Increase Sales Blog

Posts Tagged ‘education based marketing’

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.

What makes a great salesperson in today’s technology driven, moving at warp speed market place?  Talk to any sales coach, selling expert or training specialist and you receive various lists describing abilities,  attitudes,  characteristics, competencies, knowledge, skills and talents. Sales Training Coaching Tip:  Make sure you are not missing this in your sales training.

With that said, most people know what does not make a great salesperson.  A recent posting in a social media group revealed some telltale signs.  The discussion was around specific comments being deleted because the person writing the comment appeared to be engaged in selling from the stage so to speak and not sharing.

Two of this person’s remarks struck me.

1. “I do not have time to discuss the proper etiquette of a post.”
2. “I have to sell.”

The individual went on to  stress that the discussion he or she started was informative, but the “social media police” within this one discussion group has the last word and beware your comments might also face the same dire circumstance of being deleted.

I shared this comment with a colleague and asked her opinion. She first thought it was a joke and no one would post such a comment.  Then she realized it was not a joke.

The posting by this person suggests he or she may have some misconceptions about how to engaged in education based marketing because his or her focus was on selling. Also, as to relationship selling, this individual may be missing the mark there as well.

Relationship selling is all about building a mutual relationship and I stress mutual.  When someone announces that he or she does not have the time to talk about the rules of engagement (social media etiquette), then that person may end up adopting “I got to sell” attitude because the goal to increase sales is not being easily achieved.  Also the relationship is probably more one sided (salesperson) than mutual.

People buy from people they know and trust.  By sharing in a public discussion group that you do not have time for social etiquette because you must be selling will let people know your intentions and may also inform them that you may not be trustworthy. This places you in that rather large group of gray jackets instead of allowing you to be a Red Jacket.

P.S. Do you know your talents or strengths?  And do you know what talents are necessary to be engaged in relationship selling. Oh by the way, everyone is engaged in sales, it is just some people get paid for it while others do not.

In a previous post, Sales Skills – What Is Missing in Sales Training Coaching, the discussion focused on what is missing respective to education based marketing and relationship selling. If we looked at the basics of what are needed to be a top performer, the first bucket would be the ability to set, plan and achieve goals. Unfortunately, this one word – goal – has almost become “dirty” tainted with failed efforts and has started a negative self-fulling prophecy or belief within many salespersons.

If we look at this objectively, the first question to be raised is how many people have learned how to turn their dreams into reality? There is a presumption that this ability is learned through osmosis.  Stand next to a high achiever and magically you will become one.  Hogwash! Sales Training Coaching Tip:  Invest the time to learn a proven goal achievement process.

Beyond not understanding the overall process, many adopted the SMART goals criteria and equally as many probably failed given sales research suggests 30% to 70% of all targets are not achieved.

Years ago I realized in my sales career as an entrepreneur that the SMART goal setting criteria just were not enough.  The reason for this was so many sales targets continued to be missed.

As I pondered the reason for this performance failure, I realized the following about goals:

• They must be written down.
• They must be aligned to a plan of action.
• They must be owned by the individual.

From this Ah-Ha moment, I added the following 3 letters before the SMART criteria – WAY.  When goals are Written down, Aligned to a plan of action and Yours . Sales Training Coaching Tip: Using a proven goal achievement worksheet only strengthens this overall process.

Beyond the first 4 letter dirty word, plan is second one.  For without a plan, there is no alignment between where I am and where I want to be.  After all, the goal is just a bridge to move the person forward.

Again, being a simple salesperson, I created a one page business growth action plan that was supported by other one page action plans including sales and marketing. Note:  Given that many people would not accept nor understand a selling action plan, I have intentionally used the word sales in this instance to mean selling.

Finally,  I came to realize that these two words – do it – but when said fast sound like one word, keep so many from sales success.  Research continues to suggest that 50% of all sales leads are left hanging on the vine, just withering away.  Follow-up from business networking events to actual leads be them inbound or outbound stops after the third contact for 90% of all salespersons.

As the specific talents originating from these 4 dirty words are:

• Long range planning
• Project and goal focus
• Quality orientation
• Realistic goal setting for others
• Seeing potential problems

The challenge is most people do not know if these are their talents and how can they measure progress over a 12 month time frame. Just imagine the possibilities if you knew your talents and could work far more efficiently and effectively? This just might help you stop “confusing motion with progress and activity with results” as my colleague Doug Brown has so often said.

Of course there are more talents necessary for success when in engaged in relationship selling. In future postings these will be discussed as well as what each talent means.

Several recent posts within LinkedIn groups discussed various aspects of what makes a great sales person including:

• Sales Skills
• Cold calling mistakes
• Best selling books

A plethora of wisdom and knowledge was shared. As I reflected upon many of the responses, I realized that those engaged in selling their products or services be them small business owners, independent sales professionals, realtors, financial advisors, insurance agents, corporate salespersons to even C Suite level executives have truly failed to assess and determine what makes a top sales performer in today’s relationship selling marketplace.

Today more than ever before, to successfully be a top sales performer demands that you understand education based marketing and relationship selling within the sales process.  Sales Training Coaching Tip:  Marketing is getting attention and developing the relationship. Selling is uncovering needs, presenting the case, earning the and delivering the sale. Do not confuse these two terms because to do so will keep you from earning the sales or what some call closing the deal.

Take a moment to think what talents are necessary to be successful so that someone will trust you enough to exchange their profits (hard cold cash) or disposable income for your products or services.  From my experience, there are probably 3 general categories or what I  prefer to call buckets.

• Goal setting, planning & achievement – How well do you manage your sales actions both short and long terms?
• Sales skills – How well do you know and then leverage your talents to further achieve your goals
• Time management – How well do you utilize this limited, non-renewable resource?

Beyond the missing knowledge about talents,  another missing piece is the lack of knowledge about how we as individuals make decisions both externally and internally.  Dr. Robert Hartman did extensive work specific to this field of study (science of Axiology). Hartman supported this field of research through the creation of a mathematical assessment to further validate that people made decisions using three (3) filters:

1. Head – Systems – Thinker
2. Heart – Intrinsic – Feeler
3. Hands – Extrinsic – Doer

Additionally, he assigned biases connected to each of these filters.

By having metrics that are deductive and objective with a validity coefficient around .92 versus inductive, subjective with a validity co-efficient around .85 provides the foundation for a solid performance appraisal to that those in sales can work more efficiently (doing things right) and effectively (doing the right things). Additionally, a solid assessment instrument can help you navigate the Law of Process or what is also called Gordon’s Learning Ladder.

If you truly wish to be the Red jacket, stand out in the crowd, then invest the time to:

• Know who you are
• Choose who you want to be
• Create what you wish to become

P.S. During the next week, additional postings will further explore this topic of sales skills and what is missing in sales training coaching.

The Blogging for Business Pay What You Can Afford Workshop generated this one question from David Lindgren of Comfort Keepers of LaPorte, IN:  Where do you find the content for your 2,000 plus articles including over 1,600 at Ezine Articles and your over 120 business and sales blog posting?

Having presented at numerous conferences on my approach to education based marketing the most recent being in Spring of 2010 at Resource Associates Corporation, this is probably the most frequently asked question (FAQ). My response was simple, just observe and listen to what is happening around you, locally, regionally, nationally and internationally and you can discover a plethora of writing ideas.

For example, yesterday I posted this blog on social media after receiving an alert from Smart Brief. As noted in that posting, alerts are a great way to constantly receive ideas for new content.

One of the best ways to find ideas is to do the research regarding key words specific to your business. This will take time, but it is time well invested.

Then brain storm using those keywords to create some titles. This begins to prime your mental thought processes. Later as your brain becomes more conditioned to look for content writing opportunities you will begin to notice billboards, phrases in songs or passages in books you have read.

As you continue to write and develop a following, you can write title that have few to no keywords, but are still read.  One of my favorite titles was this one “Increase Sales Just Be Eating More Frogs”.

Also using Top Tips or a similar word is another great writing prompt to help you generate great writing content. For example:

• Top 7 Reasons Why Selling Cars in 2010 is Different than 50 to Even Just 2 Years Ago”
• Top 5 Reasons Why Sales Training Should Not Cost Space Rocket Prices
• Top 3 Changes in Business Marketing

Quality content for blogging is available for anyone.  All you must do is stop, listen and just take a few moments to think.  You will be incredibly surprised by how much you really do know.

In one of my past online business column I wrote about dishonest businesses who market web design that is search engine friendly or search engine optimization and really is just the opposite. This is truly a case of buyer beware. I would like to expand this concept in this posting.

Now let me ask you ask you a couple of questions:

• Would you buy a “proven” diet pill without any reservations from a fat person?
• Would you buy a Toyota without any reservations when the CEO of Toyota drives a German car?

Most people would answer these questions with a fairly strong NO. The probable reason why you would not buy has far less to do with the product than it has to do with the person selling the product.

People buy from people they know and trust.  When there is a disconnect between the product or service and the salesperson, this creates an objection, a very strong one.  In sales, the last thing you want are objections.

Recently I gave a presentation to a group of 8 local town, city and county governments on continuous process improvement,  customer service, productivity and performance assessments. Being fairly creative I was able to link everything together. I shared with them one way to save hundreds or even thousands of dollars with this one piece of advice. Do not send your people to a one day training event.

The reason is people remember after 2 weeks about 2% because there is no opportunity for practice and therefore memory retention. Afterwords I receive several positive comments and thank yous for this very valuable piece of information. One person expressed surprise that I was actually limiting my income because so many training professionals  deliver one day workshops.

Tomorrow, May 20, 2010 I will be testing the Proof Pudding once again through an innovative approach to public workshops with the concept of Pay What You Can Afford. This first workshop is on Internet Marketing – Increase Traffic; Increase Profits and is a direct outcome of seeing how many businesses have been taken advantage of by marketing firms who fail to deliver results specific to search engine optimization (SEO).

In future postings, I will share what I have learned from this new twist on education based marketing,  selling and sales training. My sense is if you provide value through great education that can be immediately applied and allow your customers to determine that value specific to them, you will receive more money.

Bottom line it is all about results and how do you measure the value of those results specific to your role, your business and your own value system.

Yesterday, on May 7, 2010, I achieved another written marketing goal. This goal was not on my marketing action plan for 2010, but was added in late first quarter when I saw another opportunity to receive free publicity, gain credibility while still adhering to my education based marketing approach.

If you are unfamiliar with education based marketing, this is 100% opposite of the traditional sales or product based marketing. TV commercials, radio spots, newspaper and Internet banner advertising are examples of sales or product based marketing. The product or service are highlighted first and there is little to no discussion as to how this product or service truly benefits you and YOUR SPECIFIC needs. Of course there may be some general discussion such as fuel economy if it is a car advertisement, but what is important to you or how will this truly benefit you and your needs is not identified. Sales Training Coaching Tip: At business networking events, these are the folks who spew price, product and even proposal within the first 5 minutes.

In education based marketing, your goal is to educate first and sell second. You provide information, resources and overall demonstrate you are a guru in your field of expertise. Sales Training Coaching Tip: At business networking events, these are the folks who demonstrate a real interest in you and may ask you simply “How can I help you?”

Now back to the recently achieved marketing goal. When your business is just one of millions internationally or hundreds locally, getting attention is truly difficult. Being ahead of the flow specific to your marketing and sales goals is absolutely without a doubt essential to your bottom line success. After all business is all about making money. For without money you cannot paid your bills and realize your other personal dreams.

One of my primary tactics (actions) within my marketing action plan is article marketing. This action was started in April of 2005 and now I have written over 2,000 articles between different article directory sites, this blog, my weekly business advice column and several journals including NBiz.com.

Earlier this year at one of my primary article directory sites, EzineArticles.com, I noticed a new feature that being a case study. This new feature highlighted specific authors. Wow, what an incredible opportunity my little marketing brain thought. Since this site has incredible traffic, this could only enhance current marketing efforts and best yet it was 100% free. So I wrote a goal to be a highlighted author within the first 20 case studies in late March of 2010.

Then about 3 weeks later, I received an email asking me if I would like to be one of their case studies author? You betcha was my quick response. Emails were exchanged and yesterday, May 7, 2010 I was the third case study featured. As of this morning, there were several comments in the blog. All were very positive.

The purpose of this post is to highlight the importance of written goals and thinking positively. For me when goals are written down, there is higher top of mind awareness. I believe this creates positive energy and attracts others to you. Given that Ezine at that time had over 250,000 authors, being selected as the third case study required a lot of positive energy.

If you wish to increase sales or achieve what other results you want, then write down your marketing and sales goals along with customer loyalty, innovation, financials and management and leadership. Monitor them and review then on a weekly basis. By taking this action, you can be the Red Jacket in a sea of Gray Suits.

In reading a LinkedIn Post from the Sales Training Execution Discussion Group, one of the respondents reminded me of something I had heard several years ago.  During a pep talk in a large sales meeting, the CEO of Black and Decker said something like

“Our customers don’t WANT to buy drills.  They buy because the NEED holes!”

Some call this Solution Selling others will call it just doing what a good salesperson does. To be effective using this sales process really demands a thorough understanding Education Based Marketing.

The question you as a professional salesperson need to ask is are you positioning yourself from a product perspective or a need perspective?  Then if you can go beyond the benefits and determine the additional value your solution offers, you will have a competitive advantage. Of course this begins first by educating yourself, doing your research before you can educate your potential customers (a.k.a. prospects).  Who knows you may actually Be the Red Jacket in a sea of gray suits.

A recent posting in LinkedIn asked for list the dos and do nots for using this social media website as a marketing strategy to increase sales.  So here are my top five Dos and Do Nots of which you may find one or more of interest and consequently may take action. Sales Training Coaching Tip: Not taking action is a decision and therefore is taking action.

Top 5 Do

• Do change your update at least 2 times per week, more if you have 500 plus connections.
• Do write recommendations without being asked
• Do participate in groups to share your expertise
• Do be conversational in your profile as well as in your posting
• Do include a short 60-90 second video in your profile (still working on mine

Top 5 Do Nots

• Do not reach out to people you do not know just to build your connections
• Do not use the discussion tab for self promotion (use the news tab)
• Do not disrespect others in any discussion
• Do not enhance your profile with untruths or stretching the truth
• Do not use LinkedIn with a product or sales based marketing approach instead use an education based marketing approach

Social media can be effective tool depending upon your business model B2B or B2R.  As in any marketing strategy, it should be integrated into your overall marketing action plan and then revisted on a weekly basis. In this way, you can quickly be the Red jacket in the sea of gray suits.

If you are engaged in education based marketing, you become a valuable resource allowing you eventually elevate your client level of engagement. The goal is for you to become the expert, the Einstein, the Red Jacket in the sea of gray suits.

Source: Piffe.com

Of course to do this well, you should know your target market and well as your centers of influence.

Maybe you want to work with young entrepreneurs. These are busy folks who want information in short blurbs. So why not find a list of 100 tips for Young Entrepreneurs or any one else in business?

Then maybe your ideal customers are small business owners who are also timed pressed and quickly need some tips to build customer loyalty. Then a list of how to keep customers is just what the Doctor ordered.

By just keeping your eyes and ears open you can quickly elevate your value in your potential customers (a.k.a. qualified prospects) because you willingly share timely information that helps your clients or customers from where they are now to where they want to be.