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Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

The current wildfires in Colorado within the USA are devastating everything from forests to wildlife to homes.  These uncontrolled acts of nature reminded me how uncontrolled business growth is very similar to a wildfire for these two reasons.

First, wildfires by their very essence are random.  This randomness reduces the ability to fight, control and monitor these acts of nature. Uncontrolled business growth is also difficult to work through especially if the organization is a small business and lacks the strategy,  structure, processes, incentives and people to deal with this challenge as detailed in the 5 Star Model for organizational development.

Second, because of the randomness, resources must be redirected from other critical projects.  For a business to operate a peak efficiency and effectiveness, requires proper allocation of all resources.  Unplanned growth reduces the overall operational effectiveness.

Uncontrolled by its very nature suggests the inability to manage it. When organizations face this type of business growth, this suggests that proper planning was not in place for this anticipated growth or there was a significant event beyond the forecasts within the existing strategic action plan that triggered the growth.  For example, production of the IPhones or IPads are two recent examples.

The ability to increase sales and reduce costs thereby growing the company is a good thing. However, when the growth is unplanned and affects the capacity of the business to carry out its day to day functions, this is a potential recipe for disaster. The end result may look more like the torched, blacken  ground after a wildfire instead of a thriving green forest.

To avoid this disaster requires the following:

• Vision – Where do you see your business in 3 to 5 years?
• Values – What business ethics will be demonstrated through everyone’s behaviors?
• Mission – What do we want to achieve by the end of the current financial year?
• Key Performance Indicators – What daily metrics will we use to ensure we are aware of current business activities?
• Critical Success Factors – What is necessary and sufficient to achieve our current mission
• Strategic plan – How do we coordinate the efforts between marketing, sales, customers, growth & innovation, leadership & management and financials?
• WAY SMART Goals – What specific long term, short term, tangible and intangible objectives do we need to achieve?
• Schedule – How often will we review this action plan?
• Course Corrections – How will we determine when we may need to change the plan?
• Research – What do our customers think of us?  What is happening within the marketplace?
• Assessments – How do we know we have the right people in the place? How do we know that everyone is rowing in the right direction?
• Alignment – How can we ensure that everything is working together like the gears of a clock for optimum performance?
• Communication – How do we share this information with all stakeholders?

By being proactive instead of reactive (fighting wildfires), any business can not only survive, but thrive. The challenge is investing the time to think strategically and then putting together a written plan of action with a commitment to work from that plan if you truly want to be the Red Jacket in a sea of gray suits.

To increase sales suggests you may need to stay ahead of the flow. To take this action may require you to invest some time to learning about where the flow is going.

Pew Research recently released in June of 2010 some interesting information about what Americans now view as a necessity or a luxury.  For example, 42% of Americans now view the television as a necessity.

Telephone landlines have also suffered since only 74% of American households have landlines and this is down from 97% in 2001. With cell phones and other types of mobile devices being so prevalent, some colleges and universities are removing landlines as well.

Savvy small business owners and sales professionals need to be aware of the trends in the marketplace. Then they must invest the time to think about how these trends may affect their potential customers (a.k.a. prospects) and their ability to increase sales. Ignoring the changing marketplace along with marketing  demographics and psychographics is a recipe for business disaster.

However the Internet allows for any enterprising small business owner, sales professional or even marketing consultant to continually monitor the flow through email notifications.  Several of my favorites include:

• Center for Media Post
• Google Alerts based on specific key words
• Smart Briefs

By becoming proactive and investing the time, avoiding business disaster is a little easier especially when you learn how to stay ahead of the flow.  This type of behavior will help you Be the Red jacket in the sea of gray suits.

Another cold calling marketing message (sales letter) crossed cyberspace from a social media site.  This one at least used my name which one would think is obvious. However this cold calling message still left me with a these 3 chills.

Cold Calling Chill #1 – Failure to do research about your target market and qualifying your prospect or potential customer.  From the content of this marketing message, I can honestly say the author failed to do research about me and what I do.  She was soliciting me as a potential customer to her sales training. If she had invested a few moments, just Google my name, she would have learned her business and my business ADVANCED SYSTEMS generally provide similar services. Her website which I quickly checked out suggests her sales training practice is not geared toward other sales training or sales training coaching businesses.  Sales Coaching Tip:  Return to your strategic action plan and specifically to your marketing action plan.  Work from that written plan or make any course corrections if necessary.

Cold Calling Chill #2 – Only asking closed ended questions with a presumption that Yes means I am interested. Since she failed to do her homework, even though I answered yes to her questions, I still was not interested in connecting with her.  The use of only closed ended questions is probably not the best cold calling sales letter strategy.  These type of questions fail to excite the emotional receptors.  In many cases after asking close ended questions, the internal response by the prospect is Okay, So what?  Unless you have a compelling take action and becoming a fan or following someone on Twitter or Facebook is not compelling nor very powerful,  all your marketing message will do is to chill (turn off) the prospect.

Cold Calling Chill #3 – Providing no value in her marketing message.  Asking close ended questions as well as open ended ones are a great way to attract attention. However, they must have value to the intended recipient or your target market. When there is no value, the potentially qualified prospect or customer will not take action.

If you are using social media to connect with prospects or potential customers, then remember the AIDA model for effective marketing. This simple model has been around for a long time and is an easy way to avoid some of these cold calling chills.

• A - Attract attention and that should be positive attention because you want people to engage with you through some emotion
• I – Incite interest through connecting with those emotional receptors those being the senses of seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting and feeling
• D - Develop desire by building upon those previous emotional connections because people make buying decisions first on emotion and then justified with logic
• A – Call to ACTION is required and that call must be both powerful and compelling

Social media is both a marketing platform and a message delivery vehicle. Sometimes this dual role confuses people and thus their attracting attention messages through cold calling invites (think sales letters) may chill their intended prospects.  By not making these three cold calling chill mistakes and applying the AIDA model, you can be the Red jacket, have success not to mention save yourself a lot of time because social media is truly not free.

With the expansion of the green movement, the 3 Rs of Reuse, Recycle and Reduce have become well known in the business world.  Yet, a recent marketing website that I happened upon suggested the 3Rs are happening within marketing and specifically branding. This site, 101 cliches, has identified the top 101 common graphics and accompanying text (including cliches) for those branding messages.

Cliches and analogies are the backbone of any branding efforts. Marketing firms charge big bucks to help struggling small business owners and entrepreneurs demonstrate their uniqueness through their creative efforts.  Businesses are then able to stand out or be the Red Jacket as I often call it.

However after revisiting this site, 101 Cliches, the author suggests that the 3Rs are far more prevalent than many realized in many of the so called branding and marketing campaigns. And that is not good for small businesses because they are becoming the gray suits and not the Red Jacket.

For example, the reuse of cliches and accompanying graphics are easily seen.  When these specific creative ideas catch on, then they become recycled, the second R.  Finally, through the reuse and recycling, the marketing firm or creative agency can reduce their costs and enhance their bottom line.The end result is the customer or client loses both a unique, creative,  branding message and the dollars invested.

Creativity is, I believe, a talent intelligence and can be developed by anyone. Unfortunately, some people due to negative conditioning believe that they can never be creative and thus resign themselves to the creative energy or not so creative energy of others. Additionally, small business owners believe in these marketing experts and resign themselves to listening to this sometimes very expensive advice because after all these folks know what they are doing.

When I wrote my book (be the Red Jacket in a Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales Success), the title (an analogy) is what drove the graphic. I then sent a rough and primitive sketch including colors to my marketing firm, Figment Creative Group and said “Make it pretty.” The individual responsible was able to in two efforts match his creative experience to my vision.

Creativity starts with words that convey your vision for your business or even yourself.  If you are having trouble, then possibly you may need to invest some additional time writing out (brainstorming) your vision using descriptive words. Sales Coaching Tip:  This is why having a vision statement within your strategic action plan is so critical.

Years ago when I started my business, I did have a challenge in designing the corporate logo for ADVANCED SYSTEMS.  Finally with the help of a graphic designer from Resource Associates Corporation, I was able to secure a unique logo.

The logo uses the letters of my company and the graphic in the middle represents a person in motion because what I do is to help people or organizations through change. Again,  I had a vision and the graphic person truly listened to the words within that vision.

If you are considering a marketing or branding campaign, just make sure you are receiving truly innovative results and not the tired and possibly false 3Rs of Reuse, Recycle and Reduce from creative efforts.

P.S. If a marketing firm engages in the 3Rs, what does that say about their values or business ethics?

Just having a blog and posting daily will not secure you all the Internet traffic necessary to increase sales unless you are already well known.  Web 2.0 allows you to leave comments on other sites and this is called microblogging.  There are public sites such as other blogs,  Twitter and Facebook and then not so public sites such as LinkedIn.

Currently, Twitter has an estimated 26 million monthly users (Exact Target) which means this is a smaller social media site (14.6%).  According to Facebook statistics, there are over 500 million active users with 50% of all users logged on at any one time. These numbers alone suggest microblogging is a viable and a necessary 21st century marketing activity.

To maximize your efforts requires you to be organized and disciplined. Of course if you are a single office/home office entrepreneur or even a small business owner with a 1 to 50 employees you may not be able to devote the time necessary to leverage this “free” marketing strategy. Sales Coaching Tip:  The reason free is in quotes is because it is not free since it requires time and time costs money.

Recently, I have constructed an Excel File where I have listed the various blogs I have encountered. Actually in one LinkedIn discussion group, the BLog Zone, there have been several hundred blogs listed ranging in genre from retail to self improvement to continuous process improvement to politics.  What I do is to quickly determine if this is a viable blog, and then list (each in a separate column) the:

• Date found
• Blog’s title
• URL
• Blog’s owner or author
• Main genre
• Sub top
• Alexa ranking
• Compete ranking
• Date Visited with comment
• Notes

Sales Coaching Tip:  Viable answers this question: Will this blog attract my potential target market?

When I have a few moments, I can quickly glance as to what blogs I have not recently visited.  When I visit a blog and leave a comment, all I do is change the date visited.  Since my goal is to use my time wisely, I always attempt to leave a comment unless the blog has not been recently updated.  I will make of note of this in the Note Column on the Excel file to ensure the quality use of my time.

By taking note of the Alexa.com ranking, I am looking to link to those blogs that have a better Alexa ranking. This is only a trending tool. However if I can find sites with better Alexa.com rankings than mine, this does help my overall SEO rankings.

Additionally, through my marketing calendar, I have a commitment to invest 30 minutes each day on various social media sites.  This time is usually scheduled early in the morning so that it does not interfere with actual production activities such as making calls, returning calls, face to face business event networking or emails and scheduled appointments, consulting or coaching sessions.

When real people not those self serving marketers make real and doable comments on my blog, I will immediately note their blogs within this file and travel over to their sites.  Fortunately, I have always been able to find at least one posting where I can leave a  comment. And since my overall marketing action plan is one based on educating not selling, my comments do provide possible insight and value.

Another solution is to hire someone to engage in micro-blogging. I recently executed this strategy by hiring a college person who understands the world of Web 2.0.  This can be a very affordable marketing strategy and if you have a larger marketing budget you can engage a full fledged marketing firm.

Microblogging can increase your own knowledge, bring traffic to your site, establish new relationships and increase sales. Just make sure you have defined your goals along with your target market. Revisit your marketing action  plan and make those course corrections so that you can secure a positive return on all of your investments of time, energy, money and emotions.

One of the most fatal marketing mistakes to make is to sell from the stage. Small business owners, professional salespersons, entrepreneurs to C Level executives have experienced this “faux pas” if not at least one time to dozen of times.

For example, you attend a conference or similar event and in many cases you have exchanged your profits or your disposable income with the hope or better yet the goal to walk away with:

• New way to think
• An idea to increase sales
• Strategy to improve productivity

You sit in your comfortable or maybe not so comfortable seat to listen to what you believe are some gems of wisdom to take you from where you are now to where you want to be. Suddenly your ears pick up and you hear the last thing you want to hear that dreaded sales pitch.

Sometimes this fatal marketing faux pas comes half way through the presentation or at the end. Regardless of where this appeal is made, your eyebrows and possibly even hackles have been raised. What then happens is you become suspicious of all future events even those offered by different organizations or individuals because no one wants to be sold from the stage.

Now with the expansion of social media this poisoned marketing action has now evolved to selling from the page. Read the Tweets, Facebook wall writing or LinkedIn discussion posts and instantly any small business owner, salesperson, entrepreneur or C Level executive can quickly see the plethora of selling from the page. Many of those engaged in this first phase of the sales process where they attempt to gain attention and to build the relationship just skip right over it. They immediately jump into spewing the 3Ps virus of product, price or proposal or what Jeb Blount of Sakes Gravy shares in his book People Buy You as “pump and dump.”

Individuals who do deliver such messages are engaged in the traditional sales or product based marketing instead of education based marketing.  Their goal is not to educate and create pr show value, but rather to overwhelm their potential customers (a.k.a. prospects) with what they know about their products or services.  In many cases, these salesperson disguised as marketers are truly clueless about the value their products or services deliver. Sales Coaching Tip:  Marketing is the first phase of the sales process where the goal is to have an established relationship. Selling to strangers is very difficult.

So how does one determine if someone is selling from the page or not beyond the very obvious attempts?  One way is to see if the URL within the message takes you to a squeeze page (I truly dislike that term) where you are immediately asked to buy something. This page may be a very well written and long  sales letter.

Another way to determine selling from the page is if you go to the directed URL, attempt to leave and then receive a message are you sure you want to leave?  If the words (copy) on the page truly provided value, why must there be such a message?

Many authentic salespersons who are engaged in education based marketing and truly understand the sales process will write articles, leave thoughtful words such as the quotes of others or even pose a great discussion questions. Their goal is to share and educate not to sell. By proving their expertise by not selling, they have enhanced their credibility and have begun to build that necessary relationship.

Social media may have changed the marketing platform, but this one thing does not change. People will buy from people they know and trust. If  you want to be the Red jacket, then make sure you are not selling from the page.

With the expansion of the WWW, this has increased marketing opportunities for people that may be positively or negatively received.  And it is how you deal with it will confirm you as a professional or not as one.

When noticing a negative reaction, the first action to take is to draw 3 circles that represent the 3 Spheres of Control. The innermost circle is what you can control; the next one is what you can influence and the third circle which is also the biggest one is what you cannot control. Keep this nearby because you will need to refer to it time and time again.

Action number two is to place your positive core values statement next to the diagram.  This is where you marry your business ethics (words) to your actual behaviors. Sales Training Coaching Tip:  If you do not have one, my suggestion is to create one.

The third action is to ask yourself:  Is this person part of my target market?

If yes, then determine if the negative reaction is justified and you may wish to make an outreach to this individual. Now if the answer is no, refer to the diagram you just drew along with your core values statement.

Action number four is to ask yourself:  If this person a center of influence specific to my target market?  This may require you to do some research using Google, chambers of commerce, social media sites such as LinkedIn or taking a trip to the local library and using their business index references.  Again if Yes, determine the appropriate action to take. If not, refer again to the 3 Spheres of Control and your core values statement.

Your final action is to look at your response if you determine one is required through these three filters:

• Is it kind?
• Is it truthful?
• Is it necessary?

In many cases, your response may have agreement to two of the three questions. However if you cannot secure a Yes to all three questions, then it is probably best to not send your response and ignore the negativity.

As long as you continue to abide by your positive core values and business ethics, negative comments to your marketing messages will roll off your back must like the water on a duck’s back.  Outsiders who may also be exposed will make those judgments about how you respond (again your business ethics) and remember in most cases “Silence is golden” still works even in this highly connected 21st century.

Self promotion is really tricky especially when you are engaged in education based marketing.  The purpose of marketing is fundamental (no matter the media platform) and that is to attract attention specific to your target market and to build a relationship with those potential and qualified customers (a.k.a. prospects).

There are many ways for self promotion or what some may call “tooting your own horn”  including:

• Speaking
• Article marketing
• Writing for business journals or newspapers
• Blogging
• Micro-blogging
• Direct mail
• Paid advertisements
• Business to business networking events
• Teleconferences

Simply speaking all marketing is self promotion.  The key difference is when you start to sell your products or services.  Some may refer to this as “selling from the stage” when they hear a speaker.

Unfortunately it appears with the explosion of social media as a marketing platform some believe that if you do not interact with them, then you are not social and therefore all of your marketing messages no matter the medium are all about you.  That is partially true because in marketing your messages are directed to your target market or key centers of influence.  You make those determinations through your research using the Internet and specific sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

The difference between self promotion and self serving selling is every time you post something you are trying to sell your product or service.  Providing information that is content rich is not selling however sending a direct message such as the one I described in this sales article is in my opinion totally self serving. The goal is to educate and demonstrate you are an expert in whatever industry you represent.

Of course, in some instances, you can promote others by referring to their articles or blogs (such as the case with the anchor text link to education based marketing in this posting), marking them as a favorite or even re-posting their micro-blogs as in Twitter.  This would suggest their comments have value to others and especially if those others are your target market. Again, this comes back to your  marketing action plan where you have integrated the various message delivering and receiving platforms.

Respective to marketing there still remains a significant lack of knowledge and this is especially true about self promotion.   Far too many people are engaged in spraying and praying their actions with the hope that something will stick or worse yet “Do not know what they do not know and think they know everything” as noted in Gordon’s Learning Ladder of Level I being unconsciously incompetent.

Bottom line, self promotion is part of marketing because why would you be directly promoting someone else unless you are a marketing firm hired to promote others? Why would you direct messages to people not clearly your target market? Do those actions increase sales and put dollars in your piggy bank? Of course not!

If you are not selling and are providing information that creates value to your potential target market, then you engaged in the first two steps of the sales process. Of course, there always will be those who may be offended by your efforts and  as noted marketing expert Roy B. Williams has said “If people aren’t complaining about your ads (refer to the bullets above), you must be doing something wrong.”

Technology has dramatically expanded business to business marketing through email. Now instead of typing that letter or retyping it, stuffing it into a #10 business size envelop, with a few strokes of the keyboard, any salesperson can whip off an email and send it to thousands if not millions of potential customers with the goal to increase sales.

Golly, gez whiz, this has to be the manna from heaven. Of course if it was, then FedEx, UPS and not to mention the US Postal Systems would be out of business specific to first class next day mail.

Every day it seems like (and especially since this blog debuted in February of this year) I receive an email message that uses my prime email address and then begins with some script as follows:

Hi,

We can provide you the exact Industry Lists and if you are giving the target industry details we can run a campaigns to promot your products.  (I left the incorrect spelling and grammar in place.)

Following are some of the sectors which we hand pre-package lists: –

• Aerospace & DefensePharamaceutical
• Metals & MiningMembership Organizations
• Education, Industrial Manufacturing

And possibly this mass email works, but for the savvy top performing salesperson he or she would not touch it with a 10 foot pole?  Why?  Because it is impersonal and that is the number one reason why employing this  marketing strategy fails.  This company is banking on quantity instead of quality as a demographic and desperation as a pyschographic.

People buy from people they know and trust.  When an email does not even have the person’s first name and any additional information specific to her or his needs, this type of email sales letter will always fail and will not increase sales.

Additionally given all the grammar mistakes and spelling mistakes, my confidence in the accuracy of the information that I would receive from this company is non-existent.

Finally companies that deploy these types of sales letters are engaged in product or sales based marketing. They have no authentic desire to help you. All they want to do is to infect you with the 3Ps Virus of Product, Price and Proposal. Sales Training Coaching Tip:  Education based marketing is far more effective and will increase sales.

So if you want someone to read your email, at least remember to use his or her first name.

Getting customers is the goal because with customers are the individuals who actually purchase your goods and services. Their purchases will increase sales.  This additional revenue helps your business to grow and to prosper.

In today’s marketplace, technology has become an integral part of getting customers. With the advent of Social Media due to the platform of web 2.0 marketing messages are flying fast and furious across cyberspace from TwitterFacebook to LinkedIn. Yet it appears the human element may be left somewhere in all this marketing activity.

John Jantsch in his Duct Tape Blog just recently posted an article titled Your Market is a Person. One of the key comments Jantsch made is about building a comprehensive date base about each potential customer. Years ago when sales professionals engaged in this activity IBM – It’s Better Mannually – they had detail information on each customer that they carried around usually in a very well worn black leather book.  This information went beyond the basic contact information and include personal information from children’s birthdays to recent personal achievements.

Getting customers begins and ends with the human element. With 80% of all sales happening between the 5th and 12th contacts according to the National Sales Executives Association, a top sales performer can certainly secure quite a bit of information between all those open ended questions especially when the focus is on building the relationship.  Technology can enhance the goal to increase sales or even interfere with it.  If you wish to Be the Red Jacket (the person seen first on the street corner), then remember the human element because people buy from people they know and trust.