Small Business Development Blog

The Difference Between Marketing and Selling

Simply put, the difference between marketing and selling (or sales) is; marketing helps to create or find someone interested in your product or service (we can call this person a 'lead'), whereas sales or selling focuses on converting the lead (enquiry/expression of interest) into a paying customer/client.

Again, keeping things really simple; if you needed to put one measure or metric on each of these different areas of business (marketing & sales) to determine success (often called KPIs or Key Performance Indicators), I would say that the...

Marketing KPI = Number of Leads generated in x period (e.g. 1 month or 1 quarter or 1 year), and the

Sales KPI = Conversion Rate % from Lead to Client in x period.

Difference Between Marketing & Sales by the Numbers

A picture can paint a thousand words, right? Well, I'm betting a table will help out too...

Outbound Marketing - Direct Marketing Methods

Direct Outbound marketing is all about proactively contacting and communicating with a selected number of your target market, we could call them Suspects (an actual list of people from our overall target market that we believe are worthwhile communicating with). 

		Marketing Activity	Marketing Result	Sales Activity	Sales Result	Conversion Rate
Target Market	10,000					10%
Suspects		1,000				10%
Leads			100			30%
Opportunities				30		33%
Clients					10

So, in the above example let's say we wanted to get 10 new clients in a set period (e.g. a week, a month, a quarter, a year, whatever), working backwards using estimated (or previous existing) conversion rates for each stage we might estimate what will happen. We can also see what marketing effort & sales effort is required, i.e. the time required to execute and the investment required for all that activity.

e.g.
1000 Suspects all sent a Direct Mail Letter with a Free Offer & receive a follow-up Phone Call, designed to generate Leads.

10% or 100 Leads are generated and we send them our Offer (leads are people that show interest in our offer).

30% or 30 Opportunities are identified by a qualification process (so, basically 30 out of the 100 people are genuine 'opportunities' to do business, based on asking some simple questions about; need, time frame, & budget).

33% or 10 become paying Clients (taking 30 opportunities through the sales process 10 choose to do business with us)

Inbound Marketing - Internet Marketing Methods

Inbound Marketing is all about capturing a person's contact details, that is a person actively looking for your types of products, services, or a service provider in your industry, or information in your field of expertise (basically, helping people find you).

		Marketing Activity	Marketing Result	Sales Activity	Sales Result	Conversion Rate
Visits		2,000				5%
Leads			100			30%
Opportunities				30		33%
Clients					10

In our table of numbers we can replace directly marketing to a list of suspects, with website visits. A website's goal is normally pretty straight forward, and normally 1 of only 2 options; i) make a sale, or ii) generate a lead/enquiry. Now, most businesses and websites aren't e-Commerce based (as yet) so for most of you it's likely that the sole purpose of your website should be to capture a lead or enquiry. So;

Marketing Department - 1) Increase Visits, 2) Increase Leads by increasing Visit to Lead Conversion rate.

Sales Department - 1) Increase Clients by increasing conversion rate i.e. running a Qualified Lead / Opportunity through your sales process to convert into a paying customer.

Small Business Marketing & Selling

In small business it is important to remember this distinction between marketing and sales, largely because most small business owners do not have a huge team, in fact you could be the whole marketing department and sales department in one. Knowing the difference and what KPIs to use to measure results, will help you identify quickly what area needs to improve, to improve your overall business results - profits! The answer is never 'I need more clients', the answer should be, 'my marketing department needs to increase the leads we get from the current 10 in a week to 20'. Or, 'the sales department needs to execute tactics to improve their conversion rate from 10% to 20% within the next 3 months'. Do either of those things and if all other factors are equal you will then double the business! Right... time to obsess about marketing & sales skills!

Action Points

We identified 3 critical success factors (CSF) in the success of owners of small & medium businesses; Focus, Knowledge & Behaviour. So while this little piece of knowledge is useful, or the reconfirming of what you already know can be useful... it really is worthless unless you implement that knowledge, which is what CSF 3 (Behaviour) is all about. Behaviour is characterised by making great decisions and taking great actions from those decisions.

So, what Decisions are you going to make from this knowledge, and what Actions are you going to take?

Go for it!

 

Prospect Target List: Size Does Matter

When building your suspect list, prospect targeting is everything. Go for quality over quantity, in this case smaller is better. Consider the following example:

Bob owns a PR firm (or a Legal firm, Accounting firm, or whatever B2B services company). He wishes to grow the firm and has highlighted he would like to increase revenue by about 400,000 pa, and he could do that with 12 new clients at £36,000 or $36,000 pa (are there any other currencies? … I await your hate mail). Looking at Bob’s current close rate of appointments to clients of 1 in 10 and the estimates from past direct marketing initiatives we could assume the following reverse calculations;

	Scenario A
Suspects	12,000
Leads	1,200	10%
Opportunities	120	10%
New Clients	12	10%
Revenue per new client pa	36,000
Total Revenue added (annualised value)	432,000

At first look we might think, ok it can’t possibly cost us 432,000 to acquire these new clients and we haven’t even considered the lifetime value of the clients to the firm. But we need to dig and uncover the true cost…

The obvious:

Marketing Expenses to the 12,000 list of suspects… our huge beloved list of potential prospects. It is easy to determine the cost of Direct Mail or Flyers or Telemarketing or a combination of all these things delivered to any list size, we just need to ask any number of service providers for a quote.

The not so obvious:

The massive point that is often missed is the person hours required to implement each escalation in the sales pipeline. Consider 120 opportunities to deal with…

This could mean for each 1 opportunity a person in the firm will need to do….

• 30mins of discovery phone calls
• 30mins of evaluation meeting preparation
• 30mins of travel to evaluation meeting
• 60mins of evaluation meeting
• 30mins of travel to back to office
• 60mins of proposal preparation
• 30mins of travel to proposal review meeting
• 60mins of proposal review meeting
• 30mins of travel to back to office

This equals = 6 hours, now if we assume you need to complete 120 within 10.5 months (12months – 4 weeks holiday leave + 2 weeks statutory holiday + 0 days sick leave) = approx 11.5 opportunities per month x 6 hours each = 69 hours. That is about 40% of the time in sales, or 2 full days a week selling. Now the firm needs to ask…

1. Who is going to do this? The MD or a sales person? Is this even possible?
2. What is the direct cost of this in salary package?

What about the 1,200 leads that were generated how do we filter this out to find the 120 qualified opportunities? Do we use rules and technology to decide for us or do we use an account manager to do this qualification over the phone? 1,200 at 15mins a call = 300 hours / 10.5 = 28 hrs a mth, almost a day a week when that person is at work? What does this cost?

The Point:

Better prospect targeting through detailed prospect profiling will yield much higher conversion rates. With better conversion rates you need a much smaller prospect list. A smaller prospect list not only gives you immense focus (because you will pretty much actually know who your clients are going to be because the list is so small), but it also massively reduces costs. Both direct marketing costs and internal staffing resource requirements. Consider Bob’s example in two different forms….

	Scenario B		Scenario C
Suspects	1,800		810
Leads	180	10%	81	10%
Opportunities	36	20%	27	33%
New Clients	12	33%	9	33%
Revenue per new client pa	36,000		48,000
Total Revenue added (annualised value)	432,000		432,000

 

Scenario C: What if we, through a much deeper profiling process, uncovered the real key clients that Bob wanted were not the 36,000 pa clients (that was just an average of his top clients, a number he had used for years), the real perfect clients were 48,000 pa.

Conversion Rate Improvement

'But haven’t you just changed the conversion rate to fix the numbers'. Yes, well spotted. But I there is a reason.

Better targeting means rather that have messages and lead generation offers that are very generic and can only be communicated once due to the expense of such a large suspect list, you now have a far smaller list where you can communicate a message and an offer which is less generic and more relevant to that person… oh and you get to increase the frequency with which you communicate… it is better to send 10 relevant letters to 1000 people over the course of a year, than 1 generic message to 10,000 once.

You could communicate 5 times as much, for half the price, to people actually interested in your messages and offers. I mean, hello!!!

I’ve also assumed you will work out what it means to create valuable relevant messages and lead generation offers for the specific very tight profile. Make it relevant, high value, interesting and frequent and people will start putting their hand up, rather then you trying to raise their hand for them when they don’t want it.

Action Points

• Print this page.
• Get out the excel spreadsheet or piece of paper and calculate a couple of scenarios, see the massive difference conversion rate makes, set your ideal scenario.
• Profile the different personas of ideal clients for you and your company. Get super detailed, not just the normal; size, industry, title, location….. go far far beyond that, this is a topic for another article - prospect profiling.
  
  

Go for it!

 

How to Create a Winning Sales Proposal

You won’t find a magic template that will make or break your sales success here, you see creating a winning sales proposal is not about the sales proposal itself, it’s more about the entire sale process and conversations that you’ve had along the way…. The sales proposal is nothing more than a summary of what you have talked about. Now, having said that… if you have a poor presentation of that summary information (i.e. you don’t reconfirm what you talked about in visual form), then you will significantly reduce your chances of success and your chances of closing the deal.

So, what should you have talked about during the sales process and therefore what should be in a winning sales proposal?

Winning Sales Proposal Checklist

• Our Understanding of...
  • Your Situation
  • Your Needs
  • Your Objectives
  • The Value (by comparing the Current Situation vs the Future Situation)
• Our Solution
  • The Approach
  • The Outcomes
  • The Specific Deliverables
  • The Timeframe
• The Tangible Impact of the Solution to You
• The Investment
• Acceptance
• Personal Bio
• Why work with US

If you think… gee James this is a lot of information, well yes I guess it is… but each piece is a vital part in the sales process and unless you have uncovered and talked about it with the prospect you can’t articulate a strong compelling proposal that truly helps the prospective client ... and gets you a "yes".

This checklist is fairly generic, and possibly skewed toward B2B service companies however, any business that requires a sales proposal (for whatever product, service or solution) would benefit from this approach as anything proposed is always fulfilling a need and taking a current state to a future state with the aid of some product or service that has the cost compared against the value it brings. Simple! But many proposals are simply 'we'll do this for that amount', no wonder the prospect is not jumping to buy.

Action Points

You are likely in one of 3 states;

1. you are looking at the checklist and don’t know what each bullet point means, if this is you then you need to read or reread some quality sales books, or
2. you’ve read the sales books and done the sales training courses in the past but don’t have all the above information at the time you go to prepare a sales proposal… if this is you, then you need to revisit what you’ve been taught because you’re not executing it in your sales process and conversations with the prospect, ask the right questions and you’ll get all the info you need, or
3. you have the information from your sales conversations but you just don’t summarise it all in the proposal, if this is you… easy… the above list is your new table of contents!

Go for it!

 

How NOT to Use Scripts for Customer Services

Using scripts can equally detract from the customers experience as it can enhance it …

Yesterday I got an excellent smack in the face business lesson in customer service. I walked into the bank, a nearly obsolete experience these days, nonetheless something I had to do. I must say the interior of this particular bank in Mayfair London was well above average, so the environment was adding to a better experience immediately when I walked in. However, someone approached me and what I was greeted with made me cringe;

“Good afternoon, welcome to ABCD deluxe, how can I help you today?”

Now, if you read this greeting script on paper to yourself at first it seems perfectly normal and reasonable opening greeting, right? But clearly the mastermind behind the corporate script had not used this time and time again on a daily basis in branch. You see, change ‘welcome to’ for ‘thanks for calling’ and this is perfect for inbound phone calls… that is because on the phone you are not staring someone in the eyes, you can simply deliver the line in one quick string of words. In person, we don’t deliver a line like this in one quick string of words, we pause and talk a little slower. So, read the line again, this time imagine someone is in front of you.

The problem with this line is it is simply just a little too long. It has 3 parts to it, where it would be better with 2. As the customer I found myself wanting to join the conversation, but she was still talking and delivering this clearly scripted line. Now, perhaps I am just a little more acutely aware of… well… anything business like, perhaps this was just me…. No no no. You see, once I advised how she could help I was politely and professionally shown to a nice leather armchair to wait briefly, I was offered a water, tea or coffee and found ample up to date business and lifestyle reading material in front of me. Ok, very good. But in my wait I overheard that line delivered twice more as the next two customers walked in, and on both occasions each customer tripped over words as they too found themselves trying to join the conversation and say what they wanted.

Each time I heard that line I felt a little less special, and thought to myself anyone sitting in this chair would hear that and think the same thing. I mean, HELLO… we are not stupid… we are humans and we look for two way natural communication.

How the script could improve my customer experience

Any of the following would of delivered a better experience;

“Good afternoon, how can I help you today?”

“Good afternoon, how can I help you?”

“Welcome to ABCD deluxe, how can I help you today?”

“Welcome to ABCD deluxe, how can I help you?”

Conclusion

Scripts can help businesses deliver a consistent customer experience, but without letting the whole team use their brains, and provide feedback about what works and what doesn’t, you can risk detracting from that experience and not enhancing it. I’m a massive fan of business automation and systemisation, in small business this is the only way to scale beyond the business owner doing everything, but come on … remember to keep your teams brains turned ON, don’t turn them into stupid mindless robots!

Action Points

Scripts can help businesses! Empower your team to at least provide feedback to enhance the scripts you have, if not create them in the first place.

Go for it!

 

Proposal Guidelines - How To Turn Price Quotes into Winning Proposals

Stop Quoting and Start Proposing Solutions or  Portraying Experiences    

 

I bet you or your staff get asked for ‘a quote' heaps, or  at the very least asked ‘what is the price?'. For lots of businesses written quotes are a normal part of the daily or weekly operations. WRONG, it is not an operations task, it's a SALES task! If you provide 10 verbal or written quotes a day, or week, or month, whatever timeframe ... you'll win a certain % of them. With some small adjustments you could change a 20% (1 in 5) conversion rate to a 25% (1 in 4) conversion rate... boosting revenue by 25%!

Most quotes I've seen don't SELL, they just TELL. They tell you the price and what product or service you get for that price. Wouldn't it be better if the standard 1 or 2 page quote document came alive and did the selling for you? Heck yes, find out how...

What Is Selling?

Here are some textbook definitions:

• Professionally helping people to buy
• Being a Problem Solver
• Being a Solution Provider

All in all, it's about.... HELPING someone... by either;

• 1. solving a problem (i.e. fix a leak in the roof) or by
• 2. getting what they want/need/desire (i.e. drive a Ferrari)

And ... to do that you've got to be great a communicator, both verbal and written. So, tell me why the heck do 99% of companies that provide a written quote only communicate the item being sold (i.e. 3 x widget) and not all the great reasons they should choose... you, your organisation, or what sets your products or services apart from the competition and the features and benefits of the "solution" and total "experience" this proposal offers as a complete package!

This document, the quote, is a HUGE HUGE opportunity to stand out, to STAND OUT and scream and shout .... "PICK ME!". It's such a huge opportunity because just about all your competition (99%) don't do it, they rely on the phone call, or the face-to-face meeting alone, then expect the potential customer to remember everything about them to make a decision at a later stage.

But what happens?

The potential customer ends up with 2 or 3 quotes which all look the same with the only obvious difference... you guessed it...THE PRICE. It's no wonder people become, or are perceived to be price focused... it's all we are given to tell the difference between companies.

So.... What if you changed your written quote document? What if you changed the way you thought about the purpose of a written quote? The quote is not merely a way of formalising the price of what the potential customer is after for their reference and benefit, it is a blank document in which you get permission, yes permission to do your best communication about why they should choose you. You know what?... if you can't be bothered to put in a little effort to stand-out and do some really effective communication then, well ... as a customer do I really want to buy from you. I'm going to buy from the person and business that communicates they understand my situation and they understand what I want and that communicates just how they are going to achieve that for me. WOW your potential customers, trust me it won't be too hard!

Turn 1 into 3 or turn 2 into 4

That's right I'm talking about pages. If you are doing a 1 pager at the moment make it 3 pages, if it's 2 make it 4... Ultimately it's not the length that's important, it's the context you layout, it's the content you communicate, and it's the design you display. Basically if you follow these 3 steps you just can't help but improve what you've got;

• 1)Context; put together a framework or sections for the document,
• 2)Content; fill those sections with powerful compelling words that communicate effectively that your company and your solution is the best choice for them,
• 3)Design; make it look cool, professional and valuable by adding a cover page and your modern company branding, plus use graphical representation or pictures/photos to support your case.

Getting Underway...

It's likely you'll start with a small amount of content, so to get running with an improved document quickly you can start with an option that has a limited context (framework), then just keep building until it becomes uninteresting and un-compelling to potential customers, then you've gone too far.

Step 1) Put together a framework by choosing sections to include in the document

Here are some basic options for the different section headings that should make up your proposal document;

Option 1:
Introduction or Outline or Situation or Overview
Outcomes
Our Approach & Solution
Investment 

Option 2:
Introduction or Outline or Situation or Overview
Outcomes
Our Approach
Our Solution
Investment 

Option 3:
Introduction or Outline or Situation or Overview
Outcomes
Our Approach
Our Solution
Investment
Case Studies/Testimonials

Option 4:
Introduction or Outline or Situation or Overview
Outcomes
Our Company
Our Approach
Our Solution
Investment
Case Studies/Testimonials

Option 5:
Introduction or Outline or Situation or Overview
Outcomes
Our Company
Our Approach
Our Solution
Investment
Case Studies/Testimonials
Other Services/Solutions

Step 2) Write your content

Once you have chosen a part 1, the context or framework of your document, next write your content or get a professional copywriter to help you. Here's an explanation for each of the section headers;

Introduction or Outline or Situation or Overview: Using the information you have received from talking with the potential customer, write 2 paragraphs describing the potential customer and explain the situation and why you are involved (this proves you understand them).

Outcomes: List 1-3 outcomes or results they want to see and what they'll get from using your company and the proposed solution.

Our Company: Describe your company using your 1 paragraph company positioning statement and convey your company Vision & Values.

Our Approach: Your approach could be what makes you different to your competition, it could be a unique process you operate by to ensure the customer gets the outcome they want. It could be a promise or guarantee you stick to.

Our Solution: This is what you propose to offer the potential customers, what you are going to do for them. List the features and explain the benefits of each of the features, it is important that the potential customer understands what the benefit of a feature is, even though it could be obvious to you, it may not be to the potential customer ... so explain it.

Investment: This is the amount in $ obviously. Not the cost, but the investment required to get what they want.

Case Studies/Testimonials: This proves that you have done it before, and people were happy.
Other Services/Solutions: If you get your overview of the situation wrong from your initial discussions with the potential customer it is likely you will lay out a solution that is also not right for them. By explaining other solutions and services you offer it shows you do what they want but it was a communication error. Also, there could be a chance for an add-on sale if you did get it right.

Step 3) Make it Cool through great Design

This is a finishing touch but it goes a long way, so when you are really... get a graphic designer to help.

This week's Action Points...

Simple, start the above process and improve your conversion rate through awesome communication!

 

Overcoming Objections - How Often Do You Lose Sales Because Of An Objection?

Reach Agreement By Resolving Objections Before They Come Up

Everyone in business loses plenty of sales, even if it is unconsciously. I mean, let's think about an enquiry that just turned out to be ‘a tyre kicker', you know... come on we've all said it, and often it's true. However, just as often they are not. Perhaps when you've asked for the sale these perceived ‘tyre kickers' raise an objection like; "I can't afford that", or "It's just too much", or "Let me think about it", or "yes, but not now, call me back in 3 weeks", or "no time for that", or "not interested sorry".

Learn the only 3 reasons people raise an objection. Understand these then relate them to your business increasing your sales by reaching agreement more often ...

What Is An Objection?

If you've been living under a rock all your life you might not have heard this, but if you've braved the world and read or listened to anything related to the topic of sales it's likely you've heard that "objections are a good thing" or "objections are nothing more than an opportunity to clarify an issue, or concern, or doubt, or area of uncertainty, or to understand the prospect more". Blah, blah, blah, yes this is very true... and how you deal with an objection once it is raised is really important for sure, but I'm not going to talk about the techniques or processes for doing dealing with an objection in this article.

Why? Because the real answer to the question ‘what is an objection?' is ... A SURE SIGN THAT I STUFFED UP!!!! If I'm getting the same objection over and over, wouldn't it be best to understand why that is and work towards never getting that objection ever again! To do this we must understand the reason people give objections and why they come up. Then we can address the communication (verbal, visual, & written) and the process we offer a prospect information. Let's begin...

The 3 Reasons For Objections

By anticipating them in your discussions with prospects, you can answer objections before they come up. By doing this you will be seem knowledgeable, helpful, frank and truthful... giving the prospect a much more favourable experience. Objections that are raised are usually for one of the following reasons;

• 1) The prospect doesn't believe something.
• 2) The prospect doesn't understand something.
• 3) The prospect is attempting to hide something.

The prospect doesn't believe something.

If the prospect doesn't believe something then you have failed to back it up with proof or information. The idea here is to ensure you back up claims with specific evidence, this will confirm what has been said or written or presented.

The prospect doesn't understand something.

When a prospect doesn't understand something, this is largely due to explanations... either they never got one or the one they did get just wasn't good enough. The lack of understanding could be about anything; your product or service, how it works, why it is so cheap, why it is so expense, how to proceed from here, what happens if such and such happens, why it takes so long to get an answer to my questions, or why I can't get the product delivered today. Furthermore, the lack of understanding can relate to simply why you can't do what they want.

You won't be able to remove all these situations overnight, heck the possibilities for lack of understanding are huge, so the best method is constantly check to see that the prospect understands what you are talking about. Do this by asking things like "Does that make sense?", or "Did I make that point clearly? Avoid "do you understand?" it infers that they are stupid if they say they don't, so what happens?.... they'll say yes, even if they don't understand. Make it about you and your communication skills, so if they don't understand it's your fault and you'll explain it again or in a different way. PS. If they don't understand ... it is your fault, that's my whole point! Improve your communication so we remove or at least limit objections.

The prospect is attempting to hide something.

Well, good luck with this one. Objections are either real or fake. If they are fake, the prospect is hiding the real reason, often because of embarrassment or to avoid conflict. An example of two common scenarios that happen here are;

• a)The prospect puts forward a fake price objection "I can't afford that" or "that's too much", but the real reason is they don't believe this product or service is for them but it's just easier to say that they can't afford it and move on.

 

Again, if you get this common objection you have failed to deliver desire and need for your product or service. You've failed to prove to solves there problem in the best way.

 

• b)The prospect puts forward a fake value objection "I don't need this" or "I can get better elsewhere", but the real reason is the price is more that they can afford and they don't want to admit that.

 

Embarrassment based fake objections, are hard to stop coming up. They relate to relationship and it being ‘ok', no matter what the situation is. The prospect will need to feel you really are there to help them and that you have their best interests at heart and that you won't judge them or make them feel like an idiot by sharing the real reason.... And that they can trust you to be private if required.

This week's Action Points...

The key to answering objections before they come up is to become a better communicator. Directly after your next sales call, discussion, meeting, quote, proposal or presentation write down any objections that came up. Do this for a week, then come up with ways to answer all these during your verbal and/or written communications with prospects. Now Implement and continually fine tune then watch your converse rate and bottom line improve.

 

Lead Qualification - How Much Time & Effort Do You Invest In Identification?

Get A Better Conversion Rate By Targeting Better Prospects

This may seem obvious, and you're right... it is, but in practice the execution of this methodology is rarely used to its potential. In fact, often the common notion that "Oh, I just don't have time to identify and target prospects, I'm too busy for that" can in itself be the cause of all the busyness.

If you could spend 4 hours this week to save yourself 4 hours per week for the rest of your life, would you do it? Learn the two key areas to address and how to proceed...

The Business Lifecycle Graphically Explained

If you're like me, and 40% of the population, you'll learn best by Visual Representation. Let's start with an overview of how marketing turns into cash. Here's a Generic Business Lifecycle;

Now, terminology will change from person to person, from company to company, from industry to industry, from business type to business type, and from country to country. The process may also miss a step or two, but all in all this is the generic process. Let's look at each step briefly;

Campaign: These are Marketing activities. i.e. an Advert in a magazine, this year's Yellow Pages Ad, a direct mail letter to your database, a PR campaign.

Lead: A lead is someone who has shown interest in your product, service or company. Perhaps they made an enquiry from your website or gave you a call... but normally they need to have found out about your company through a marketing campaign or a lead source, like a referral.

Opportunity: Once a lead has been qualified (meaning that we now know more about them through questions and we want to deal with them), they become a genuine opportunity to make a sale.

Quote/Proposal: In some businesses or for some products/services there is now a quote or proposal or tender required. For others they just go straight to an order, but for other businesses this quoting is a critical and often time wasting area of business. Some businesses also have this lengthen with a negotiation process to follow after a quote or proposal.

Order/Contract: This is when the deal is done, we get the go ahead to proceed, a purchase order is received, or a contract is signed.

Fulfilment: This is perhaps the biggest area for differences between businesses. This is because it is actually doing what it is your company does. Generically it can be broke down into four business types;

• Services Companies (Project Management i.e. scheduling, resource allocation, time billing, materials/parts/products/expenses)
• Wholesale/Distribution Companies (Pick/Pack/Shipping/Tracking, Inventory Management)
• Retail Companies (Inventory Management, Point of Sale (POS))
• Manufacturing Companies (Materials and supply chain management)

Invoice: Accurately pulling the different components together that make up the total invoice and aligning and communicating payment terms are want invoicing is about.

Accounting: This is the function of Accounts Receivable Management, doing everything in our power to make sure invoices are paid on-time and followed up on if overdue.

Support: Most businesses support their customers in some way, particularly on-going services companies, handling calls and questions and issues.

The Link From Business Lifecycle To Better Targeting

The first two areas in the business lifecycle, Campaign and Lead, represent the 2 key areas to address. Let's examine each;

• Campaigns: This is more of a marketing issue really, and I'll deal with it in more depth in an upcoming article, but it is worth recognising that if you target the wrong people then you will either end up with a lower response or a large response but in the wrong target market. If it is the later you get, you'll have heaps of enquiries which are a waste of time. Better targeting will solve this.

 

• Leads: With respect to the business area of Sales, and more specifically... improving conversion rates, then ‘Leads' is our key area to focus on regarding identification and targeting. It is your qualification process. If you do not invest a few minutes asking some simple questions and qualify the lead, to be satisfied enough to be able to say "yes, this person represents a genuine and likely opportunity to make a sale", then you run a huge risk of wasting lots of time going through your sales process of meetings or whatever with people that are just never going to or are highly unlikely to buy the products or services you are trying to sell!

 

Focus On Lead Qualification To Save Time & Improve Your Conversion Rate

All it takes is to sit down, by yourself, with your team, with your adviser and write a list of questions to ask people over the phone, so simple really. You can use this with in-bound enquiries or for out-bound strategies. What questions do you ask? Well, simply follow this process to uncover your businesses qualification questions....

• 1)Think about the problem you and your business solve for people or the need that your business fulfils. Write this down, along with any thoughts you have about this issue.

 

• 2)Now consider; who are your best customers, or who would you like to be dealing with? List some names and write their common attributes down in 4 areas;

 

• a.Demographics (tells us who an audience is),
• b. Psychographics (describe their attitudes and opinions),
• c. Behaviour (tells us what they are doing),
• d. Purchases (tells us what product or service they buy for how much)

 

• 3) Your list of attributes are in fact the common variables that describe your best customers or the customers you wish to deal with, this is your ideal target market. And you really only want to be spending time with this target market, so to do this your questions need to be designed with the objective of building a quick profile of your ‘lead' and see how that measures up against your ideal target market profile. You'll soon see if they are "qualified" and represent a good ‘opportunity' to make a sale, or if they are just not in your target market and you would be better referring them to another business or sending them some information via eMail and not proceeding to your sales process with them.

 

Example basic qualifying questions

Generic (Business-to-Business & Business-to-Consumer)

• What Suburb/City/Country are you in (geographical area)?
• What particular Product or Service are you interested in?
• What is it about that product or service that is of interest to you?
• What outcome are you looking to achieve?
• What's your biggest issue with......?
• Timeframe, so tell, how soon did you want to proceed/get underway/make a decision?

Business-to-Business

• Number of employees?
• Annual Revenue?
• Industry?
• Business Type?

This week's Action Points...

In the past I've made the mistake of not valuing this ‘qualification step' or slipping back to old habits and leaving qualification out, both mistakes were to my detriment. Get some of your time back by doing this, not necessary but incredibly beneficial, step in your business today.

Offers That Work - Do You Offer Anything Valuable?

Give Your Prospects An Offer They Can't Refuse To Make The Sale

Yes, the words "make me an offer I can't refuse" maybe cliché, but there is a very good reason to take this hard wired human mentality to "get a deal", and flip it around for your benefit. What's the flip? You're a business owner with a product or service or solution and you want to sell more, right? You need to come up with an offer that will satisfy the challenge laid down by those words "make me an offer I can't refuse" to even the most cynical of your prospects.

Do this, and you'll be closing more deals and finding more opportunities to do business. Learn how to determine your offer...

Why Do People Buy?

To find out what we need to offer we first need to understand some basics, like why people buy. There are only two reasons why people buy:

• 1. To solve a problem
• 2. To make themselves feel good

Both you and I have heard and given a million reasons for making a decision to buy something, but when it boils down to it, all these reasons can be classified in one of the two areas. If I don't have a need or a problem I'm not going to buy, similarly if I don't want or need to make myself feel good, heck I'm not going to buy either. So, people make a decision by thinking about the problem/need or the product/service/solution in their mind and by asking themselves questions each time they see, hear or experience something related. The questions they ask; "does this solve my problem/need?", and "Will this make me feel good?"

Two key elements dominate this ‘thought & decision process', in a prospects mind. You've probably heard them mentioned before, Emotion & Logic. These are just empty words, unless we give them a very simple meaning;

What Is Logic About?

Simply put, logic is all about defence. A prospect must we be able to defend the purchase to preserve their self-image. To themselves, their family, their friends, and their colleagues. Logic is the PROOF that the purchase was the RIGHT decision to make, the WISE decision to make. Just think about yourself (or some friends) and think about one of the last purchases you or they made recently, let's say it was a $5,000 leather sofa. You'll find people will defend this purchase to their friends buy saying things like, "it cost a little more but the quality is much better so it will last longer" or "it was made in New Zealand not China and was actually half price so really we got great value for money".

So, your offer must allow people to defend their purchase. It's got to be credible and make sense! But proving that the purchase is logical alone will not be enough to make the sale, for that we need emotion.

Emotion is Number 1

Why? Well, it's a time thing. You see, without emotion I don't have to purchase today... it may be logical to buy, but maybe tomorrow or next week or next year. Emotion is about desire, a prospects desire to solve that problem now, a desire to feel good today. The bigger the desire the more people have to have your product/service/solution. You need to build desire!

"I'll Think About It"

If you get lots of prospects saying... "I'll think about", or "I'll call you", or "call me back in....", then you're probably talking too much logic and not enough emotion with customers. Talking emotion is about personalising it, logic is facts you can state to anyone. With emotion it becomes personal. News flash, the only way to make it personal is to ask questions. What is the personal benefit that someone will get out of a feature of your product or service. Here's how you can make sure you understand this;

• 1.Write a list of each of your products or services (or product groups).
• 2.Start with one product or service you want to sell more of, perhaps your conversion rate from prospect to sale is currently poor for this product/service. Write a list of all the reasons people buy that product.
• 3.Now classify each as Logic or Emotion.
• 4.If you don't have many emotional reasons listed, find more by thinking about personalisation, benefits and the feeling it brings, rather than facts.
• 5.Rewrite the list on a new page, with the logic list on the left of a page and the emotion list on the right.
• 6.Study this list and when talking with prospects remember to ask questions to find out their individual and personal emotional elements.
• 7.Repeat for each of your products or services.

Prospects Are Concerned

During the thought & decision process people have only three concerns;

• 1. Fear
• 2. Cost
• 3. Risk

If each of these concerns is outweighed in a person's mind then a purchase is made, if not, there is no purchase. So, you want to know what factors shift the balance to a green light are, right?

• 1. Fear is overshadowed by Support
• 2. Cost is overshadowed by Benefits
• 3. Risk is overshadowed by Assurance

Halleluiah, We Now Have Our Ingredients For A Strong Offer You Just Can't Refuse  

Yes, but ingredients don't make a recipe do they?! So, let's very quickly explain each ingredient then we can combine them.

Fear: "If this doesn't work, I'll look like an idiot" or "If I get this wrong, I'll lose money". Fear is the concern people have about losing something of value if they don't make the right decision, like their pride or cold hard cash. The prospect wants make a decision to buy but is understandably concerned about the possibility of it not working out for them. You need to learn to support them to make a decision. All you are doing communicating the benefits then supporting the decision with logic.

Cost: Arhh yes cost, business owners the world over often believe cost is everything to a prospect, "It's only about price James", I often hear. Let's clear this up. Cost is just that the prospects doesn't want to pay too much, and for some too little (i.e. = cheap and crappy). A prospect wants to get great value for money. They want a great deal. Focus on communicating the benefits for paying the price of your product/service. The more benefits you have and the more value each benefit brings, the more they will overshadow the cost. If you still get price objections, change your target market, or change (read IMPROVE the heck out of) your product and service. You see, if a prospect can't see the benefits, they just won't buy regardless of the cost.

Risk: People can be worriers. "If I change the way I've always done things, I will risk what I've accomplished so far", "If I buy a house now, I might lose money". Very similar to Fear, Risk is about removing the risk from a decision. It is again about communicating the benefits then backing it up this time with the assurance that yes this is a smart decision.

People don't want to be sold to. So, communicate with them instead.

Here's What You've Been Waiting For

An example "offer" to emulate! Offers can be simple, and should be sensitive to the concerns people have; fear, cost, and risk. Here is a list of offers I recently have received that caught my attention and with some ultimately my business;

• 1.The National Business Review (NBR) weekly newspaper sent me a letter offering 4 weeks free subscription. 1) No Fear, I can't lose anything, 2) No Cost, it's free, 3) No Risk, I can say no at end.
• 2.Webex, an online web meeting provider. I was looking at some different options, they offered a 14 day free trial. No Fear, No Cost, No Risk.
• 3.NZBusiness Magazine sent me 2 or 3 months free subscription organised through my BNI (Business Networking International) membership. No Fear, No Cost, No Risk.

In each of these situations they basically Offer;

• We'll set you up free of charge.
• You can use the service for a period of time free of charge.
• If you like it, you keep it.
• If you don't want it at the end of the time period, we'll drop the service free of charge.

Each of the three concern factors are removed. And if a prospect is talking to you and they are seriously investigating making a purchasing decision... this really is an offer too good to refuse!

 

This week's Action Points...

Get excited about this as it is pretty powerful stuff, run a brainstorming session with your team, get feedback from prospects. Whatever you choose, think about all the reasons, the elements, the concerns and the factors carefully. Then go ahead.... Make me an offer I can't refuse!

 

Unique Selling Proposition - Are You Unique Enough For Me To Care?

Get A More Effective Benefit Focused Message To Your Customers

 

I ask just about every business owner I come across a question, a question which I long to here an awesome answer... alas, I never do. In fact, I get a pretty consistently boring message I've come to expect in a world of same same businesses. What is the questions I ask?

"Why would I choose you over Bob's business down the road?" What is the instant answer you would say to me... see if your answer is the same as everyone else's and what you can do to transform it in to words that will convert more enquiries into sales by clicking here...

"Our Service"

"Our Service" or "Because we have/give great service" or "we go the extra mile" blah blah blah ... whatever! This is the answer I get more often than not. Dribble, dribble, unspecific dribble! What people actually mean is Customer Service, but everyone believes they have great customer service, news flash.... As a customer I just expect great customer service as the price of entry. And as a prospect (or someone interested in buying your product or service) I'm evaluating three things;

1) You (or your staff) personally,
2) Your business,
3) Your product or service.

If you don't pass each I'll keep shopping around. And when people shop what do they do? They evaluate one solution against the other. Prospects are looking for the difference between providers and vendors or the difference between products and services, what is it about you, your business, your product or service that is unique? Please would someone tell me?!?!!

What is the most important factor to your customers when evaluating a solution?

Most business owners scream "price" back at me when I ask them this question. Is this true? Sure, it's important but not the most important factor. But for most businesses it becomes the most important factor because they are not able to effectively communicate the differences and the uniqueness, so to a prospect they all look the same.... there for the only way to tell solutions apart is price.

Take tyres for example;

What is the number one question someone calling a tyre shop is going to ask, every time just about guaranteed? "How much?" and what do 90% of tyre shop owners or employees do? Why they just tell them, and the prospect who called up says "thanks very much I'll call back" and guess what they never do. You just know that the prospect is going through the yellow pages and calling three or more companies for quotes. If all businesses do the same thing, the only, I REPEAT the ONLY factor the prospect has to evaluate the different providers by is PRICE.

So, wouldn't it be better if the business owner and the rest of the team knew what set them apart from the competition and were able to communicate that to the prospect, now you have got more factors to be evaluated on and it sets up the business as unique.

So what do we communicate?

You need to develop a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) or Promise or Guarantee. How? Find out what frustrates people about;

• 1) your company,
• 2) your industry,
• 3) your product or service,
• 4) the situation you are attempting to solve with your solution

If you find out this information then develop your solution to remove all those frustrations. Then it's just a matter of summarising those points and communicating that you'll not give them these frustrations in your marketing and sales literature and verbally during suspect/prospect/customer interactions (over the phone or face to face) to improve your conversion rate from enquiry to sale!

How do you find what frustrates people? ASK THEM! It's so simple, either casually and document findings over time, or via survey form (in-house or market research house). You could also just guess, be careful though... don't assume you know why... often business owners are too close to the product or service and get this wrong, best to ask. These days you can set this up via an online web form that is eMailed to customers, so you could call customers and ask them if they would take 5 mins to complete a survey then eMail it to those that say yes.

What does an example look like?

One of my clients developed this;

We Promise to:

• Turn up on time
• Tidy up when finished
• Be trustworthy in your home and business

Simple yet effective. He addressed the main frustrations people have with his industry, then promises to do the opposite. He can enrol and inspire his team behind this same simple message. Most importantly the suspect/prospect/customer quickly understand what makes them different and what makes them unique... and as a result they get selected to do the job over other providers!

This week's Action Points...

List your immediate thoughts on your prospects and customers frustrations, ask your teams input, ask friends, ask customers who just brought from you why they choose you, ask prospects who did buy why they choose someone else or didn't buy at all. Turn these frustrations into an opportunity for your business.

 

Sales Process Flow Chart - How To Turn Time Consuming Enquiries Into Opportunities

...And Turn Opportunities Into Sales...

I arrive at the office building, I walked inside the building, I walked up the stairs, I open the door, I walk in.... Boring isn't it! And yet this simple process of getting from outside the office to inside is something I do each and every time I come here. It happens in the same way, sure sometimes I might be carrying a briefcase or a folder or my laptop, I might even stop to chat to someone I bump into on the way, but basically it's the same process. Why? Because it is the most effective process to get the outcome I'm looking for.

I mean, I could mix it up a bit, do it slightly differently each time; behind the office there are also some stairs which lead to level 1, or maybe go through the window. But I don't, and why is that.... well that would be just a waste of time, that door could be locked at the back so it might not work at all or, I could get stuck trying the window option. If I'm going to the office I want to get to the desired result, working at my desk. Now tell me, why is it that when it comes to the area of sales (and if we think about my office example as the Sales Process for a moment), most business owners see fit to try and jump the flight of stairs and try to get straight to working at the desk (making the sale). Often they just end up hurting themselves on most of their attempts to get to working at the desk (turning a lead into a sale), which wastes time and resources, plus builds frustration?!?!

Are you building these 4 key elements into your sales process?

Sales' is a Process, it takes time for a lead or enquiry to become a prospect or an opportunity, and ultimately become a customer, client, or sale. Sure different businesses have vastly different ranges of time, from minutes to years. It is less about the time and more about the information that different types of people need to make a buying decision. It's also about proving that you understand their situation and have the right solution and have proven to have helped others like them in the past. Before making a buying decision, no matter how big or how small, some consciously others without even knowing it, some quickly some very slowly, everyone goes through the following 4 phases and questions:

TRUST -Do I trust this person/business/product/service?

NEED - Do I need this person/business/product/service?

HELP - Can this person/business/product/service help me?

HURRY - Ok I want it now!

If you and your business don't get a good grade from the prospect at NEED you want progress to HELP in their mind let alone HURRY where you maybe be thinking.

So what you're saying to me is that I need to provide answers to those questions then?

Not exactly, you see people will form answers to these questions whether you provide proactive answers or not, what you need to do is provide ‘better' answers that more actually reflect what you, your company, your products and your services are all about. When? Right up front, people will buy from people they are familiar with, so the more touches like a phone call, or a brochure in the mail you can do (without going OTT, over the top, of course) the better. Let's say your business did a lot of onsite quotes or proposals for people, often the first step will be enquiry phone call from the potential customer, most businesses will get a brief outline from the prospect about the potential job and ask a few questions and book a time to visit onsite, all up taking 5 mins on the phone. The next the prospect hears from them is at the onsite visit, a quote maybe given and possibly a brochure, the prospect will often say "thanks I'll get back to you" or "let me go over it with my wife or husband". And what happens, some come back some don't.

Reality Check... not all people that don't buy from you are tyre kickers!

Don't use tyre kickers as an excuse, most often prospects don't buy simply because they found another company that ‘better' answered all their questions in the 4 key elements above. Let's get ‘better' by improving your sales process... take charge of the first phone call, ask more questions and listen, this will help you come better prepared to the appointment and show the prospect that you have listened to them. Send the brochure before the appointment, post is best but email will be fast and cheap, call the day before the appointment to ensure they have read the brochure. Find the best process and do it the same each time.

Walking up the stairs to my office one step at a time is the sure fire most consistent way to always get to the top and get to my desired result. Taking each of the ten steps is not necessarily the fastest process, I could jump straight to step 5 missing out 2, 3, and 4.... but I could slip and fall in a heap, never getting to step 10 (the sale).

This weeks action points...

Get a white board or piece of paper and draw your current sales process as a flowchart, the idea here is once you have documented it, it is time to start improving it by providing all the information in the steps, before the decision point. Take charge of the process and make sure you tell the prospect the steps to buy... all this leads to that final step, decision time, is it a yes or no... not, let me think about it.