases is the start-up or established company looking to grow with little to no marketing experience or education, it’s even more misunderstood, as the way that most end up judging marketing will either be based on their own experiences, beliefs or what others tell them. Rightly or wrongly.

This creates a spectrum of view points from “it doesn’t work”, “marketing cheapens products”, “marketing is a waste of money”, “I won’t spend money on marketing”, “marketing is lying to people”, through to “marketing is what everybody else is doing”, “marketing is making things look good”, “I’m not sure what our marketing is doing” and eventually “without marketing our business would not be here”, “marketing IS our business”, “marketing is how we continually innovate”, “marketing is the reason that we have all these customers”.

Marketing works for everybody if you use it correctly. However if you’re looking to invest little money and do things quickly you’re probably of the “opportunity seeker” mind-set rather than the “business builder”. You’re chasing a dream with an unrealistic strategy, rather than building a future on realistic terms. Under those circumstances marketing doesn’t work.

Whilst seeking out opportunity is a good thing, you must switch your mind-set to becoming a business builder that can determine what it’s really going to take to make something a success that isn’t based on hope, misplaced views or incorrect beliefs but a deliverable set of steps, just like when you’re creating SMART goals which are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound.

You can’t do smart marketing unless your business goals are also smart. Whilst there is a case for replicating the components of a successful strategy (which you are certain is actually working and responsible for the results) you should use it as a starting point from which to evolve your own strategy.

“Follow The Money” Does Not Mean Follow Your Competitors Blindly

Often I hear, “yes, but my competitors are already doing this and look, its working for them”. I then ask what factual evidence they have to base their decision that their competitors are profitable and not debt ridden and that their marketing is actually responsible for bringing in the business and not just a waste. The answer is always “well, I’m not sure”. You must have evidence that supports what you see and what is actually happening.

It’s like the local pub that’s advertising right across the region and wasting a ton of money instead of concentrating on delighting local customers. It doesn’t generate any business for them expect to support the owners grandiose ideas about his single and only “global” pub business. You’ve got to match what you’re doing to your potential customers and with your business goals.

The only winner is the person selling that advertising or marketing and later using it as a stick to push your competitors into doing the same. “Oh look your competitors are doing it!” or “We did a great job for them because they said here” does not equate to “It works and created x leads or y sales”.

Marketing Is A Goal Driven Process – So What Are Your Goals And Where Are You Driving It ?

If you’re doing some form of advertising or marketing then stop for a minute and step back. If you can’t honestly say what its brining back to your business in terms of a return on your investment then you need to seriously ask yourself this question.

“What am I doing and why am I doing it ?”

• Does your business and its product or service have something specific to offer its audience that isn’t necessarily being solved well elsewhere ?
• Do the methods you are using for marketing your company actually connect with your buyers and generate more leads, sales and loyalty than it’s costing ?
• What goals or aims did you have in mind before you started marketing and what analysis did you do to decide what activity, costs and time would be necessary to reach those goals ?
• Are you analysing what you’re doing to decide what is and isn’t working and how to adapt your strategy to bring you closer to what you need or want from your businesses marketing ?

If you’re unclear about any of these things, you’re probably just wasting time and money marketing in the hope that something will happen.

STOP! Marketing will not work for you until you give it a reason to work.

Here’s an interesting book on why copycat marketing kills personality and eventually kills business, unless you can evolve a model and make it your own you’re just another one of those companies that does widgets, so why should anybody buy from you ?

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In more and more industries, supply is actually overtaking demand causing the inevitable commoditising of products and services and the eventual profit erosion and even downfall of businesses who rely predominantly on “direct competition” for their business.

Sustainable growth will only come when businesses find those spaces where little to no competition exists.  Easier said than done.

What’s “new” though is often closer to home than many of us would think. In recent times my involvement with Inbound Marketing is resulting in the creation of new marketing services which are based on what is already there but delivered in a more human, focused, integrated, business driven and transparent way that is more likely to trigger the outcomes that businesses really want.  It pushes returns higher and is more cost-effective when compared to traditional methods.

From a geological perspective new oceans form (rather slowly, and within the space-time continuum in no time at all) when barriers or boundaries break down allowing water to run into new territory. This could be dry land or sometimes it forces land to part and allows two different water fronts to come together.

The same is true about geological business development, where the boundaries of a market are redefined. The first question you might be asking though is all that effort worth the return ?

New Geological Market Formations Yield High Return Eco-System For Business Development

In a study of 108 business launches by Harvard Business Review, it found that 86% were mainly line extensions, while the other 14% actually created new markets or industries.  Line extensions accounted for 62% of revenue, and generated 39% of profits.  By contrast, 38% in total revenue was generated where new markets and industries were created and staggeringly they delivered over 61% of total profits.

Looking at it another way;

• 86% of effort resulted in, 62% revenue and 39% profits.
• 14% effort resulted in 38% revenue and 61% profit.

This is also a classic example of the 80/20 rule in action, where 80% of returns comes from just 20% of effort.

All too often businesses focus on ramping up sales revenue at the expense of profitability, until the business is balanced on a precarious edge where either the banks burst, forcing new rivers to form or they just collapse and eventually dry up.

Business development is like the evolution of our planet where species have survived and thrived where the competition for food has not been great or where one species has an overwhelming advantage over the rest.

Our planets millions of years of evolution was mostly at the hands of significant forces of “nature” and chaos theory.  In recent times though the human race has learned to create some order to improve and stabilise living conditions.  We have learned a survival strategy which has allowed us to firstly adapt and secondly redefine our environment.

Base Your Action On The Art Of War, Not War Itself

Business development is part strategy, part action and a blend of principles including sales and marketing.  Most business strategy over the years has been influenced by the military, from company “officers” to being active on the “front line” and “attacking” the competition head on. This is a limiting strategy and  there is usually only one, or maybe a few winners, as Sun Tzu demonstrates in the book “The Art Of War”.

The basic premise of the book is to avoid fighting a head on war in the first place. If a fight is unavoidable, your next move is to make sure that you do not fight the obvious fight, head on.  Unsurprisingly Sun Tzu was, and still is, thought of as a master of strategy and the book has more to teach than just warfare.

You next question is now what strategy.  To define that we must first lose the conventional meaning of competition and look at the reasons that new business eco-systems form.

Whilst many would believe that technology is the defining “force” or “weapon” which causes these markets to form research from the Harvard Business School presents evidence to the contrary.

In fact across three representative industries new eco-systems were seldom the direct result of technological innovation, as underlying technologies were already present in every case.  An obvious example is Henry Fords revolutionary assembly line which can be traced back the meat-packing industry.

Another belief is that established businesses are often disadvantaged (becoming disconnected from the market) and so it takes companies outside the established market to define these new eco systems.  Once again research from Harvard Business School showed that many of these new eco systems were created from within established companies.

It’s really about linking technology to what buyers valued.

It’s Not You, Its Your Strategy

The key to all this is making the right strategic moves.

• Firstly don’t benchmark yourself against the competition – make them irrelevant by creating value for the company and the buyer that’s ahead of anything else.
• Secondly, reject conventional strategy which dictates you either differentiate or lower costs – new eco-systems are formed when you pursue differentiation and cost reduction simultaneously.
• Thirdly, shift your mind-set from the limited beliefs of fixed structural industry conditions (deterministic) to ones who’s are shifted by your actions and players in the industry (reconstruction-ist).

As well as creating more value and reducing the companies cost base there is one other and significant advantage that both strategic thinking and strategic action in this way can achieve and that is a considerable barrier to entry for other would be imitators.

Companies like eBay, Cirque De Soleil and The Body Shop are classic examples of models that other companies found impossible to imitate because it would have meant a complete U-turn on their core beliefs, in turn invalidating their customers.

Instead of trying to beat the competition and steal a share of existing demand, these companies reconstructed the boundaries of conventional market wisdom, in just the same way that Henry Ford made a more reliable and durable car more cost effectively.

What strategic moves have you made that contributed towards reshaping the boundaries of your market and creating new eco-systems ?

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My own personal background has been a journey which started as an engineer and had me move into sales, marketing and business.

Tell Your Story As A Guest Blogger

I’ve seen highs and low, the best and worst and have many stories yet to tell, which may just surprise one or two of you, and of course many more to come.

As yet I haven’t really shared a lot about  my technical or technology experiences from a business, sales and marketing perspective although I’m sure an opportunity in the not to distant future will open up for me to do some of that.

What has amazed me throughout my journey so far is the ignorance I’ve seen displayed by people from different disciplines and backgrounds. From engineers blaming marketers for cheapening their products, sales people blaming engineering for not giving them what they want, everybody else blaming sales people for anything that could go wrong, business leaders not being recognised for the good they create while other leaders get away with shameful abuses of power and position along with all those that don’t understand the bigger picture and want to blame technology for all that is bad in the world.

It’s simple, the problem and the solution are the same. Its people, never the things. And its why blogging and sharing evidence and stories is so important.

Guest Writers Should Take A Stand On Something

In recent times I’ve seen an overwhelming need for business to become more connected with its social roots and contribute back into the communities from which it relies, takes and owes so much. There are the beginnings of what could be called a revolution on the horizon, although I’m sure we are many decades away from seeing, however everything has to start somewhere. Business has a role to play, and it is those of us who are willing to discuss, share and explore its evolution that can have the opportunity to be part of the solution.

So, whilst we are on the topic of our social duty and giving back, if you think you have something worthwhile to share that would help people to learn something new, gain a different perspective or understand modern thinking or methodology then I’d like to receive your guest business blog posts.

Good Writing And Blogging Is About The Give And Take

Please bear in mind that the aim of this site and the posts within it are to share something useful, while promoting something as useful, so please avoid blatant pitches but don’t be afraid to let us know about something.

By all means get in touch with me before you post, however you’ll still need to use the link above to register and submit your articles.

I shall of course continue to post on the site myself and administer it as I’ve always done and plan to make it bigger and better.

As Benjamin Franklin once said “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing“.

Use this link and become a guest blogger for the site.

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It’s grunt work that just doesn’t justify your time and effort given the results because your way smarter and more effective than that and there are much better ways to achieve the same outcome.

Selling is a cycle of ascension that guides a buyer from interest to action and one of the best tools for describing this is with AIDA which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

First you attract your audience’s attention, next you build interest in order to maintain their attention and then you establish desire (which is typically a need to solve a problem in business) so that you can finally ask for action. It’s very similar to a sales cycle.

Marketing is one the most powerful tools at your disposal for automating a lot of your selling work.

It allows you to “pre-sell” an idea of who you are, what you stand for and what it is that you can do for your customers. Most marketing falls prey to the same pit falls that selling does and loses the attention of your customers and prospects right from the word go.

That’s because far too many marketers (and sellers) use ploys or gimmicks like meaningless puns and strap lines which try and impress or close down a prospect quickly, which actually creates more resistance.

Instead, at the very beginning you should be talking to your prospect as if you were talking to a long lost brother or sister who you’d just met for the very first time.

Show them that you understand their problem or where they are coming from, then spark their attention with a meaningful response which shows that you care and offer a way for getting to know each other better. Show them evidence of your experiences and family connections and finally move onto the last step where you mutually agree on some kind of action or next step which might involve meeting again.

The customer supplier relationship is no different.

Your Strategy Should Be To Campaign Not Pitch Or Promote

Sellers are instantly at a disadvantage because customers don’t like being “sold to” and guess what sales people do ? They sell, so if your marketing and selling starts with a pitch or promotion you will find yourself, or your marketing, being shut out.

It’s easy to spot when your marketing is full of puns and gimmicks or your sales people are asking assumptive questions and you’re talking about products and services to drive towards the close without ever establishing whether there is a situation that does need you to actually sell something and is usually much later in the process.

Instead you should focus on education and training that helps your prospects and customers achieve something or learn something. Each piece of communication should reinforce the very idea of how you can help your customer and what it is that you do without pitching or promoting.

Your building a case around a topic or idea that you can support with content you produce and supply in a series of information articles, guides, videos or audio interviews.

Effective Marketing Automation Eradicates The Labour Intensive Low Return Repetition Work

Selling and marketing requires a constant stream of activity so that it can cut through the clutter and noise in any given market. It’s a relentless and time consuming activity.

It’s made worse when you’re not doing the right things in the first place and no matter how much repetition you do, things just get worse and not better.

Repetition is an industrial throw back and its always been associated with low paid and low skilled work which is why automation and robotics eventually replaced people on many production lines.

When all you are doing is laborious mind numbing work it’s difficult to focus on doing the things that really grow and develop a business.

To truly unleash your business development potential and increase the trajectory of your company’s growth you need to have some foundations in place first, which will help you build an effective system. The key to this is implementing components that take away the grunt work and actually enhance your customer relationships so you may be surprised when I tell you to use automation.

Often automation conjures up images of complicated menus and clinical processes which in business gets associated with those bad systems used by call centres. With ease they demonstrate their inability to perform simple tasks like directing calls correctly or forcing you to hang on the line for 40 minutes while they remind you how important your call is before you even get a chance to speak to a real person.

It’s not the automation that is the problem it’s how it’s being used because of a lack of education, improper training, poor staffing levels and many other choices made by the company using it. But you’re not going to make those mistakes because you already know far more than those big dumb businesses who just don’t know any better.

Automation is an essential part of everyday living, and in fact most of our lives are automated in some way. Whether it’s the dishwasher, alarm clock, oven, lawn mower, or car, all of these automated components help us to avoid time consuming manual labour so that we can do more with our time.

Automation when used correctly enhances the outcome and should not detract from it. This will be the same for automation in your sales and marketing system.

Selling and marketing automation that actually builds a relationship is not a fairy tale despite your bad experiences. It’s going to be essential for scaling up the growth of your business with the optimum level of resources and minimum waste.

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Very similar to the problems many businesses are facing trying to connect with their market. It’s a serious problem for those big companies but an opportunity for the smarter SME who can evolve and develop smarter working practices.

Advertising And Marketing Is Selling In Words And Selling Is Advertising And Marketing

Marketing and advertising has only one purpose and that is to generate leads or make sales, and what generates leads and sales ? It’s the selling of ideas and concepts. So marketing is really selling in words, not some overly creative and colourful adventure.

If you were to look at your business and its marketing or advertising practices and you saw excessive use of graphics and pictures and few words which actually talk directly to the people in your market and their problems then you have a disconnect because you’re getting far too creative.

Its distracting you from the real purpose of what your marketing is and that is to sell or to obtain somebody’s buy-in to a mutually beneficial outcome, whether it’s a download, booking an event, fixing up a meeting or arranging for a review to actually buy something.

From a direct sales perspective you’re involved in establishing a good fit between you the supplier and your prospect or customer, which often means talking to enough people until you find a good match.

For most new business this usually involves you in cold call prospecting which is very labour intensive and increasingly time consuming. Your experiences may have already proven to you that as each day goes by sales barriers continue to rise against the tide of change and the effectiveness of old school “dialling for dollars” is diminishing rapidly.

You can improve your chances of success though by realising that marketing is selling, and blending together evolved sales strategies with accountable marketing rules for lead generation that don’t involve you in chasing buyers all of the time.

One of the best ways of learning how to do this is to study the companies that know how to sell in these mediums.

Where To Go And Learn The Formulas For Selling Remotely In Words

Many people will turn to friends for advice, but the problem with that is its advice based on another’s persons situation and beliefs, which may not fairly represent your own.

Just the other day a TV programme called Rogue Traders showed a man had employed a builder on a friends recommendation. After paying £40,000 upfront for work, the job was never completed and the house was left in an almost irreparable state.

The reason we choose our friends for advice is because of an emotional bond, not because it makes logical sense.

Words are the emotional components which bind people to each other and you to your prospects, customers and key audiences. It’s the reason that mainstream music always contains meaningful and relevant lyrics which emotionally connect with their fans, and can be listened to on the track or read from the album cover. One of the greatest examples of this was the Beatles.

A great example of effective selling using the spoken word is digital TV shopping channels like QVC.

They are product sales channels that operate 24/7/365 and buyers actually volunteer to watch them which is in direct opposition to most advertising on TV which just gets turned off.

Why is it that a TV channel which is just one long selling engagement has its audience volunteering to watch it, when most buyers watching a regular TV show instantly switch off or turn the sound down to eliminate the words when an advert that is trying to sell something appears ?

If you’ve ever watched one of these shopping channels you may have found yourself being drawn into the programme as the presenter talks to you like you were the only person in the room, even though you were not intending on actually buying anything.

Watch on and you’ll see them talk directly to you, making a personal connection. They get into the problem first, then involve you in a solution and later the product itself, finally concluding with an irresistible offer.

These items are commodity products which are being sold using the power of words, not image.

Don’t be fooled by the general nature of these products as it’s not an excuse for ignoring what they’re doing because you represent a cooler, sexier technological wonder and this is somehow inferior. Far from it, these are the building blocks of effective communication with words.

Most of the readers of this paper are probably already accomplished direct sellers, but if only they could get in front of enough of the right buyers it would make all the difference.

It’s true that you can use video to achieve a similar thing and connect with your audience, but not everybody wants to be, or is good in front of a camera which is where selling using the printed word comes into its own. You can even send it in the post, and yes, direct snail mail is still effective.

No matter what you look like or how you sound, writing gives you the very best opportunity to use your knowledge to show how you can help your customers, which is the only thing that counts.

By their very nature direct response marketing companies are organisations that sell using words in printed material. They are the people that have learned what it takes to slice through the mayhem in any marketplace and their skills are used by many of the world’s most successful companies.

Virgin’s founder Richard Branson started in the mail order record business and still uses direct response marketing style approaches as did Sir Alan Sugar, now famous for the UK Apprentice programme. They have employed formulaic approaches to selling and marketing based on rules which have withstood the test of time.

There are no parlour tricks or misleading gimmicks, just cold hard measureable results, which if you take the time to learn and master will bring you predictable outcomes.

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1. your site was never designed with lead generation in mind so they probably wouldn’t be able to engage with you in any other way except to call you up as a last resort.
2. they’re not really interested in buying, but they are interested in picking your brains to see what they can find out for themselves, you know, kick a few tyres.

Never the less they’re local so you go visit them without really qualifying whether there’s a real need for you to do so, or whether this could be done remotely first to at least determine if there is a fit.  Once you’ve established some common ground you could then arrange a meeting to explore the details.  Never the less, you go anyway.

You’ve now spent time with them now and they seem unusually focused on the details and reluctant to focus on goals and where they want to take this and why they want to do it, but you unwittingly take this as a sign they’re interested.

At the end, they ask for a proposal, yet something deep down tells you that they’ve not quite bought into your ideas and there is some resistance, even nervous avoidance of certain issues and commitments.

Guess what, you’re right, they’ve not bought into it yet (if ever), yet somehow you logically convince yourself that without a detailed proposal this suspect will never become a customer.

So, you go away and spend hours crafting the perfect proposal which will nail this deal once and for all.

You feel proud after sending it along to your suspect, only to find out that you never hear back.

Something went wrong.

Don’t Blindly Follow Your Customers Demand For  A Proposal

Just because your in sales doesn’t mean that your time or expertise is worthless and should be spent pandering to every beck and call of suspects, prospects and customers. It needs to be give and take. When its all take from them and give from you, something isn’t right.

You’ve probably done a number of things at no cost already and yet still they ask for more.

Instead you need to challenge this, and quickly, before you waste a lot of time and effort on an opportunity you’ll just keep chasing.

Know this, customers are equally as good at avoiding the truth as suppliers are.

A summary, outline, or possible service / product package that gives an indication is a good way to test what’s going on.

Arrange for a free trial or something which pulls them closer to your product or services and you into their business without taking up too much time and expense, and see how they react. If they push away it wasn’t real.

They’ll probably agree at first and then all of a sudden they’ll turn you down.  Told you so.  Sure, they’ll have a great excuse, a fix they arranged literally within days, or they never fix it and nonchalantly turn you away as if you have some kind of transmittable disease.

The Sooner You Determine If Something Is Real Or Not The Less Time You Waste And More Time You Have For Better Opportunities

They’re just shopping, browsing, having a mooch with no real intention of buying.  I wonder if….. ?

If you believe that you are somehow less important in this story then go ahead and write your proposal.  But don’t complain when you don’t get the business until you’ve qualified the situation.

You see the less time you was with these people, the more time you have to find the right people and spend with the right people.

Just image how you would have felt having spent a day or two crafting your proposal masterpiece which was going to blow them away, when all they were doing was window shopping, which would mean never returning your calls, cancelling other meetings, dodging any next steps and all the other cherades.

Once you dig deeper into the psychology you realise that these individuals are not really all that serious. They led you to believe they were, but had no intention of committing to it even if it was the right thing to do.

Proposals are not for people who are “just browsing”.  Give them something generic or ask for more commitment. If it doesn’t progress you just saved yourself a lot of time.

If What You Represent Is A High Level Of Knowledge Or Skill Then Your Creating Real Value And You Deserve More Commitment

Proposals at this level offer a great deal of insight, analysis and strategy. Why would you give that away for free ?

Sure, even the likes of interiors decorators offer a free in-house consultation. Designer can come in and suggest colours and scheme’s but you wont get a proposal until you pay for it as it requires skill and expertise to craft such ideas.  If you want them to complete the work, you also have to pay them for that also. Its the world of real business.

Instead have some outlines and packages that can illustrate it a little better for them.  If their interest becomes serious, you can get them invested deeper into the level of value you can deliver to them.  Again its give and take.

What you’re leading to is an ultimatum where you really get to see how serious these people are.

Proposals can be a waste of time, but only if you let it happen.

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Whether you believe it or not, effective business growth and development is more formulaic than it is creative.

This confusion occurs a lot in marketing because things get done in a certain way because everybody else is doing it that way. Ask somebody to actually tell you why, and they will struggle to give you a definite reason that will support the way it’s being done, other than its an industry norm or because they believe it would be effective but can’t tell you just how effective.

Even in selling you’ll come into contact with successful sales people and if you get a chance to talk to them or pick their brains for some advice over a beer or coffee you’ll mostly definitely find yourself feeling a little bemused as to actually why it is they are successful and what specifically they do that gets them results which could be transferable to you.

A Business Can Only Grow Successfully On Formulaic Facts Not Mysterious Factors

When faced with beliefs, instead of measureable outcomes based around some kind of proven formula which explains that if you do “X” you’ll get back “Z” in return, you’re forced to believe that it’s just all one big mystery, a game of luck, lottery of chance. I know I did when I first started investigating this whole area even though I already had years of experience.

This is exactly the reason why so many people are led to believe that success is indeed a mysterious outcome when the reality is, given the right know-how you can engineer a successful outcome.

It’s true that certain people seem able to do things naturally, just like those talented painters or musicians, while for others they are always having to work hard.

When people who have done well in business are asked how they did it few seem to actually know why. Instead they regale you with stories of hard work, doing what they thought was the right thing, making their own luck, or sharing ways that other people have done it. None of which actually answers the question, because if the truth be told they were to a large part an accidental success.

In the long run though talent and chance alone is never enough and you must be prepared to really learn your craft and understand what makes something truly effective so that you can develop it, repeat it, scale it up or even turn your mind and talent to other things. There is indeed a formula.

Selling and marketing are the essential components of business growth, assuming you have a product and service that is right for your audience and you are willing to stand by it.

It would make sense that in order to develop your business growth more effectively and make better use of your companies time and money to create more leads and convert more customers, that you should identify what is most likely to deliver that kind of outcome. Instead of the tireless head on assaults and the same old rhetoric.

Formulas and systems are the most reliable components for creating a measureable and predictable outcome over methods based on blind belief alone.

Systems Give You Frameworks For Creating Predictable, Repeatable And Scalable Outcomes

When you don’t know what creates the outcome you need, it’s impossible to engineer it. Where formulas exist they typically describe a system which operates in a specific way, which creates a certain outcome based on a single or sequence of events occurring.

The reasons systems are so important is because things run far more effectively in a system or as manufacturers would say they get done “faster, better and cheaper”.

Systems are used to run our everyday lives. You get up, have breakfast, travel to work, do some work, lunch, more work, return home, exercise, dinner, have some family time and finally relax and later sleep. It runs like clockwork ensuring that you get everything done that needs to be done in life. They are small parts done on a regular basis which work together to engineer a much larger outcome.

In the factory raw materials go in one end, items are processed, assembled, decorated, packaged and shipped and in this way a manufacturer knows that each product produced is consistently manufactured to a good standard. They can also determine time scales for the completion of finished products along with raw material and component stock levels required to maintain supply and build traceability mechanisms for determining the causes of quality issues.

Investments and financial trades are also based on systems that help traders and investors identify with a high degree of probability the likely outcome of a transaction and its profitability.

This enables them to repeat it more consistently so that losses are minimised and returns are maximised, right from identifying an opportunity to executing the trade or investment and managing it until you finally exit or sell.

Even the army, fire brigade, police and ambulance services are based on systematic approaches to specialist situations.

So a system ensures repeatability, improved accuracy and predictability and you can scale it up in size knowing that if all things remain equal you will get more of the same results.

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In fact they’ve probably faced difficulty at every turn and yet its that same difficulty that made the impossible possible.

Difficulty steers people onto new paths, gives us new experiences, new ways of looking at things and challenges us to find ways around or through to what we know is on the other side. If we choose to step up and follow our passion then great things can happen in facing and overcoming our difficulties.

For those who know me they know I’m not a crazy Apple fan boy, nor am I an rabid Apple hater. I appreciate what Apple has brought to the world and how its contributed to the positive evolution of technology in our lives. But things don’t inspire me, people do.

What’s really amazing about Apple is the man who started it, amongst other great companies, who has now sadly passed away. Steve Jobs.

Steve is much like most of us, a flawed individual that some would say is not particularly exciting to work for or be around, yet he managed to overcome and do so much.

From being rejected at birth twice, a drop out of higher education, getting fired from his own company and finally given a death sentence by doctors.

I salute you Steve for your vision, determination and your willingness to share with so many even if you were a bit of a troublesome geek.

Sit back and be inspired by Steve as he gives a talk at Stanford and the twists and turns he’s faced over the years.

This is the kind of fighting spirit we need to see us through to better times.  However, don’t ignore the fact that its our mistakes that truly enable us to distinguish what we need to do, to get right and the other people we meet in our lives that make a difference.

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Or do your own beliefs and the recommendations of others come from the depths of fantasy land ?

With the economy shrinking by the day what are businesses going to do to maintain growth when the gradient of progress seems to be endlessly uphill, and budgets shrink back to the bare bones and things just don’t seem to be working like they did ?

There’s only one thing for it and that’s to find a way to increase the number of potential customers you come into contact with while reducing the costs of engaging them and doing the right things to increase the chances of concluding any businesses.

It’s time to “Run forest, Run”

Hope or belief alone isn’t enough to help you win the day, you need to apply some critical thinking to see through to the truth behind the smokes screen of lies.

So, sit back and take a look at these short videos which present real facts along with some ideas you can implement below which could make a significant difference to your business in these tough times.

Enjoy that ?  Want to know more ?

Well, if you’re looking for a way to “don” the running shoes for your business then listen up. These simple ideas will help you engage more potential customers and costs just a little time.

Get Involved In The Conversation

Social media is a great way of driving traffic and engaging people. As long as you use it in a “conversational” way (avoiding the direct sell) and your website has been designed to convert traffic into leads then you’ve got a potential source of new customers.

The key (or keyword) is firstly finding conversations and people you can interact with and there are a ton of tools out there which can help you do that. One of the simplest is to use something like Google Alerts.

Once you’ve found a relevant conversation follow these simple steps;

• Help to move the conversation on.
• Offer something useful, such as advice or a reference to other content within a comment.
• Avoid selling, instead show your interested first and interesting second.

Give Away Something Of Value

Everybody in business or those working for themselves have typically amassed a lot of knowledge about their particular subject which could be useful to others.

By carefully packaging it together into a tasty bite size chunk of content it will help inform your potential customers and demonstrate your knowledge within your chosen field of expertise.

However, don’t forget that if knowbody knows you’ve got it, they won’t be asking for it, so make sure you use attention grabbing graphics to attract peoples interest and a download page where you can sell the benefits of reading, watching or attending.

Run A Workshop

When people see you doing what you do best and they’ll soon realise the extent of your knowledge and what you could potentially do for them.

One of the cheapest and easiest ways of demonstrating this is online with a “webinar”.

The key again is not to pitch, but show your audience how they can fix a specific problem.

Unlike live workshops, webinars can be pre-recorded so that the only live bit is the Q&A at the end.

Marketing that generates leads like inbound marketing is a reality and if done correctly it can make a significant difference to your business.

Make Some Calls

Whilst you’re working your marketing there is nothing stopping you putting in a few calls to existing and new customers alike.

The good thing about having your marketing up and running is that you now have something relevant to offer people when you call them whether its an invitation to a workshop or some useful information.

If you’ve got your marketing right then you should have some leads to follow up on also.

Bottom line is you’ve got to get out of your porch if you’re going to get things moving.

Image Attribution: Fantasy Wallpapers

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Business

Sales is one of those areas that’s under increasing pressure for all sorts of reasons and it’s often not helped by the company that employs them.

“Rubbish” I hear you say, sales people are just lazy or incompetent or what ever other excuse you want to lay down on them.

So what would you say if I presented you with the following statistics:

• Over 40% of salespeople fail to hit quota.
• 30% of reps turn over each year.
• It takes an average of seven months to ramp up a new sales person.
• 65% of a sales rep time is spent NOT selling.
• Salespeople spend 30 hours a month searching for and creating their own selling materials.
• 90% of marketing deliverables are not used by sales.

If you’re speaking at this moment then you’re probably saying something like “Oh Dear”, only a little more colourful.   And if you’re not speaking I bet you’re feeling a little uncomfortable.

Well these stats are exactly the numbers Jeff Ernst now with Forrester Research uses to open his book on sales enablement, which you can read here.

If you’re one of those lucky business not faced with any of the challenges I’ve mentioned above then I’m sure readers of this blog would love to hear from you, so please share and post your comments about that below.

Of course I’ve got my own opinions on the matter having served in the front line and leadership roles in sales and marketing so I know what its like from both sides of the fence.

In my experience most companies make it considerably more difficult for their sales team than it needs to be because of old rules that don’t fit todays buying habits.

Instead we need some new rules and I’ve consolidated the 5 rules from Jeff’s book which are great and aligned with many of my own.

Conversations, NOT Collateral – The goal of Marketing and Sales is to create conversations, not push information at people or make it difficult for them to access or understand.  Most sales teams have too much information and its typically not aligned with real selling situations or made practically useable and accessible, the same goes for the customer on the receiving end.

NEW RULE:  Sales enablement is about ensuring salespeople are able to have valuable conversations that help buyers advance through their buying process.

Information by itself doesn’t help people, however when its placed in context and aligned with real life situations and delivered in a way that fits with the daily routine things get easier for both sides.

Experience BEATS Expertise – 90% of the “stuff” that the folks in corporate give salespeople is ignored because it rarely conveys what salespeople are actually doing to win deals.

NEW RULE: The most effective selling content, messages, and strategies are discovered from experience with buyers.

Sales want to know what works not what people say will work.

PROVEN Plays – For too long its been believed that “if we implement a new sales methodology, trick or tactic, that every salesperson will become a top player”.  Yeah right!  That brown and smelly stuff is wafting back up again and we all know that it doesn’t work like that else we’d all be the top of everything after reading a book or going on a course.

NEW RULE:  Any salesperson can improve performance by following sales playbooks that are proven to work in winning deals.

Practical approaches that work in specific situations, not just methodologies or processes, that’s what salespeople are looking for.

Value OUT, NOT Data IN – You’re not helping salespeople by holding them to ransom, forcing them to fill in sales systems like CRM or opportunity analysis or what ever else you call it which doesn’t provide the salespeople with anything valuable in return, other than allowing management to interfere with deals and not aid in their closure.

NEW RULE:  Adoption of sales enablement applications should be driven by the value a salesperson gets out of it, not the data they key in. 

Activity metrics and forecasts are worthless unless the real substance that helps deals get closed is in place first.  You can have all the activity and grandiose forecast in the world but it won’t amount to much long term growth.

Act NOT React – With business under increasing pressure sales and marketing teams are being scaled back, less investment is being made into enabling them, travel and tools get reduced and more sales from fewer customers are being expected. Businesses want more from less, when it had less from more previously.

NEW RULE: During times of economic crisis, it’s even more important to invest in knowledge that enables your salespeople to perform.

In a hurricane, even a turkey can fly and with buyers scrutinising every purchase and sales and marketing teams being pushed to the limits you’ve got to spend more enabling people.  Its a question of priorities.

Those people that figure our how to grow revenue during tough times will be the ones that become leaders during the next economic boom.

Photo credit insideview from Flickr.

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One of the most emotive topics in sales is cold calling and this week the blue touch paper was lit and a ton of emails arrived that went along the lines of “you see I told you cold calling works”.  No surprise there.

Its easy to find one example of something and hold it up as being truth or fact. The longer you can leave it behind you (distance yourself from it) the less likely people can verify it or check for themselves, instead you have to “believe”.  Its what institutions like religion and politics have being doing for a long time.

Cold Calling Is Like Gambling Unless You Can Determine High Probability Outcomes

Cold calling for most is a game of chance, a probabilistic outcome where success varies depending on a number of factors.

Its those factors which are never discussed or remain hidden from view that will continue the debate on whether or not cold calling does or doesn’t work.

Before I get a bunch of people telling me I know nothing about sales, you need to know this about me.

After I graduated as an engineer I went into sales and made a career in that field handling large deals before moving into marketing.  I’m a hybrid and have been on both sides of the fence.

You see cold calling can work, but for most it doesn’t. Sales trainers will tell you its because you’re doing it wrong. I’ll go one step further and tell you that in some instances no matter what you change cold calling will not work effectively to grow your business.

Its Not A Question Of If Cold Calling Works But A Question Of When Cold Calling Works

I’ve experienced it when it worked and I’ve seen it when it was a total flat out waste of time.  Since then I’ve been exploring the details to understand what make up the differences and how to determine where and when to employ cold calling.

Lets use the recent Apprentice show as an example of why cold calling can work and then reflect on what most sales people are faced with.

Before I continue I’ve got to say that I’m not watching the show much these days as I’m focused elsewhere.

However, because of the recent activity surrounding this weeks episode and its connection with cold calling I decided to check it out on iPlayer and try to put it into context.

This episode was about taking new products into new markets.

Cold Calling Can Work If You Bring Something Of Real Distinguishable Value To The Equation

The teams task was to selected products developed in the UK and sell them to the French retail market.

Once they had selected the products they had to setup their own meetings where they would pitch these products in a bid to try and sell the most units.

So lets talk about a couple of interesting facts about this situation.

Firstly what’s special about the retail market ?

Well the retail market lives and dies by the products it resells which are constantly being bought and sold and its always on the look out for new products that will help it stand out and sell more.

Next, what about the timing of this situation ?

These were new products from the UK and the sales team was in France for just one day.  If buyers want to see something new from a trading partner in Europe then this is probably a good chance to do it.

Last of all, what’s the value of meeting ?

French buyers may not be accessing the UK market of suppliers on a regular basis or at all, so its a chance of finding something new and unique from a different part of Europe that will help differentiate their business, offer more of what their customers wants and ultimately help them the retailer sell more.

Why wouldn’t a retailer meet ?

Cold Calling Doesn’t Work If You Can’t Create A Reason For It Too Work

The situation is unique as it creates urgency due to the limited window of opportunity and offers a chance of discovering something new and exotic from an establish trading partner.  The real appeal is the situation itself, which will only come off if handled correctly.

Its for this reason that Alan Sugar says “I don’t want another bloody sales person” because he realises the power of creating the situation that facilitates the outcome.  That’s strategy.

The problem facing most sales teams is that the company, products or services they represent are probably offering little value to their prospective customers apart from being yet another supplier of the same or similar product or service that the last five callers were trying to sell.

For most playing the numbers game the timing will always seems to be wrong.

Unless you focus your calls on businesses that are likely to need your product or service and which can be tied into a trigger event like a new hire, company investment or some other reason that the product or service may be needed then your calls are probably going to be a total waste of time.

Cold calling can work and if you’re a start-up with the right products or services (see adding value) it can be a viable route to market to begin with.  However, if you’re looking to really grow long term you cannot do it on cold calling alone.

Marketing led companies always outgrow their competitors in the long run, that’s why anybody who’s going anywhere in business has a system that leverage’s marketing and integrates marketing and sales together effectively.  Just take a look at the successful companies out there and what they’re doing.

This interesting article charts the use of cold calling in the recruitment sector and the selective use of it as a strategy. Notice the downward trend of cold calling and the impact of internet marketing techniques.

Here is another interesting article on cold calling and when it works.

OK, I’ve said it, let’s see what you’ve got to say about this one.

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Les may have gone, but his stories will live on.

You see, Les for all his faults was a real character and lived life to the full and then some.

Whether it was lassoing sharks and water skiing behind them, hunting down stolen anchors finally ending up rising up out of the sea on a beautiful beach front in full black scuba gear and pinning down the suspect with his diving knife to the bar, throwing people overboard during races, taking guns out of the hands of people stealing from him and doing much hooting and roaring in bars and villages across the Caribbean and around the globe.  The list goes on.

The lines between urban myth and absolute truth may be a little blurry but there’s a lot of truth in there and he’s somebody you didn’t forget in a hurry.

Stories Can Be More Powerful Than Reality

When somebody leaves all of a sudden its a strange feeling, even when the bond may not be as strong between you and other family members.

In their absence though its the stories that begin replacing those strange feelings as its peoples actions and the impact they leave that make up a significant proportion of who and what they are.

Losing people is hard, but its a lot harder when there a no stories to fill in those empty gaps and that’s a lesson for us all in life.

Even Benjamin Franklin once said: “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.”

Be A Story Teller And Have Your Stories Told

If you want to keep to things alive, whether they’re ideas, beliefs or a growing business you need stories.

Boring businesses, like boring people, don’t often get remembered whereas great stories on the other hand do.

Not only do stories stay with people, they also help to re-frame things in a different perspective, essential in gaining a true understanding of things.

Les lives on as I and others continue to write and talk about him and his life.

So now its your turn to regale us with stories about what you’re doing to tell more and have told stories about you or your business ?

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Take for example your average office with its sales and marketing teams. How are people like this every going to learn to get along when they’re at each other instead of with each other.

Marketing and sales are there to achieve the same end goal and that’s the right customers, however when your restricted by “beliefs” and “market myths” about what does and doesn’t work its no wonder that the same wheels keep on spinning and guess what…..nothing changes.

Instead they turn on each other and the blame games start.

Its even worse when you get those bright sparks that see the need for change and try to build a case only to find themselves struggling to bring change into these change resistance places.

Aggression and anger is usually a results of ignorance and inability so its no wonder that when presented with awesome ideas that these people lash out and close down any hope of change.

If you’re tired of the struggle, and you know there’s a better way then you need an Inbound Marketing Consultant to help you win.

So go get you’re strategist for free period to help you change the game and move away from the pain of old school marketing and sales.

Image from: Edu Pics

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Once you’re ready for customers its time to launch your product or service into the market.

Get this right and the business will move into a high growth trajectory after some initial ramp up. There are also a few things that you should give careful consideration before getting this right, especially in the sales and marketing department.

1) Start Executing Your Sales And Marketing  Plan Before Your Product Is Market Ready

Due to the costs of establishing a business supplying a new product or service its going to take some time before the business moves into break even or profit.

Generating sales for an unknown brand is much harder than for an established business so its going to take time for you to get your message to the right people and create enough influence and interest in your market.

The more product or service you’re able to deliver the more profitable your business cam become.  Its the “elasticity of demand” or “economies of scale” that allow the same business infrastructure to support an ever increasing consumption of its products and service, until the upper limits are reached.

2) Consider Outsourcing And Bring In House Only What You Really Need To

Marketing and sales people are expensive things and with large overheads that are not yet generating leads and sales at an optimal rate the business will struggle to elevate its position into a break even or profitable situation.

Finding a good agency will help you engage your market without the permanent staffing overhead.

3) Research And Test Your Marketing And Sales Strategies -  Don’t Just Assume Their Right

New product or service launches consist of many incremental steps.

Its easy to assume that your market wants something and in a particular way, only to find out later on that not enough prospects are converting into customers.

Unless you can identify this soon enough you run the risk of wasting both money and time on your marketing and sales activities.

Market research will point you in the general direction, however until you’re engaged with your market you’ll never know exactly how your market is going to react.

The sooner you find who the right prospects really are, those that really need you and buy into the way your present your product or service, the sooner things will start to happen.

4) Don’t Let Your Business Plan Force You To Commit To Commercial Strategies That Aren’t Working

Markets are changing faster than ever before and plans can be easily scuppered because of new trends or changes in market competition.

Businesses that are married to their plan are often unable to change before things are too late, innovation becomes stifled and the business stagnates and dies.

The faster you realise things are changing and adapt by creating products and services to meet these new market evolutions, the greater your chance of survival and eventual success.

5) Be Prepared To Shut Down What’s Not Working

If you’ve identified that something isn’t working and that change or timing is not enough to resolve it then its time to let go and shut it down before you waste any more time and money.

Many businesses have shifted their traditional marketing spend from static ads in magazines to internet marketing because of the return on investment and measurability that it offers.

The same goes for products like TV’s and radios that have moved from standard analogue to digital reception because of changes in broadcast specification.

6) Let Your Product Do The Selling

Products that are noticeably different, which people can experience quickly are sales tools in themselves.

The sooner people see it for themselves the more likely they are to work with you.  Online software service companies provide free service accounts that allow users to try before they commit.

Sampling is another great way of getting your product and service in front of prospective customers and to start building early champions for your brand.

The Take Away

You’ve got to get your idea out there into the market as soon as possible. The longer you leave it, the less chance you have of maintaining any advantage so you need to get your business ready to engage your key audiences as a matter of urgency.  In many instances you can lead with marketing, without even producing the product to test the markets reaction.

The sooner sales start coming in, the sooner your business is likely to reach profitability, so prepare your business’s lead generation and conversion strategies when you have something useful to talk about or demonstrate.

Don’t over commit resources to areas that don’t justify it when you’re ramping up.  Instead find outsource partners that can help you build operations like marketing and sales which you can quickly test and adapt without committing huge time and money.

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However, poor sales training and education along with bad leadership forces sales people into difficult positions.

Way too much focus is placed on activity for the sake of activity or having busy forecasts that demonstrate activity when in reality it creates a lot of so called “deals” that should never be on the forecast.

Time gets wasted discussing and chasing down deals that aren’t a good fit and are never going to happen.  Its stressful and painful.

Instead most of these deals should remain in the pipeline until they’ve reached a sufficient level of qualification or even more likely be killed off completely because they’re not even a good fit.

What’s need is better qualification and a clearer evolution of how opportunities journey through the pipeline so that your focused on the right deals in the first place.

Here are 5 categories that you can use to evolve your opportunities, improve your forecasting and stop deals going sour.

Cold sales opportunities

These are simply contacts that you may have found through research that are a good fit based on some simple rules that enable you to target your activity at likely fits.

Filtering criteria may include the type of company, the market they operate in or their location.

Suspect sales opportunities

You’ve typically made some contact or had a conversation and their is a level of engagement between you and your potential customer.

They get your positioning (how you can help them) and have probably scheduled another reason to make contact again.

Prospective sales deals

Their is a clear need for what you do and somebody recognises it and is actively promoting it within your prospects business.  Their is less resistance now and a significant number of compelling reasons for change as well as quantifiable consequences which are clearly understood.

Qualified sales deals

Deals become qualified once the timescales, processes and criteria for making decisions and getting things complete are clearly understood and that money has been discussed and is available in some form, whether its from a budget or using finance.

Closable sales deals

When there is real need and the company wants to solve their problem, is committed to doing it and its been qualified as a good fit then you’ve got a closable deal on your hands.

What else causes deals to go sour and what have you done to resolve them?

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Some strategies are ideal for market testing and short term ramp ups, while others take more time to build and will add stability and value to your business long term.

The internet is one of the best places for comparing these strategies.

The short game – a marketing auction.

A good example of short term marketing that’s great for market testing and generating quick returns is Google Adwords or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing.

The problems with this sort of marketing is that its an auction, and there is nothing stopping other companies outbidding you or copying your strategy overnight and stealing your business lock stock and barrel.

Play the short game while you have an ROI.

As long as you can actually generate a measureable return from this type of marketing then keep doing it, but don’t expect it to last for ever.

Depending on the type of ad you create which could be text, image, video, mobile or rich media Google Adwords can be used to target either search results or in content (specific networks) and further refined by language, location, timing as well as auction bid pricing and keywords.

Reach deep inside other networks with auctions.

This can help you reach audiences embedded deep inside particular networks that match your buyers persona or those on the peripheries that are outside these networks looking for answers from search engines.

Your ads are then used to direct clicks to a relevant landing page designed to give your audience what they are looking for, converting traffic into leads or customers.

While you’re paying for these ads your generating traffic and leads or sales.  However if you turn off your ads, get aggressively outbid, or competitors engage other channels more successfully then your audience may start to dwindle or become significantly harder to generate a descent ROI.

The long game – a marketing asset.

In comparison a marketing asset is something that works without any paid advertising, but it does take time and effort to establish.

A good example of this is inbound marketing or content marketing which is more strategic (relies on a development strategy) and integrates (connects together multiple activities for leverage and compounding) marketing activities.

Content engages people better than advertising does and if its good its likely to get read or shared online, deep inside relevant networks.

Furthermore content on your site as well as offsite will help to improve your search engine optimisation (your ranking in search results for given keywords).

Social engagement like blogging, twitter, facebook and other communities are also ways of sharing, engaging and improving your SEO (search engine optimisation).

Content is as permanent as the internet, your site and the sites that are sharing it so it is more sustainable and longer lasting.

Not only that but a website that generates sales and leads without the need for advertising is far more valuable if you decide to sell the business as part of your exist strategy.

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Blogging generates exponential returns.

Every blog posts counts if done correctly and will compound your efforts over time.

Blogging helps your search engine optimisation.

Each blog post helps to improve your sites search engine optimisation (SEO), which will help it get found in search engines for different search terms relevant to your key audiences.

Blogging is social media.

Each blog posts is a piece of social media that can be distributed and interacted with all over the web.

Ultimately content will increase your visitors numbers, levels of engagement and finally conversions into prospects or customers.

Now, if you’re convinced that you should be blogging then read on.

Ten Key Components For Successful Blogging

A little bit of planning goes a long way and you’ll save yourself a lot of time and effort in the long run if you have a plan for your blogging activity.

Identify your target personas.

Get to know the people you are writing for and the problems or desires they need help with.

Create content that your buyers (target personas) will gravitate towards.

Write about things that will help them learn and excite them.

Identify keywords to attract your personas.

Do some keyword research using tools like Googles keyword tool.

Include your keywords in post titles and post content.

Build archives full of your keyword focused content.

Create a mix of content.

Include tings like news, features, videos, reviews, opinion, examples.

The “How to” post – quick and easy, can be posted regularly.

The “Leadership” post – more detailed and high level, fewer of them.

The “Big” post – usually a series of posts, lots of links and discussion.

The “Hot” post – make a bold claim or statement, done with caution.

The “Sweet” post – be nice, have some fun, joke about yourself.

Write useful posts.

Use headlines that grab attention

Keep post length to 500-800 words or shorter, occasionally longer.

Stick to one main idea or theme per post

Always include media like photos or videos from Flickr.

Creating ideas for posts.

You should find ideas all over the place.

Use the Internet to search for things that interest you.

Read RSS feeds of your favourite blogs.

Keep magazine articles and reference media like TV.

Write about experiences or books you’ve read.

Talk about the people you’ve met and places you’ve been.

Interview people on opinion or get others to write guest posts.

Do “best of” lists and “how we do that” posts.

Talk to people and ask them what they want or need.

Writing headlines that get read.

Start with your headline first, not the article.

Surprise readers with a new angle.

Use intrigue or the grey areas in a particular subject.

Don’t forget to include your keywords.

Keeping up your blogging activity.

Pick a schedule that suits you.

Stick to it regularly.

Remind yourself why you’re doing it and that it takes time.

Take a break if you run out of steam.

Charge up you brain for ideas and enthusiasm.

Spreading your blogging.

Comment on other blogs.

Send your posts out on facebook and twitter.

Link out to other blogs and people will link back.

Measuring your blogs activity.

Understand how far you’re reaching out into the blogosphere using analytics like Google analytics.

See how many page views you get.

Charts the number of comments you receive.

Understand where you inbound links are coming from.

Be clear on what causes conversions into leads or sales.

This covers a very basic and top level overview to get you going.

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I was on a webinar on “passion” or “personality” in marketing and more specifically the importance of it in content and video especially if you’re looking to promote an idea or business using marketing today. 

The same applies to sales.

People lower their resistance when people are authentic.

Basically I couldn’t agree more.  How can you connect with people if you can’t be authentic or transparent, and that means letting the real person or personality behind that idea shine through.

We all know that people buy from people….more importantly people buy from people like them or people that are credible and believable who they can trust.  Today, authenticity is a large component of trust, and that means letting the little mistakes and emotion through, just like a real person, but being big enough to admit them and address them if they backfire.

One of the speakers was Gary Vaynerchuck, who’s a passionate guy about the need for change in business and I couldn’t agree more with him. Gary took over the family wine business and used video to build the business and his personal profile delivering authentic wine tasting for ordinary people, without the pretence.

Passion or personality can be overwhelming and polarise people away from your argument or pull them towards it.

Sometimes though passion can appear to get the better of you, but that’s authenticity for you right there.

During the webinar a whole bunch of questions came in and one was how to get the boss to listen to you and let the team run with new marketing ideas.  Gary’s response was “if they’re not listening then just punch them in the face”.

In the real world people are in positions of power for all sorts of reasons and not always because they are the best or right people. Sometimes though they just make mistakes and every day you hear people complaining about their politicians or bosses at work.

Human nature causes the weak minded to become defensive in situations where their knowledge is, or appears to be, less extensive, so they may dumb down, block or stifle ideas that may oppose their own beliefs, or just appear to be a threat.

A lot of companies and probably bosses are stopping sales and marketing teams running with new ideas because they don’t fit with conventional wisdom and getting those people to listen and make any kind of change can be a hard task, especially when your jobs on the line.

Instead of lashing out because of frustration, demonstrate you care and build a winning case.

Eventually its leaves you with such frustration that it appears there’s no alternative but to deliver a punch right to the face, and I’m sure some sales people have felt like lashing out at a few prospects and customers because it appears they’re being ignored just because their sales people, even though their product or service could be a game changer for that prospect.

Having heard or read the reply just “punch them in the face”, I’m guessing that you, like most webinar participants, interpreted that to mean a physical punch in the face, and with all the frustration that can build up when people seem to just ignore you, even though you’ve got great ideas it’s no wonder that people turn to aggressive tactics.

The response that came from webinar attendees was no surprise and mostly made up of criticism with comments like “how the hell can that be a real strategy” or “is this guy for real” ?

However, I think there’s an important point here, especially when you’re trying to bring ideas into a market that’s dead set on conventional wisdom.

Getting these people to listen or even consider change can and will only happen when you deliver a powerful blow that either affects them directly or influences their surroundings.  It has to be formed on the basis of argument which demonstrates unequivocally that your case has a sound basis and should go to the very emotional core of the matter, not the hype and pretence of yesterdays tactics.

It’s why business, marketing and sales is really a science as change only comes when you have an overwhelming case for change, buts it not one that’s built on pure logic or fact as people are emotional beings that need to feel a real connection with an idea so emotional arguments and cases are more powerful than pure fact or logic based cases.  However we can’t forget that businesses must use logic or fact to help them make decisions as they invest mostly for a return.

Marketing and sales teams today should be helping their key audiences to understand and build a case for change, its about helping others to help themselves and keeping it human.

It’s probably the same reason that Kirk leads the team on the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek and not Spock.

Would you agree or disagree ?

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The purpose of the internet has been constantly evolving from its defence routes into a commercial and social platform redefining the way we work, communicate and acquire knowledge as well as products and services.

Business is a competitive space and prior to the maturing of the internet there were few channels for marketing and sales and the majority took traditional mass media and cold calling as the dominant routes to market or had a bricks and mortar business that relied on footfall.

The more people you got in front of, the more chance you had of acquiring customers and that still remains true to some degree today, however instead of all the grunt work coming from sellers pushing their messages at people which they struggled to measure in terms of leads and sales, businesses can combine the networked nature of communications that allow message to be passed, contributed, merged, converged, interacted with and all sorts of other possibilities that traditional marketing and sales approaches could never achieve.

Now businesses can see in greater detail what happens when they produce a new piece of content (advertising or marketing) and enter that into the conversation.  Businesses can listen to what people are saying and where they are saying it and react much more quickly.

The world is opening up and changing because of the internet and the way businesses operate are also changing as barriers continue to fall between buyers and sellers.

What has been lacking is the strategy and technology to make these new developments a reality for businesses without being forced to spend a fortune and that is now happening.  David can now take on Goliath as the marketing playing field is being levelled.

New technologies in marketing automation like HubSpot and Marketo are making time consuming and complex integrated marketing approaches a reality by connecting together steps like effective traffic generation, conversion, integration and measurement into a single unified system, similar to what happened in the communications industry with unified or converged voice, video and data over a single network.

Less time is spent on getting things working and keeping up to date with new technologies so that more time can be spent on creating, measuring and adapting.

This I believe is a major leap forward and is the signal that the foundations of maturity are certainly here.  Its now up to businesses to start adopting these new developments along with the strategies that are essential to make them work to really make Internet Marketing a mature space for business.

So what else do you think needs to happen before we can say that Internet Marketing is now a mature business development strategy, or have we got a way to go before that really happens ?

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Technology

When faced with the possibilities that technology like CRM systems can bring to a business its easy to lose sight of the reason that these investments are actually being made and that’s why you need to go back the beginning and ask what is a CRM system really used for.

CRM or customer relationship management is a software application that can either be run on premises (at your business) or more typically these days offsite in the cloud (internet) from a software as a service (SaaS) CRM provider.

It’s key purpose is to allow for the effective management of relationships between customer and supplier, but what does that actually mean.

Relationships form when there’s an affinity between a group of people.  They occur for various reasons such as shared values, complimentary skills, likeable personality traits and all sorts of other human characteristics as well as business reasons.

Your CRM System Should Help You Build Relationships

Businesses are complex things made up of different individuals, products and services, most of which may mean very little to most customers.  Despite the huge array of choice that many businesses offer these days there are probably just a few things that each customers sees as being valuable to them.

So the the first key to building relationships with prospects and customers is to understand what is really important to them, so your CRM system should help you do that by allowing you to attribute each contact and company with information that can segment (characterise) your contacts into groups with shared values and interests.

You’re not just building relationships externally, you’re also doing it internally so your CRM system should be easy for your staff to use and allow them to understand the prospects and customers their engaging with and make informed decision about what they need to do through identification of opportunities as well as problems.

Your CRM System Should Help You Understand Your Sales Engagement

As well as understanding your prospects and customers and allowing you to tune your communications so that they’re better aligned, eventually your going to end up in a sales engagement.

Your CRM system should also help you understand how your progressing with each opportunity and identify potential deals that have slowed, so that you can engage the appropriate nurturing, or adjust a deals probability.

To do this you must be able to clearly the define the steps involved in progressing a sales opportunity towards a conclusion for your business.  Restricting yourself to the steps included in a CRM system will lead to some friction and a misunderstanding of how deals or actually progressing.

Whilst the progression of deals is a good indication, the time it takes a deal to move between stages and the time that deals languish at a particular stage can also help you to determine opportunities that or slowing or stalled or have a lower probability of concluding.

So what is a CRM system ?

A piece of technology (software) that help businesses build relationships with prospects and customers and better understand how live deals are progressing.  If its not helping you do that, then its probably a liability.

You may also find this guide useful from Hitachi Consulting to help you define what is a CRM system really for and how it will be used and implemented within your business.

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This may seem like an obvious statement to make, but I’ve seen businesses loose customers over the silliest of things and usually during a single transaction (heat of the moment) because they’ve lost sight of the total business that any one customer can and does bring into the business.

Providing the same or additional services and products to existing customers is like fishing in waters you already know like the back of your hand and is far less time consuming and costly than trying to find new grounds to fish in all of the time.

I touched on various ways to generate repeat business in a previous post, however I didn’t go beyond individual transactions and look at the true lifetime value of a customer which is where the customer lifetime value formula will come in handy.

Not only will you understand why its worth fighting to keep profitable customers but you’ll also have a clear picture of what you can afford to spend attracting new ones in the first place.

If you’re not aware of it not all businesses break-even on the first customer transaction, so its essential you know your numbers to determine where and when you’ll start to make a profit and what you’ve got to do to make it happen.

So lets get into the maths.

The Customer Lifetime Value Formula

There are four components of the customer lifetime value formula, 3 of which are the most obvious, which you could refer to as direct or tangible outcomes;

1. The Average Purchase Value (AV)
2. Frequency Of Purchases Made Annually (FP)
3. The Total Years As A Customer (TY)

The last sometimes gets overlooked, probably because its considered an indirect or sometime less tangible outcomes. 

However you should seriously consider the positive impact a happy customer can make on your business through referrals. So we’ll also include

• Happy Customers Referred Annually (CR)

Putting it all together we get;

(AV x FP x TY) + (AV x CR x TY) = Total Customer Lifetime Value (TCLV)

Once you have a referred customer who continues to buy from you, you can also apply the formula to them. Its like a cascading effect.

So lets say one customers spend £125 (AV), 2 times during a year (FP).  They remain a customer for 4 years (TY), so spend in total equals £1,000.

They tell one customer each year who also spends a similar amount of money, so we add;

£125 (AV) x 1 (CR) x 4 years (TY) = £500.

Total Customer Lifetime Value (TCLV) = £1,000 + £500 = £1,500.

So try and avoid losing them over a £125 as you’ve actually lost £1,500 over their lifetime.

Putting Your Customer Lifetime Value Formula Into Action

Show your customers that you care they remain loyal.

• Run launches, receptions, previews, meets and greets, parties and any other form of entertainment.
• Build exclusive offers for your regular customers such as trade in deals, free trials, special showings, promotional gifts.
• Offer educational programmes like seminars or workshops that help your customers learn how to get the most out of your field of expertise or associated products and services.
• Ask your customers to bring friends with them and join in the fun.
• Extend credit facilities to exceptional customers.
• Reach out to customers on special dates like anniversaries, birthdays or seasonal holidays.  This is especially useful if your products and services are used during these periods.

Good communication tools like a CRM system will be essential here.

Remind customers that you understand them.

• Remind your customers why they buy from you and why your the best choice.
• Tell your customers that its time to renew or replenish their current service, especially useful for consumable based products or repeat services like cleaning.

Reactivate past customers.

• You can make an immediate impact just by reaching out to people that used to buy, but no longer do because they’ve forgotten about you.
• Give them a good reason to come back to you.

Encourage customer loyalty.

• Have an incentive like a loyalty scheme which doesn’t cut prices but does given them a good reason to keep buying.
• Offer a priority service to members.

This is another great example of the scientific approach to marketing.

This is another great example of the scientific approach to marketing.

Here’s an interesting post from Dennis Mortensen on Customer Lifetime Value and specifically (key performance indicators) KPI metrics.

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As buyers begin their buying journey they typically start with research, combining their own finds using tools like search engines with results from their own established networks of friends and colleagues. This can be done offline in the real physical world or online in the digital networked world of the internet.

The information that buyers collect will lead them to places where they may get referred or passed on by an associated trusted source or an authoritative site to a potential source of supply. This only occurs where a buyers can see some value or there is an obvious reason to follow.

Buyers Trust Their Networks So Find Ways To Get Your Message To Spread Through Networks

When a buyer asks their network a question they may ask things like “Who do you know who can help me with X or Y problem” or “I’ve got this problem, how can I fix it” and their network responds.

The response a buyer receives will be based on either their networkers direct experiences or something useful, usually information or knowledge which they have come across in their travels or heard about from another source which they may end up referring you to.

Open networks like social media also invites responses from connections that are further out of the boundary of a persons usual network of friends and colleagues.

A buyers own research will typically lead them to places where they can learn more about their own problem and how they go about addressing it.

Improve Your Status By Offering Expertise Instead Of Just Finding Excuses To Interrupt Prospects For A Sale

It’s an incredibly uncomfortable feeling to know that you’re not like those other sales and marketing fakes, instead you’re knowledgeable and act with sincerity, yet you’re still perceived as an untrustworthy source and unwelcome pest just because you’re in sales and marketing.

Things get even more frustrating when you realise that as well as being knowledgeable you also represent a hot product or service, and still you’re ignored or treated like some market trader trying to offload a pile of junk onto some unsuspecting punter.

Knowledge, Information, Usefulness and Purpose Are All Things That Prospects And Customers See As Being Authoritative

So what better way to get closer to your prospects and customers than by serving them real know-how instead of trying to force your way in the door for that excuse of a meeting or to “touch base”.

Genuinely useful information will help your customer learn more about their problem and how to go about resolving it and it will position you as a knowledgeable source. One of the best ways of getting your knowledge across which avoids much of the interruptions with traditional selling and marketing is to become the most visible person in your field.

It automatically makes you the authority and trusted source because the market is pointing to you and saying hey this person knows a thing or two about “super widgets” so go and talk to them.

Prospects, customers and partners will be far more likely to welcome you in as the chief problem solver in your field, just like all those other experts when they see you are a respected authority which happens when you serve your market in the right way.

Here is another useful article from Nate Whitehill on establishing authority through blogging.

This video is a final reminder that we all must earn trust, especially if we’re in business.

Of course as prospects come into your business and turn into customers you must deliver on your promises or else all that hard work you did in the beginning will be eroded away on the back end and all that authority and trust will disappear very quickly indeed.

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I forgot to mention the obvious, yes sales leads, in this video but leads are steadily trickling into our new business as a result of our content, blogging and integrated marketing approach and I’ll be posting some results soon.

Don’t worry if the generation of content is not for you, companies like eb2bleads can help you build a strategy, access technology and generate content that creates leads and sales.

Apologies, I made a mistake (quite a few actually) in the video. It should have been Guy Kawasaki.

You can get a copy of Guy’s most recent book Enchantment from Amazon in the UK but I could only find John’s book 99 Questions To Jump Start Your Channel Partner Brain on Amazon in the US.

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Happy customers are amongst your top sales and marketing assets, and if you’re doing things right, no doubt you get referrals already, but are you getting what you deserve ?

If your business is new or you don’t supply to a specific localised market where word of mouth spreads quickly, then word of mouth is probably hard to come by unless you do something to stimulate it.

Get referrals by making it a logical step in your marketing and sales processes

Without a formal process you’re probably relying on your customers to go spread the word for you, but why would they when they’ve got a ton of their own problems and priorities to deal with, its not personal, its just life ?

Unless you make referral generation part of your business process you’re probably missing out on some great business that would otherwise sit right under your nose or be snapped up by your competition.

So what should you be doing to get more referrals ?

There are in fact many ways that you can generate referrals but to help you on your way I’ve focused on some general areas to get you thinking about way to promote referral generation.

5 Ideas To Get Referrals

1) Get referrals by earning them.

You stand a higher chance of generating referrals and getting a positive response to your requests when your business actually delivers on its promises and creates a great experience which customers will want to talk about.

2) Ask and you’ll get referrals.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get, so make sure you ask your people to ask for referrals, as well as asking for the referrals themselves.

Make new customers aware that part of doing business with you entails them passing you referrals and the reasons why this is good as it helps you and your customers and you’ll be more likely to generate referrals.

3) Get referrals through promotion.

Give customers a goof reasons by running regular referral promotions and give customers cards, discounts, or gifts to incentivise referral generation.  Go one step further and offer a financial incentive.

As long as your costs are covered offer a reduced price to customer who are willing to pass you a set of warm leads.  Stipulate the number of leads, say 3 or more and ensure that your customer have spoken to each lead and they are open to you reaching out to them.

Events are also a great way to generate referrals and introductions, so create an environment conducive of referral generation.

4) Say thank you and your customers will help you get referrals.

Make a fuss of each personal referral you get and reward customers that do pass referrals.  Present them with gifts and compensations that show your appreciation of their effort.

Give your customers who pass you referrals a priority status in your business so that others understand their importance.  Talk about them in news, on your website, on a wall of fame in your business.

5) Get referrals by tapping into digital marketing like social media.

Allow people to spread word of mouth online by using social media to your advantage.  Make sure your website and articles have the capability to make sharing your site and its content quickly and easily with others and promote on-going referrals.

One tweet or Facebook post can be distributed by thousands in minutes.

Get your websites listed or referred by other websites so that people can find you quickly online.

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