Solid Training Is The Key!

Sales Training:

The on-going recession has changed the economic climate and it is now more important than ever that your company is equipped with expert salespeople. Whereas in some industries the only task salespeople used to have was taking orders, your sales team now need to be proficient in every aspect of the sales process. Selling that is recession proof means that the skills set of your salespeople need to be better than that of your competitors. Solid training is a key advantage for successful sales teams and research has shown that businesses that fail often did not put in the proper amount of time and effort into polishing the skills of their salespeople.

Try A Different Approach:

To decide what type of sales training program is suitable for your company you need to understand a few concepts. Firstly, there is a difference in approach to selling to businesses as opposed to selling to consumers. B2B (business to business) commerce are transactions between businesses where both the buyer and the seller is a business entity, for example a manufacturer and a wholesaler. In contrast B2C (business to consumer) describes commercial activities between a business and a private individual, for example a retail store and its customers. The sales approach is very different and your training provider should be aware of that. Regardless of whether you sell B2B or B2C, there are three modes of selling. Telesales is a familiar method where either a telesales representative calls a potential customer directly to sell a product or service (cold calling) or where a customer calls in to a call centre. The sales representative will go through the entire selling process over the phone. In contrast, field sales involve a sales representative visiting the customer – be it a business or a private individual – on their premises, going through the sales process face to face. Finally retail sales is the sale of goods from a fixed location owned or rented by the seller such as a department store, a kiosk or a boutique which an individual can visit to enquire about the company`s products.

Closing Can Make All The Difference:

When sales training is insufficient there are a number of negative outcomes. Sales people can lack confidence in their ability to sell the company`s service or product offering: a sales team can fall back to a comfort zone of old tried and true selling methods which may have worked in the past but have gotten less effective over time. Management`s expectations relating to products and services are not communicated through the ranks and neither is frontline feedback on the company`s products and service communicated back to management. Finally, closing sales is one of the most difficult steps in the sales process and this is where training can make a big difference: if salespeople are unable to close sales all their effort may be wasted but there are proven techniques to make asking for the sale easier.

Increase Your Revenue:

A good training program will help fix the above problems and cover a broad array of skills: basic communication ability, how to build an understanding of the prospect`s needs and wants, how to present the proposition and how to close a sale by dealing with objections and negotiating. The training provider will tailor the lessons to the way your company sells and to your target audience. New technology is giving salespeople additional tools to the sales process. In addition to well established technology salespeople can now make use of novel methods such as social networking and an excellent training course will teach salespeople how to use technology to reach out to customers. Even though training courses involve some expense the additional skills will give your salespeople a permanent advantage which means a large increase in revenue. Not only will revenue increase, you will also build better relationships with your customers and the turnover of salespeople will drop. Business Marketing Courses are also valuable as this will teach salespeople the basics of running a business, important knowledge for salespeople that do not have a commercial background.

Three Great Marketing Tips To Beat The Credit Crunch

Hi everyone my sincere apologies, I have neglected my blog recently due to an illness and hospital visit, But I’m OK now and back to work.

Today I have THREE great tips for you, please let me know your thoughts and leave some feedback.

Many Thanks

Dave

PRICE

when customers need to think about it, it’s usually about Getting over the price problem.

Now more than ever your customers are watching what they are spending.

Yes There still spending, but their wanting to get the best their money will buy.

Rather than jump on the band wagon and start discounting your products to close the deal, why not try something a little different.

Next time your potential customer tells you that your product is to expensive ask them this question,

If your nearest and dearest had a serious life threatening health problem, would you if you were able to afford it hire the best surgeon your money could find or would you use the good old national health doctors to carry out the operation.

Without a doubt this will focus the importance of your customers wanting to spend their money on the best rather than saving a few pounds on something that does not have the same quality.

Pressure Selling

CLOSE! CLOSE! CLOSE! Remember this? Maybe you still sell this way.

One thing is for sure nowadays, customers are more clued up about smart sales techniques than ever before and the old close, close, close is a thing of the past.

As an example: if you were stood in a Que and someone pushed you, they would be sure to get your attention, your attention would be really negative and slightly misplaced I’m sure WHY, because people don’t like being pushed.

Now imagine your sales staff were pushing your customers around in a similar way, push, push, pushing for a decision,

Do you think your customers would have the same negative attention towards your sales staff, as you had with the person that pushed you whilst you were in that Que?

In today’s marketplace customers don’t like being pushed around, their getting used to it from all your competitors so they are less likely to stand for it by the time they get to you.

If your sales staff are still using the old style (bullying) selling techniques, its time for a change.

Remember your customers have been attracted to you by some means or another, don’t spoil that attraction by being pushy.

Get other people to promote your products

Quite often I hear about all sort of products, some new and some that have been around for a while and often I hear about these products from people rather than paid advertising or other media.

Take for example Google or Facebook, both of these companies have customers that can’t wait to tell everyone as soon as they bring out a new or improved product, that’s right their customers are motivated into telling everyone else how great they are.

Could you imagine how powerful it would be if your customers told all their friends how great you are?

My advice would be watch and learn from these businesses, try and find a way to use word of mouth advertising for yourself and feel the power of Viral marketing and what it can do for your business.

Generating Business Part Three:

Ten more questions you should ask yourself if you want to generate more sales enquiries and turn them enquiries into profit.

1. The best way to sell is to ask questions, are you and your sales staff aware of this fact?
   
2. You should always include a PS in your letters, are you aware of why this is important?
   
3. You should be using up to ten ways to market your business, are you doing this?
   
4. If you follow up a mail shot with a phone call you can increase response rates and increase your profits, do you do this after every mail shot?
   
5. Your existing customers are really important, you should take the best care of them are you and your staff aware of this?
   
6. Your clients all have Birthdays; do you know when these are? Do you send them a card?
   
7. You should be in contact of your existing customers all the time by these methods, Mail, Email and Telephone, this is how they will get to know about your offers, are you keeping in touch?
   
8. Most of your competitors probably don’t do what I have stated above, Can you imagine  how much  better than them you would be if you chose two of these marketing methods and put them to use?
   
9. Would you enjoy life more if your business was doing better?
   
10. Did you know for things to change in your business, you have to change what you do with your marketing?

If you have answered NO to any of the above, implement the changes today and begin to earn those missing profits that your company needs.

Dave Edwards

How To Get NEW Customers On A Tight Budget – And Get People To Do Business With YOU Rather Than Your Competitors!

Thought this might be interesting!!!

In these days of really hard work, uncertainty and crisis (probably more fear and panic than real problems), it’s good to remember the following words from

Albert Einstein:

Let’s not pretend that things will change if we keep doing the same things. A crisis can be a real blessing to any person, to any nation. For all crises bring progress.

Creativity is born from anguish, just like the day is born form the dark night. It’s in crisis that inventive is born, as well as discoveries, and big strategies. Who overcomes crisis, overcomes himself, without getting overcome. Who blames his failure to a crisis neglects his own talent, and is more respectful to problems than to solutions. Incompetence is the true crisis.

The greatest inconvenience of people and nations is the laziness with which they attempt to find the solutions to their problems. There’s no challenge without a crisis. Without challenges, life becomes a routine, a slow agony. There’s no merit without crisis. It’s in the crisis where we can show the very best in us. Without a crisis, any wind becomes a tender touch. To speak about a crisis is to promote it. Not to speak about it is to exalt conformism. Let us work hard instead.

Let us stop, once and for all, the menacing crisis that represents the tragedy of not being willing to overcome it.

I had this sent to me from Carsten pro- Plan interactivo S.L, wwwpro-plan.eu and thought you might find this interesting.

U.K. Advertising “Make It Pay”

Advertising seems to be every one’s favourite way of wasting money:

So let’s take a look at how you can get Better Results from your advertising budget.

In my experience there are better and more cost effective ways of marketing than advertising. This said, most businesses I know depend heavily on advertising and therefore give little thought to finding more cost effective ways to market their business. Advertising is the most expensive of all marketing options so business owners should look at getting their advertising right before spending their marketing budget. If  however you are advertising already, or plan to in the future, here are my thoughts on what works and what doesn’t.

Don’t Advertise if it Isn’t Working.

If this sounds silly or obvious you would be amazed at how many businesses advertise because that’s what they have always done or even worse because the competition does it, most don’t even know if their advertising works or if it doesn’t.

Measure the results of all your advertising its really important. Many businesses just allocate a certain amount of money to an advertising budget, they spend this budget every year…and only have a vague idea if the adverts are working or if there not, this is absolutely barmy. If your advertising works then use it on a larger scale if it doesn’t work STOP it immediately and use the money on one of dozens of other marketing strategies that can bring you a better return on your investment.

Use Direct Response Advertising, other forms of advertising are institutional (or brand) advertising and are designed to build brand awareness, If you’re a small or medium sized business, brand advertising is almost certainly a waste of your advertising budget.

For small or medium size businesses your advertising needs to produce a profitable response, so stick to Direct Response Advertising and watch your profits grow
RATE CARDS:
Now there’s a laugh! I often chuckle to myself when newspaper sales executives talk about rate cards, most rate cards are far too high always negotiate a better rate is my advice. 20 to 30% less for your advertising isn’t unreasonable and can make your advertising campaign profitable rather than unprofitable and I bet your sales executive is soon back looking for more business.

Just as with direct mail the HEADLINE should be given lots of thought it will if written properly increase response greatly, don’t be tempted to use your company name as the headline think of something that will grab your customers attention, remember also that the copy of your advert needs to communicate with the person reading it.

Here are some other advertising tips:
If possible place your advert on an early right hand page. This has been tested again and again. When you read a newspaper or magazine your eyes are drawn to the right hand page as you flick through, so statistically more people will see your ad if it’s on the right hand page, use Bold or Underline text in your advert especially on any offers

like I said in my experience many businesses are wasting money on ineffective advertising compared to other cost effective means like (Direct Mail, Telephone Marketing, Direct Sales, Email, Internet, Referrals, Strategic Alliances etc) But done properly advertising can be highly profitable and a good mix with other marketing forms.

Hope you found this interesting if you did pass it on or leave your comments:

Feel free to forward this information on to anyone who will find it useful. If they want to receive my emails, they need to go to harlequinsalesandmarketing.com/newsletter.

Make Money With Direct Mail

Direct Mail

Let’s remove any doubts; direct mail is a profitable source of income for any business when done properly, but not done properly it will waste your time and money.

For those that say Direct Mail doesn’t work then let me tell you you’re not doing it right.
Clever businesses will take the time to write direct mail properly, after all you would give this time if you were sat with a customer wouldn’t you? I have said many times Direct Mail is like having your best salesman in print if done properly. To remove the confusion.

Direct mail is anything you send to existing or potential customers.

Let’s dispel some of the myths about Direct Mail. The favourite is

‘Direct Mail doesn’t work.’

This is usually derived by the fact that when you get direct mail at home it ends up in the bin, (which means it must be a waste of money right?) the truth is that about 80% to 90% of people do throw direct mailing in the bin, however have you considered what would happen to your business if you could get customers to read your Direct Mail?

The reason that Domino Pizzas, Viking Direct and many other big companies continually fill up your post box with direct mail is because it works. How much do you think these companies spend testing and fine tuning their direct mailings, probably thousands and thousands why because it works, better still they know what works and what doesn’t. All this said I wouldn’t want to mislead you not all direct mail works and this is why, Small to Medium size businesses don’t spend enough time thinking about the message they are trying to get into their customers minds neither do they give enough thought about what they are trying to achieve, if they gave the time and consideration to think about this then direct mail would make their profits soar.

Another myth is that the response rate of Direct Mail is a very low percentage, compared to number of mailings you send and that you need to send a thousand letters to get a single response, this is nonsense and a dangerous way to budget for your direct mail, there are all sorts of factors that will make a difference to your response rate, your product, the price and so on what really matters is not the response you get but the profit you make, which is why testing what you send is paramount. Don’t use a Direct Mail campaign without testing it on a small scale first. Why?

The beauty of Direct Mail is that it is statistically very predictable.

Your Direct Mail will fall into two categories, existing customers and potential new customers.
If you have a date base of existing customers you are sitting on a fortune, start by mailing these, think of something you can offer these customers, send them a letter and measure the response. If it works, mail them again next month and measure the results and if it works keep doing it, when you perfect this try it out on new potential customers and again measure the response each time.

REMEMBER

Test your Direct Mail campaigns for new customers on a small scale before rolling them out.

Always send a letter with any literature you send as it will increase the response rate you get

Your mail should focus on the benefits of your product or service; your customers want to read what your product will do for them not you.

Spend your time wisely

Make sure you spend the time you need getting the headline right its 90% of what people read and has to make them interested to read the rest of your letter, you repeat a successful mailing a few weeks later and expect a response rate around 50% of the original mailing you sent, and following up your letter with a phone call will also increase the response you get.
Don’t make costly mistakes on your future Direct Mail, remember write for the reader not for the writer, and take the time to think what your writing in your letter.

Fighting The UK Credit Crunch

When market conditions soften and the recession mongers surface, the solution is not to batten down the hatches, start by asking yourself “AM I HAPPY?’ if the answer is yes tell your face about it then the whole world will get to know.

A friend asked me last week,

“How is the credit crunch affecting you?”

“Its Not!” I said!

We all have a choice YOU, ME and everyone else can choose not to participate.

THE WHOLE WORLD needs to wake up and smell the roses, the last time I looked there were plenty of people buying plenty of products, so the great news is your products haven’t gone out of fashion, just ask yourself, how many of your products you want to sell this month?

Whatever the number you have picked I am sure it will be considerably less than the number of products your competitors will be selling in this market place in your area, ITS NOW TIME crank up the pace!! Stack the odds in your favour and focus on things that really matter, all this talk of a downturn and recession is the best time to re-ignite the passion that is needed to make your business stronger.

Develop an action plan & this time:

Pull the trigger.

Ask yourself:

What do I need to stop doing and what do I need to start doing?

What do I need to do less of and what do I need to do more of?

And Remember this, if your not out there selling your being out sold!!!

So go get em! Absolute positivity sells absolutely anything.

The bottom line is get excited again and start;

SELLING UP IN A DOWN ECONOMY