sales - Pivotal

Keep Your Marketing Simple and More Effective With This 6-Step Model

Whether you are a professional in a solo-practice or own a small business, chances are you feel overwhelmed when it comes to marketing. While you may be an expert in your field, consistently attracting new clients probably isn’t one of your strengths.

Here is just a short list of "marketing culprits" that are likely keeping your business from reaching its full potential:

Unclear Target Market. It absolutely makes my marketing blood boil when I hear "our service can help everyone". How on Earth do you find everyone?
Confusing, Self-Centered Marketing Message. Since the early 1900 marketing geniuses like Claude Hopkins have been telling us that shouting "we are the best, come buy from us" doesn't work - no matter how loud you scream! Amazingly, over 90% of all marketing materials out there are doing exactly that!
'Hop-And-Drop' Approach. Any worthwhile skill takes practice. Yet most small business owners abandon each marketing tactic after just one try, without giving themselves a chance to get good at it. It's like a running rabbit - switching direction with every hop!
On and off approach. Spending a lot of time and effort on marketing when the business is slow, but then giving up on almost all promotional activities when business gains momentum!
Not Preaching To The Choir. Most businesses make the mistake of chasing new markets all the time instead of maximizing profits using their existing database of current and prospective clients.

If you can put a "yes, guilty as charged" checkmark next to any of those statements, chances are you are not profiting from your business as much as you could. To help unleash the extra profits currently hidden in your business or practice here is a simple Five Step Marketing Model.

Create a MAP!

You don’t need to kill a tree to create an effective Marketing Action Plan. Simply describe your target market, their problem, and the benefits your service or product offers. Identify five to ten ways in which you can get visibility and generate new leads. Finally, list all the action steps you need to take daily, weekly and monthly and assign specific deadlines and outcomes to each step.

Craft Your Magnetic Marketing Message!

Potential clients don't give a hoot about your titles, awards, and prestigious office location! All they want to know is that you understand their problem and have an effective solution to it. Communicate those two things clearly and new clients will flock to you like bees to honey!

Develop Attraction Tools!

Forget about the self-focused brochures! You need promotional materials that intrigue interest and generate response. Today’s technology allows to easily and inexpensively assemble and distribute information products - like special reports or CDs - that illustrate your capabilities and effortlessly promote your services.

Generate Leads. Getting all the visibility in the world will not do any good if you are not giving your potential client an irresistible reason to contact you. Try and test several marketing messages and media to see what promotional strategies bring in the biggest bang for the buck.

The key here is testing - tweak your approach multiple times before you decide to completely abandon it. What might have been a big flop at first, with a bit of tweaking can turn into a total goldmine!

Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up!

Studies show that over 80% of all sales are made on or after five contacts with the prospect. However, more than 80% of follow-up ends after just three attempts! Creating and automating a systematic follow-up process is a must to maximizing your marketing ROI.

Develop a series of 12 to 24 meaningful communications each addressing something of relevance to your prospects and find a way to periodically distribute them to prospects and clients.

Learn To Sell!

The thought of selling causes most professionals to cringe. Fact is, effective selling is not about memorizing hundreds of closings tactics or becoming an attack dog that corners prospects into saying “yes”. Instead, study a consultative approach model and become a master of asking powerful questions that compel others to action!

Author: Adam Urbanski the Marketing Mentor

Business, Story, videos

Video: Similar Story Telling

three simple, yet very powerful ways to use similar story.

Good Girls Do Sell: The Modern Businesswoman’s Guide to Authentic Selling

The fact is…women account for the majority of the newly self-employed and whether you think so or not, you need to become the sales person in your business when you decide to go it alone.

If you feel challenged by the thought of doing this, then Good Girls do Sell will provide you with the methods to overcome your selling reluctance.

This book is invaluable for all the entrepreneurs who desire the success and want the know-how to build their business using authentic selling techniques.

Find out why…

• Sales scripts aren’t authentic and don’t work

• Customers who get what they want are willing to pay more

• Your perception will influence the entire sales process

Imagine how empowered you’ll feel when you are confident and brave in every sales exchange.

By following the steps in this book, you will find out how.

About the Author: Pivotal Business Member: Janeen Vosper

She has the runs on the board and knows the processes described in Good Girls do Sell work. Having coached high performing, commissioned-based sales teams, Janeen knows exactly what it takes to inspire top results. She was instrumental in the expansion of a multi-million dollar business by applying the authentic selling techniques you will read about in this book.

The book is available from Amazon

Books, videos

You can have everything in life you want if …

Using Pain and Pleasure to Win the Sale

Traditional sales training teaches that the sales process starts with needs. Find out what your prospects need and then give it to them. The trouble is that it isn’t strictly true. Your customers are not motivated to buy what they need. Your customers are motivated to buy what they want. >>> read more

Business, products, Sales, Success

Creating Add-On Options to Explode Your Income During Tough Times

with Warren Evans, CSP and Kit Grant, CSP

You’re most likely leaving money on the table in most of your engagements. By building in non-standard services, you can increase each client’s bill significantly, while adding tremendous value. Discover additional revenue sources from each engagement and expand your possibilities with tools and tips that positively impact your relationship with the client. Differentiate yourself in the marketplace by altering your perceptions of that relationship and taking action on steps that others may not be aware of.
You will learn:
• how successful speakers add value and revenue from the first conversation
• some common missteps that are costing you money
• keys to dramatically increasing repeat and referral business
• how to use your on-stage performance as a key marketing tool

Click here for all the details ...
________________________________________

Special Limited-Time Offer:
If you want more information on other ways to expand your business, we’re suggesting the MP3 recordings of several earlier programs to complement this program:
• “Establish Client MasterMind Groups for Ongoing, Significant Income and Results” with Steve Miller
• “Subscription Products: Getting Customers to Pay You Again and Again (and Again)” with Ron Rosenberg
With your order of this teleseminar, CD or MP3, at checkout you will be offered these recordings.

Business, Sales

Connecting with and selling to power buyers

Connecting with and Selling to
Power Buyers
with Josiane Chriqui Feigon

Josiane Feigon

You’ve increased your prospecting and marketing efforts but now realize you have invested too much time aligning with the wrong people. In today’s unpredictable economic landscape, it’s not unusual to spend time with buyers who have no power and no potential, yet make you believe they can actually do something.

There is business out there, you just have to work smarter to uncover it and get to the decision makers — the Power Buyers. It is harder than ever, but when you learn the right techniques, you’ll get more business. This session helps you focus on the Power Buyer: how to recognize them, what to say to them and if you really deserve to speak with them.

You’ll learn how to:

find the Power Buyers — how to recognize verbal and visual Power Buyer signs and what are common characteristics of people with high influence.
engage with Power Buyers — when you finally get to the Power Buyer, what do you say and how do you align and package your offerings with high value that creates curiosity and intrigue?
move out of the “No-Po Zone” — don’t get fooled into believing the ones with No Power and No Potential will actually do anything. Stop listening with your Happy Ears.
understand Power Buyer objections — you’ve been hit with a tidal wave of objections, but do you believe them all and where are they coming from?
determine if you are Power Buyer Worthy — do you have the self-confidence, knowledge and courage to believe you have something important to say?

Details:

Register for the 13th October or order the CD or MP3 recording. Note: Everyone who registers for the teleseminar will get the MP3 recording of the session for free.

Business

Be Prepared! … from the Little Red Book of Selling

What do you need to know about the prospect’s business to engage?

I mean if you just walk in the door and say, “Tell me a little bit about your business,” how unprepared does that make you look?

Answer: TOTALLY UNPREPARED.

Prepared is going to their website and printing out several strategic pages, reading them, and making notes so you can ask about what you don’t understand, or need elaboration on—not asking about them from TOTAL IGNORANCE.

NOTE: Just so we understand each other, “Tell me a little about your business,” is the third dumbest thing you can say to or ask a prospect. The second is “Let me tell you a little about my business.”

The prospect couldn’t CARE LESS about you or your business, and probably already knows enough to not want to hear it again. The first most dumbest? I’ll tell you later. Let’s talk about where to find out information about a prospect and his or her business before your sales call.

1. The Internet. Don’t just look up their site. Enter their company name on Google or other search engines like dogpile.com and see what pops up. There may be an article or other important information. Then enter the name of the person you’re meeting with. Then enter the name of the CEO. Then tell me why you’re not meeting with the CEO. (Just a little jab there.) By the way, if you look up the name of the person you’re meeting with and you find nothing, that also tells you something.

2. Their literature. Even though it’s we-we, it has the basic “brags” covered and may talk about shifts in emphasis and market coverage. It also tells you what they think of themselves and their products.

3. Their vendors. Usually reluctant talkers, but they can tell you what it’s like to do business with them and all about how you are going to be paid—valuable information to say the least. Vendors are a rarely used resource.

4. Their competition. Oh man, talk about dirt, here it is. Just ask casual questions about how they win business—it will tell you what it will be like to negotiate with them. By the way, the more their competition hates them, the better they usually are. Competitors hate the people who take business away from them.

5. Their customers. Customers talk. And they are the real word on delivery, organization, quality, and the subtle information that can give you an insightful competitive advantage.

6. People in your network who may know them. A quick e-mail to your inside group asking for information will always net a fact or two and may just be the bonanza you were looking for.

7. Their other employees. Occasionally the admin will help, but don’t count on it. A better bet is their PR department or their marketing department.

8. The best and least used resource: Their sales department. Salespeople will tell you anything. You can get details you won’t believe.

8.5 Google yourself. Want some pain? Look up your own name. Where are you? What’s your Internet position? Suppose they are looking you up. What will they find? If it’s nothing, that’s a report card on you.

And it’s not just Internet preparation. It’s other research, such as finding mutual friends, calling a few vendors, maybe a few customers. Getting VITAL information as it relates to the buying of your product or service. There’s one more thing in preparation: Be prepared with an objective or two about what you want to accomplish in the meeting.

Proper preparation takes time, but I assure you it’s impressive to the prospect. He or she knows that you have prepared, and is silently impressed. It’s an advantage that very few salespeople use. They make the fatal error of getting all their own stuff ready. PowerPoint slides, samples, literature, business cards—you know, all the same things the competition is doing. Biggest mistake in sales. And almost every salesperson makes it.

And it’s not only preparation about the sale—it’s your personal preparation for sales—your personal training. How ready are you? Get ready baby. Turn off the TV and get ready.

—Jeffrey Gitomer
Click on this title to Buy the Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness

Business

Three Ways Employee Mentoring Pays Off

Chutzpah 101: How to Approach Top Dogs to Sell Speeches, Sponsorships, and Products

with Ron Karr, CSP
What if you knew how to get the attention of top decision makers? How to entice them to engage in conversation, then engage your services? Would your life — and bank account — be different if you could speak directly to those who hold the purse strings, versus going through lower-level gatekeepers?

Ron is an über-salesman. He knows how to get to decision makers through strategy, courage, persistence, creativity — and chutzpah! He’ll share techniques he’s used to get to Steve Forbes, Cathie Black (CEO of Hearst Publications), Tim Ferriss (bestselling author of The Four-Hour Work Week) and many more. He’ll discuss how to adapt what he’s done so you can apply it to your situations.

You will learn:

how to avoid the most common mistake that prevents speakers from reaching their targets
the proper etiquette for networking power brokers
the key to leveraging relationships
how to create an enticing value proposition for each top dog
how you can generate so much conviction that you can’t not make the call — you have absolute belief you can help him/her
how how to uncover your prospect’s hot buttons and wrap your offer around those
the best ways to get through to the top decision makers

Get it all here

Tag Archive for: sales