Professional Qualified Sales Experts present products and services, calling on companies using our proven door to door Marketing agency , door-to-door sales technique and door to door Marketing agency in mumbai.
We convert potential customers to sustainable clients in the shortest space of time( door to door sales, door to door Marketing agency ). Our professional teams interact with customers, educating them on our clients’ products/services, as well as generating immediate sales or leads with interested customers.
Marketing and advertising budgets have come under increasing pressure. door to door Marketing agency and Door-to-door sales is a low cost distribution channel, and is an effective way to gain more return on investment. It secures increased value with minimum spend, allowing access to a customer base which is not always reached by existing marketing strategies.
Through Door to Door sales,customers can choose the most suitable deals, especially because they have a chance to ask questions and have the offering clarified by our qualified sales experts in mumbai
We believe our experience, our sales ability and the detailed processes we have in place ensure we successfully launch new products to the market. Our sector experience and data insights ensure we are calling on the right outlets to maximise return on investment during the critical launch phase.
We have proven experience in launching challenger brands to the market along with well-established range extensions and completely new products.
We believe Fulcrum is the door-to-door-sales agency in pune best suited to owning the responsibility of launching your new product – why not give us a call to find out if we can help you?
I did door-to-door sales for nine years, in hundreds of different cities and towns all across the india. Through long, hard, agonizing trial and error, I eventually developed enough skill that I could take any product into any area on any day and make sales.
In the beginning, I struggled. But when I was about to give up on myself and quit (like 99.9% of people that try door-to-door sales do within their first few days), experienced salesperson to give me a chance to get on track.
What I saw that day changed my life forever.
I watched as the experienced salesperson drove to an area where he had previous sales success, and listened as he explained to me why he parked his car in the exact spot he did to start his day and laid out his exact plan of attack. Within the first 10 minutes, I learned a valuable lesson that not only made my door-to-door sales career much easier, but has also been the key to bringing in millions of dollars in revenue for my own companies, and those of thousands of others I’ve consulted to:
A current customer is the easiest person to make a sale to – many, many times easier (and less expensive) than trying to get new customers.
Most business owners operate a risky, day-to-day, transactional business, believing that the reason for getting a customer is to make a sale. That’s their biggest problem: making nothing more than “a” sale to a customer. After that initial transaction, they simply hope that their product or service or location is good enough that they will get a repeat visit from that customer.
On the other hand, sharp business owners (and door-to-door salespeople!) know that the point to making a sale is to get a customer. We have systems put together to maximize the value of that customer by making future offers to them, so that they buy more of the same product or service, or a different version, or even an entirely different product or service.
In other words, we recognize that a current customer is the easiest person to sell to, and a prospect is the hardest and most-expensive person to sell to. Therefore, we concentrate on maximizing the value of every new customer we get.
If you want to grow your business during these challenging economic times (and even during boom times), your time and effort should be invested in working to turn prospects into customers and retain them to market to in the future. While your marketing is doing its job to get you prospects, you need to be working on turning those prospects into customers. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be:
Inviting Informative Enjoyable
The biggest fear of most new customers is the dreaded “buyer’s remorse.” You want to minimize this as best you can, and if you’ve provided a quality product or service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made, the risk will be lower.
However, returns can still occur. Here are the two most effective ways to deal with this:
Offer to refund money — no questions asked Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product
These offers alone will also lessen the impact of buyer’s remorse, because the customer will trust you more just because you showed the confidence in your product or service to offer these options in the first place.
There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:
Offer a special price as an opportunity for them to test the market. Offer a lower price with a legitimate reason, such as clearing out inventory to pay a tax bill, for your kid’s braces, or another tangible reason. (Added bonus: Customers love you for doing this, because it makes you so much more human to them.) Offer a referral incentive. Offer a smaller, less expensive entry-level product to build trust. Offer package deals. Offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer. Offer extra incentives, such as longer warranties or free bonuses, if they order by a certain date. Offer financing options, if applicable. Offer a bonus if they pay in full. Offer special packaging or delivery. Offer “name-your-own-price” incentives. Offer comparative data or other comparison tools. Offer to let them trade up or upgrade to something better if they want. Offer additional, educational information to help them make the decision.
The options are really only limited by your imagination and marketing skill. You can use these or other ideas to discover what works the best for your specific business, with your specific products, services and target market.
Even if you ever find yourself doing door-to-door sales.
Marketing business in Budhwar Peth
How to Balance Finance and Creatives to Create the Perfect Sales Promotion
Obedience and discipline without this nothing fruitful can happen because everything disintegrates. And yet without the magnanimity of disorder, the happy abandon, the entrepreneurship venturing into the unknown and incalculable, without the risk and the gamble, the creative imagination rushing in where bureaucratic angels fear to tread without this, life is a mockery and a disgrace. Jeremy Bullmore
Some are here for order, some want to disrupt that order, Fixed Fee Sales Promotion permits both in a perfectly balanced concoction.
Whilst both intentions are absolutely essential for success, its often creatives that are made to relinquish their right to escape the confines of an arbitrary reality.
Fixed Fee sales promotion removes these limitations, and returns their creative freedom.
The service creates a perfectly intertwined reality based on imagination and feasibility, creating free-flowing functionality between both finance and marketing.
Time and Motion Man
Time and Motion Man meticulously analyses the current and past, to best demystify the window that peers into the future.
In the instance of sales promotion, the analysis of past promotions is crucial for measuring how future sales promotions could perform. Likewise, the risk manager can lay a path to deliver success and permit creativity, within a fixed budget.
Time and Motion Man will extrapolate all costs through the past and utilise any existing intelligence, then fix the cost, placing a cushion of security on promotion.
The Mad Inventor
The Mad Inventor can then put Time and Motion Man to one side, and use the data provided, to begin to construct their catapult, ready to expel the empowered promotion. All this, with the comfort of knowing wherever the prizes land, the cost is covered.
Utilising data, comparisons and expertise enable the promotion to flourish from unhindered creativity.
As a result, the Mad Inventor spread their promotion nationwide. Thus, filling the catapult with more prizes, and pulling the jaws of the catapult further to allow them to give more prizes to more people.
A victory for both parties, a perfect partnership of creativity, feasibility, and logic to create a powerful promotion primed to deliver results.
Professional Qualified Sales Experts present products and services, calling on companies using our proven door to door Marketing agencies , door-to-door sales technique and door to door Marketing agencies in mumbai.
We convert potential customers to sustainable clients in the shortest space of time( door to door sales, door to door Marketing agencies ). Our professional teams interact with customers, educating them on our clients’ products/services, as well as generating immediate sales or leads with interested customers.
Marketing and advertising budgets have come under increasing pressure. door to door Marketing agencies and Door-to-door sales is a low cost distribution channel, and is an effective way to gain more return on investment. It secures increased value with minimum spend, allowing access to a customer base which is not always reached by existing marketing strategies.
Through Door to Door sales,customers can choose the most suitable deals, especially because they have a chance to ask questions and have the offering clarified by our qualified sales experts in mumbai
We believe our experience, our sales ability and the detailed processes we have in place ensure we successfully launch new products to the market. Our sector experience and data insights ensure we are calling on the right outlets to maximise return on investment during the critical launch phase.
We have proven experience in launching challenger brands to the market along with well-established range extensions and completely new products.
We believe Fulcrum is the door-to-door-sales agency in pune best suited to owning the responsibility of launching your new product – why not give us a call to find out if we can help you?
I did door-to-door sales for nine years, in hundreds of different cities and towns all across the india. Through long, hard, agonizing trial and error, I eventually developed enough skill that I could take any product into any area on any day and make sales.
In the beginning, I struggled. But when I was about to give up on myself and quit (like 99.9% of people that try door-to-door sales do within their first few days), experienced salesperson to give me a chance to get on track.
What I saw that day changed my life forever.
I watched as the experienced salesperson drove to an area where he had previous sales success, and listened as he explained to me why he parked his car in the exact spot he did to start his day and laid out his exact plan of attack. Within the first 10 minutes, I learned a valuable lesson that not only made my door-to-door sales career much easier, but has also been the key to bringing in millions of dollars in revenue for my own companies, and those of thousands of others I’ve consulted to:
A current customer is the easiest person to make a sale to – many, many times easier (and less expensive) than trying to get new customers.
Most business owners operate a risky, day-to-day, transactional business, believing that the reason for getting a customer is to make a sale. That’s their biggest problem: making nothing more than “a” sale to a customer. After that initial transaction, they simply hope that their product or service or location is good enough that they will get a repeat visit from that customer.
On the other hand, sharp business owners (and door-to-door salespeople!) know that the point to making a sale is to get a customer. We have systems put together to maximize the value of that customer by making future offers to them, so that they buy more of the same product or service, or a different version, or even an entirely different product or service.
In other words, we recognize that a current customer is the easiest person to sell to, and a prospect is the hardest and most-expensive person to sell to. Therefore, we concentrate on maximizing the value of every new customer we get.
If you want to grow your business during these challenging economic times (and even during boom times), your time and effort should be invested in working to turn prospects into customers and retain them to market to in the future. While your marketing is doing its job to get you prospects, you need to be working on turning those prospects into customers. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be:
Inviting Informative Enjoyable
The biggest fear of most new customers is the dreaded “buyer’s remorse.” You want to minimize this as best you can, and if you’ve provided a quality product or service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made, the risk will be lower.
However, returns can still occur. Here are the two most effective ways to deal with this:
Offer to refund money — no questions asked Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product
These offers alone will also lessen the impact of buyer’s remorse, because the customer will trust you more just because you showed the confidence in your product or service to offer these options in the first place.
There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:
Offer a special price as an opportunity for them to test the market. Offer a lower price with a legitimate reason, such as clearing out inventory to pay a tax bill, for your kid’s braces, or another tangible reason. (Added bonus: Customers love you for doing this, because it makes you so much more human to them.) Offer a referral incentive. Offer a smaller, less expensive entry-level product to build trust. Offer package deals. Offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer. Offer extra incentives, such as longer warranties or free bonuses, if they order by a certain date. Offer financing options, if applicable. Offer a bonus if they pay in full. Offer special packaging or delivery. Offer “name-your-own-price” incentives. Offer comparative data or other comparison tools. Offer to let them trade up or upgrade to something better if they want. Offer additional, educational information to help them make the decision.
The options are really only limited by your imagination and marketing skill. You can use these or other ideas to discover what works the best for your specific business, with your specific products, services and target market.
Even if you ever find yourself doing door-to-door sales.
Marketing business in Hadapsar
8 Benefits of Sales Promotion
8 Benefits of Sales Promotion
A successful promotion has the ability to nurture relationships with consumers through retention and engagement. Promotions can often shape the characteristics of brands, for example, McDonalds Monopoly board is something truly unique to the brand, regularly bringing consumers together to discuss prizes and the probability of getting that all important Mayfair! This article will underpin the key benefits of sales promotion, and what it can create for your brand.
Sales promotion benefits
Creates differentiation
The word brand was initially coined in farming as a way to differentiate cattle. A brand needs to be different to survive, a sales promotion can be an exemplary way to make a brand stand out from the crowd. It holds the potential to add unique value to a customer through a competition or unique experience, creating a reason to choose your product in a crowded market.
Again, take the McDonalds Monopoly, for instance, consumers walking in and peeling off stickers with hope and eager anticipation that they may just have a winner. This often results in a free apple pie but creates that true brand experience which is different to Burget King or KFC.
Creates communication opportunity
Communication is an art, an art which creates formidable relationships with consumers that make your brand unique. A sales promotion allows brands to communicate on packaging and enables them to focus campaigns around an event.
Sales Promotion Advantages
Creates word of mouth
A brand is not the only one who can communicate a sales promotion! Word of mouth is one of the most positive forms of communication, especially if it is coming from a friend or colleague as they are usually a trusted and reliable source! Give your consumers a reason to be surprised and they will pass on the feeling of goodwill.
Creates a platform to cross-sell and upsell
If a promotion is based around giving money off a next order or something in a similar vein, then it can hold valuable opportunity to get sales around another product.
Sales Promotion creates cross selling
Creates a reason to buy
All the points above drive sales and make customers decision-making much simpler if a brand is offering a similar product but something additional, then the consumer will often select that product and get more for their money!
Sales Promotion Increase sales
Creates a focused marketing approach
A sales promotion often becomes an event for the firm and then allows a company to focus all its channels of marketing. A focused approach can force a brand to change the way they market themselves thus creating brand identity through those changes.
Creates greater revenue
Put simply, more sales from your promotion will create higher revenue. However, brands need to always calculate their costs and ensure they are aware of how many people may redeem the promotion and ensure that it is a profitable endeavour.
Sales promotion creates greater revenue
Creates a source of information
When customers attempt to redeem brands can often retrieve data such as email addresses and their home address. This creates the opportunity to target a customer through segmentation, you can then use direct mail or email campaigns to create personalised marketing.
Data opportunies with sales promotion
Sales promotions are indeed beneficial for driving revenue, creating brand identity and allowing brands to acquire new customers! For more advice on sales promotion management visit the Mandos promotional risk management page.
Professional Qualified Sales Experts present products and services, calling on companies using our proven door to door Marketing agency , door-to-door sales technique and door to door Marketing agency in mumbai.
We convert potential customers to sustainable clients in the shortest space of time( door to door sales, door to door Marketing agency ). Our professional teams interact with customers, educating them on our clients’ products/services, as well as generating immediate sales or leads with interested customers.
Marketing and advertising budgets have come under increasing pressure. door to door Marketing agency and Door-to-door sales is a low cost distribution channel, and is an effective way to gain more return on investment. It secures increased value with minimum spend, allowing access to a customer base which is not always reached by existing marketing strategies.
Through Door to Door sales,customers can choose the most suitable deals, especially because they have a chance to ask questions and have the offering clarified by our qualified sales experts in mumbai
We believe our experience, our sales ability and the detailed processes we have in place ensure we successfully launch new products to the market. Our sector experience and data insights ensure we are calling on the right outlets to maximise return on investment during the critical launch phase.
We have proven experience in launching challenger brands to the market along with well-established range extensions and completely new products.
We believe Fulcrum is the door-to-door-sales agency in pune best suited to owning the responsibility of launching your new product – why not give us a call to find out if we can help you?
I did door-to-door sales for nine years, in hundreds of different cities and towns all across the india. Through long, hard, agonizing trial and error, I eventually developed enough skill that I could take any product into any area on any day and make sales.
In the beginning, I struggled. But when I was about to give up on myself and quit (like 99.9% of people that try door-to-door sales do within their first few days), experienced salesperson to give me a chance to get on track.
What I saw that day changed my life forever.
I watched as the experienced salesperson drove to an area where he had previous sales success, and listened as he explained to me why he parked his car in the exact spot he did to start his day and laid out his exact plan of attack. Within the first 10 minutes, I learned a valuable lesson that not only made my door-to-door sales career much easier, but has also been the key to bringing in millions of dollars in revenue for my own companies, and those of thousands of others I’ve consulted to:
A current customer is the easiest person to make a sale to – many, many times easier (and less expensive) than trying to get new customers.
Most business owners operate a risky, day-to-day, transactional business, believing that the reason for getting a customer is to make a sale. That’s their biggest problem: making nothing more than “a” sale to a customer. After that initial transaction, they simply hope that their product or service or location is good enough that they will get a repeat visit from that customer.
On the other hand, sharp business owners (and door-to-door salespeople!) know that the point to making a sale is to get a customer. We have systems put together to maximize the value of that customer by making future offers to them, so that they buy more of the same product or service, or a different version, or even an entirely different product or service.
In other words, we recognize that a current customer is the easiest person to sell to, and a prospect is the hardest and most-expensive person to sell to. Therefore, we concentrate on maximizing the value of every new customer we get.
If you want to grow your business during these challenging economic times (and even during boom times), your time and effort should be invested in working to turn prospects into customers and retain them to market to in the future. While your marketing is doing its job to get you prospects, you need to be working on turning those prospects into customers. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be:
Inviting Informative Enjoyable
The biggest fear of most new customers is the dreaded “buyer’s remorse.” You want to minimize this as best you can, and if you’ve provided a quality product or service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made, the risk will be lower.
However, returns can still occur. Here are the two most effective ways to deal with this:
Offer to refund money — no questions asked Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product
These offers alone will also lessen the impact of buyer’s remorse, because the customer will trust you more just because you showed the confidence in your product or service to offer these options in the first place.
There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:
Offer a special price as an opportunity for them to test the market. Offer a lower price with a legitimate reason, such as clearing out inventory to pay a tax bill, for your kid’s braces, or another tangible reason. (Added bonus: Customers love you for doing this, because it makes you so much more human to them.) Offer a referral incentive. Offer a smaller, less expensive entry-level product to build trust. Offer package deals. Offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer. Offer extra incentives, such as longer warranties or free bonuses, if they order by a certain date. Offer financing options, if applicable. Offer a bonus if they pay in full. Offer special packaging or delivery. Offer “name-your-own-price” incentives. Offer comparative data or other comparison tools. Offer to let them trade up or upgrade to something better if they want. Offer additional, educational information to help them make the decision.
The options are really only limited by your imagination and marketing skill. You can use these or other ideas to discover what works the best for your specific business, with your specific products, services and target market.
Even if you ever find yourself doing door-to-door sales.
Marketing company in Narayan Peth
The Media and Ethics
The previous article in this series looked at how the media is an important pillar of democracy and how unless there is a free and fair media, democracies cannot be well functioning ones. This article looks at the other side and that is the practice of ethics by the media itself. In a way, this article sheds light on the media, which is the other way round to what the media does i.e. shedding light on the other organs of democracy. At the outset, it must be mentioned that though the media largely observe restraint, there are instances where the media fail to do what they preach to others. That is the very conception of ethical behavior that the media demands is sometimes overlooked by the media houses. For instance, in recent years, there have been several scandals over the way in which mediapersons have engaged the other sectors in ways that can be called unethical.
Some of these instances relate to the Newscorp scandal that brought to light the collusion of the media house with investigative agencies so that the Newscorp papers get the scoops as well as engage in phone hacking and other unethical methods.
Elsewhere in the United States, we have had serious charges being brought against several media houses like the New York Times about the way in which they cover news. Closer home, in India, we have had leading industrialists accusing prominent media houses of extortion so that certain news items and reports would not be published. All these instances point to the fact that the media or the fourth estate that was preeminent and beyond reproach in earlier decades is falling prey to the same unethical instincts that the rest of the corporate world is mired in.
The point here is that once the media is corrupted, there is nobody to point out the several wrongdoings in democracies, and hence, it is by far the most important point that media in a democracy ought not to be corrupted. In addition, when the collusion with the government happens, it is more the case for concern. For instance, in India, the Nira Radia tapes exposed the unholy nexus of media collusion with the government and this was seen by many as an indictment of the media. Similarly, in the UK, journalists were questioned about their activities that included bribing senior members of the government to access juicy stories that were exclusive to their papers and television channels.
The latest instance concerns the venerable BBC or the British Broadcasting Corporation that until now was thought to the paragon of virtue. However, in recent weeks, it has become known that the BBC had covered up several stories that exposed the powers that be in the UK. All these instances are regrettable and point to the unholy nexus between the media and the politicians that is not healthy for democracy. Further, the nexus between the media and the powers that be often leads to the average person getting cheated.
Finally, while it is not the intention here to proclaim that mediapersons and the objects of their attention cannot form friendships or exchange favors. It is just that this cozy relationship ought to be restrained and cannot cross the threshold of the media acting in the interest of the powers that be instead of in the interests of democracy.
Outsource Our Sales Hiring Process?? We’d Never Consider It!
Outsourcing your Screening, Hiring and Onboarding processes to a company that has accumulated many years of strategic hiring in this area has many benefits that result in a lessened amount of ‘risk’ and costs.
Companies who do are experiencing high churn rates, or only hire infrequently, are at risk of costly Sales Hiring cycles and should consider the following tasks that need to be included in a successful Hiring Process:
Being able to understand and clearly articulate the deliverables of the role you are hiring for (i.e. net new business acquisition, existing customer management, etc.), and from that developing an accurate and realistic job description, not a ‘wish list’.
Assigning a key contact, preferably in Sales themselves (not HR) to act as the primary and principal ‘screener’. This seems to be done mostly these days by identifying key words in an Applicant Tracking System, which does not reflect or capture any ‘subtleties’ of that person’s skills, just that they used a lot of key words in their resume.
This approach though is slowly going by the wayside as employers are realizing that there must be a ‘human’ intervention / investment made at this stage to not let a good candidate slip through their fingers, and perhaps to a competitor. But this takes time that many of those on the Sales Management team just don’t have.
Once properly screened by someone either in Sales and / or possessing a very good understanding of the skills required for the role, interviewing can begin. However again, at this stage for the best results, interviews need to be conducted by those with a Sales background, not HR. More often than not, it takes a Hunter to know a Hunter, as is said.
More detailed expectations of the role should absolutely be shared at this time with the candidate, as well as discussions of what your culture is like, what to expect working for your Organization in Sales, and perhaps even meetings with current Sales People can be arranged to allow the candidate to speak with some of his / her future colleagues.
Vetting / Reference Checking of the final candidates. This step could be managed by HR now, provided they are given in writing what questions to ask from the person to whom the candidate will be reporting to.
Final Negotiations on salary, start date, onboarding details should also be discussed with their Direct Report so proper expectations are set.
Five Selling Techniques That Really Work And Five That Dont
The Best Sales Techniques And Some Of The Least Effective
Who couldnt use an arsenal of effective selling techniques? But there is a lot of conventional wisdom out there that, in reality, doesnt help you make the sale. Here are five of the best sales techniques that really work, as well as five classic go-to selling techniques that may, in fact, be hurting your sales efforts.
Selling Techniques that Work
1. Challenging the Status Quo
Most salespeople see the sales process as a linear process. At some point, it has an end the prospect will choose either you or your competitor. The truth is that those are not the only two end points. Theres another option no decision which is chosen all too often. Studies show that 20 to 60 percent of deals in the pipeline are lost to no decision rather than to competitors. Its only by challenging the status quo that you can get your prospects to see that change i.e., adopting your solution is necessary.
2. Finding Your Value Wedge
How much overlap is there between what you can provide to your prospects and what your competition can provide? Most B2B salespeople admit that overlap is 70 percent or higher. So rather than focusing on that parity area, you should focus on what you can do for the customer that is different from what the competition can do this is your value wedge. Your value wedge must be unique to you, important to the customer, and defensible.
Learn more about how to define your value proposition.
3. Telling Stories with Contrast
Messaging is about telling your companys story in a way that attracts prospects to your doors and turns them into customers. The challenge is that, if youre like most companies, you tell your story in a way that doesnt differentiate you much, if at all. But to create a powerful perception of value, you need to tell both the before story and the after story you need to tell customer stories with contrast. When you tell customer stories, dont be afraid to link data with emotion. Often the best way to do that is to talk about the people who were affected by the challenging environment they were working in. Then talk about how their lives became better, easier, more fun, or less stressful after using your solution.
4. Making the Customer the Hero
Every story has a hero. Who is the hero of your story? Is it your company and/or solution? If the answer is yes, then you need to rework your story and make the customer the hero. The customer is the one who needs to save the day, not you. Your role is that of the mentor. You are there to help your customers see what has changed in their world and how they can adapt and better survive and thrive.
5. Using 3D Props
There are many ways to tell a story. But one extremely effective and underutilized technique is to use 3D props. Props break the pattern of whats expected and can make the prospect sit up and pay attention. Props make a metaphor or analogy tangible. Props create a physical reminder and can continue selling even when youve left the room.
Five Sales Techniques that Dont Work
1. Selling Benefits
Everyone knows you need to sell benefits not features, right? Well, no. If you start your customer conversation with benefits, youre jumping the gun when it comes to how most prospects are looking at their first interactions with you and your company. Remember that 20 to 60 percent of pipeline deals are lost to the status quo. That means that you need to establish a buying vision the case for why the prospect needs to change before your solutions benefits will resonate. That means you need to effectively challenge the status quo and show how the prospects world can change for the better (see Selling Techniques that Work #1).
2. Competing in a Bake-Off
When you position yourself against your competitors, youre competing in a vendor bake-off. Its a spec war and you might gain the upper hand with one feature, but then the competition meets your feature and raises another. In the process, you and your competition are often having a very similar dialogue with the prospect, leading to the dreaded no decision. Instead of talking to the prospect about why us, focus instead on challenging the status quo by getting the prospect to think about why change and why now, and demonstrate the truly unique value of your solution (see Selling Techniques That Work #2).
3. Marketing to Personas
Many marketers use personas to develop messaging. And, on the face of it, it seems to make sense: defining the profile of your prospect will enable you to develop messages targeted to that profile. The problem is that personas are typically defined by who the prospect is demographics and behaviors. But the need to change is not driven by a persona. The fact that a prospect shares similar characteristics with the persona isnt what causes them to re-think their current approach and consider your solution as a new way to solve their problems. Instead of developing messages based on personas, focus on how to convince prospects that the status quo they are standing on is unsafe, then show them how life is better with your solution (see Selling Techniques that Work #3).
According to Wikipedia, an elevator pitch is a short summary used to quickly and simply define a product, service, or organization and its value proposition. And just about every sales organization under the sun spends a lot of time trying to perfect that pitch. The problem is that the standard elevator pitch tells your story not your prospects story. So instead of spending time refining your elevator pitch, focus on building the story that features your customer as the hero (see Selling Techniques That Work #4).
5. Delivering PowerPoint Presentations
The PowerPoint presentation has become the de facto go-to approach for sales meetings. Marketing churns out slides, then salespeople turn out the lights and rely on logo slides, bullet points, and animations to do the selling for them. The problem isnt with PowerPoint itself but with how its used and the right time and place for it. But when youre in intimate, executive conversations, use sales techniques that are visual, and can really make a lasting impact. Instead of spending time refining your slide deck, focus on telling a compelling story and using props to pique your prospects interest (see Selling Techniques that Work #5).
Corporate Visions has developed a portfolio of solutions to help your sales organization develop, refine, and use the sales techniques that will be most effective for your business.
Professional Qualified Sales Experts present products and services, calling on companies using our proven door to door Marketing agencies , door-to-door sales technique and door to door Marketing agencies in mumbai.
We convert potential customers to sustainable clients in the shortest space of time( door to door sales, door to door Marketing agencies ). Our professional teams interact with customers, educating them on our clients’ products/services, as well as generating immediate sales or leads with interested customers.
Marketing and advertising budgets have come under increasing pressure. door to door Marketing agencies and Door-to-door sales is a low cost distribution channel, and is an effective way to gain more return on investment. It secures increased value with minimum spend, allowing access to a customer base which is not always reached by existing marketing strategies.
Through Door to Door sales,customers can choose the most suitable deals, especially because they have a chance to ask questions and have the offering clarified by our qualified sales experts in mumbai
We believe our experience, our sales ability and the detailed processes we have in place ensure we successfully launch new products to the market. Our sector experience and data insights ensure we are calling on the right outlets to maximise return on investment during the critical launch phase.
We have proven experience in launching challenger brands to the market along with well-established range extensions and completely new products.
We believe Fulcrum is the door-to-door-sales agency in pune best suited to owning the responsibility of launching your new product – why not give us a call to find out if we can help you?
I did door-to-door sales for nine years, in hundreds of different cities and towns all across the india. Through long, hard, agonizing trial and error, I eventually developed enough skill that I could take any product into any area on any day and make sales.
In the beginning, I struggled. But when I was about to give up on myself and quit (like 99.9% of people that try door-to-door sales do within their first few days), experienced salesperson to give me a chance to get on track.
What I saw that day changed my life forever.
I watched as the experienced salesperson drove to an area where he had previous sales success, and listened as he explained to me why he parked his car in the exact spot he did to start his day and laid out his exact plan of attack. Within the first 10 minutes, I learned a valuable lesson that not only made my door-to-door sales career much easier, but has also been the key to bringing in millions of dollars in revenue for my own companies, and those of thousands of others I’ve consulted to:
A current customer is the easiest person to make a sale to – many, many times easier (and less expensive) than trying to get new customers.
Most business owners operate a risky, day-to-day, transactional business, believing that the reason for getting a customer is to make a sale. That’s their biggest problem: making nothing more than “a” sale to a customer. After that initial transaction, they simply hope that their product or service or location is good enough that they will get a repeat visit from that customer.
On the other hand, sharp business owners (and door-to-door salespeople!) know that the point to making a sale is to get a customer. We have systems put together to maximize the value of that customer by making future offers to them, so that they buy more of the same product or service, or a different version, or even an entirely different product or service.
In other words, we recognize that a current customer is the easiest person to sell to, and a prospect is the hardest and most-expensive person to sell to. Therefore, we concentrate on maximizing the value of every new customer we get.
If you want to grow your business during these challenging economic times (and even during boom times), your time and effort should be invested in working to turn prospects into customers and retain them to market to in the future. While your marketing is doing its job to get you prospects, you need to be working on turning those prospects into customers. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be:
Inviting Informative Enjoyable
The biggest fear of most new customers is the dreaded “buyer’s remorse.” You want to minimize this as best you can, and if you’ve provided a quality product or service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made, the risk will be lower.
However, returns can still occur. Here are the two most effective ways to deal with this:
Offer to refund money — no questions asked Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product
These offers alone will also lessen the impact of buyer’s remorse, because the customer will trust you more just because you showed the confidence in your product or service to offer these options in the first place.
There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:
Offer a special price as an opportunity for them to test the market. Offer a lower price with a legitimate reason, such as clearing out inventory to pay a tax bill, for your kid’s braces, or another tangible reason. (Added bonus: Customers love you for doing this, because it makes you so much more human to them.) Offer a referral incentive. Offer a smaller, less expensive entry-level product to build trust. Offer package deals. Offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer. Offer extra incentives, such as longer warranties or free bonuses, if they order by a certain date. Offer financing options, if applicable. Offer a bonus if they pay in full. Offer special packaging or delivery. Offer “name-your-own-price” incentives. Offer comparative data or other comparison tools. Offer to let them trade up or upgrade to something better if they want. Offer additional, educational information to help them make the decision.
The options are really only limited by your imagination and marketing skill. You can use these or other ideas to discover what works the best for your specific business, with your specific products, services and target market.
Even if you ever find yourself doing door-to-door sales.
Marketing company in Swargate
Code of Conduct in Journalism
Need for a Code of Conduct
In recent months, the media world has been hit with several scandals related to the way in which they have tried to manipulate the system for their benefit. If in the UK, the Rupert Murdoch owned NewsCorp was caught bribing the police to access personal details of people and to hack into their phones, in Asia, there were several scandals related to the blackmailing of industrial houses in order to stop bad coverage. Further, the fact that paid news or infomercials (commercials passed off information) has dented the reputation of the media houses.
Hence, there is a need for a code of conduct for journalists if the present degenerative trend is to be stopped. Indeed, the need for a code of conduct is becoming stronger by the day as the journalists have been proved as susceptible as anybody has to the lure of money. As the recent scandals show, the media, which is supposed to be the watchdog in a democracy, has been suffering from credibility issues.
How the Code of Conduct Works
The most important reason why the media needs a code of conduct for itself is that the media along with the legislature, executive, and the judiciary is the purveyor of public good and hence, must be above suspicion. The code of conduct can be along the lines of having the journalists declare whether the article that they have published is being paid for by industrial houses or whether the information in the article has been obtained ethically. In other words, the journalists should be scrutinized for unethical practices and made to observe the code of conduct diligently. Apart from this, though there is a need to protect sources since that is the bottom line requirement of journalism, there is also a need to report news in an objective and unbiased manner. The function of the media is not to massage the message and spin the facts but to report them as they are. Hence, the code of conduct must incorporate ethical practices like not concealing key and vital information and declaring whether the information obtained is through ethical means and not through dubious means.
Voluntary Compliance is better than External Control
The other aspect of the code of conduct is that it must be made binding on the journalists and any attempt to circumvent the code must be punished. This calls for an ombudsman for the media who would oversee the various publications and ensure that the media is sticking to the code of conduct. Apart from this, each media house must have internal vigilance wherein the voluntary practice of adhering to the code of conduct must be practiced. As any industry veteran would attest, voluntary compliance is the best way for any industry and hence, like how some newspapers in India do (ex. The Hindu) there must be a Readers Editor and an Internal Auditor to check the content being published.
Closing Thoughts
Finally, prevention is better than cure and hence, the media houses and their unethical practices must be nipped in the bud and not allowed to outgrow the institution. This is the clear message that is being sent from the recent scandals where the institutions have been subsumed because of the presence of some bad apples.
Your Sales Manager / Team have been forecasting certain prospects for months now, yet they cannot get them to move to the next step and make a decision. They believe they have qualified all their requirements, presented a customized proposal with good price points but the prospects still resist moving forward regardless of your Team’s dedicated follow-up, and perhaps even a price reduction to get these deals done.
What is happening here?
There are four main mistakes that can get a Sales Manager / Team into the position of losing to the Status Quo. And these mistakes happen early in the Sales Cycle. Specifically, they have most likely rushed through the Discoveries stage to get to the Proposal / Recommendation. They can’t go backwards at this point now, and actually need to stop and readdress the entire opportunity. Here are four key variables that your Sales Manager / Team most likely did not fully qualify:
They have the wrong person– Right from the start as they did their pre-call research and / or qualified a lead they identified a contact that they suspected would be the Decision Maker for your particular product or service. However, they did not confirm if they were indeed the correct person, or if there were additional stakeholders.
They have the wrong level of authority – In addition to this confirmation, does the identified Decision Maker also have the access to funds and contractual / transactional signing authority? Can they provide an overview of their organization’s Purchasing Process?
If these questions are not posed at the beginning of the Sales Cycle, the Manager will find themselves too far down the road with the wrong contact and risk not knowing how to reach around them or worse, above them. They will have effectively become ‘stuck’.
They have the wrong ‘problem’– In their initial excitement of identifying where a prospect’s ‘pain’ is being experienced they failed to flesh-out any related challenges. Think of that iceberg slide everyone has seen – initial potential problems are fairly easy to spot, but it’s what lies beneath the surface where potentially large corresponding and related areas of opportunities are.
Rushing through Discoveries is a fatal mistake as the chance to fully understand related business challenges is not being optimized. For example, poor fleet management of office equipment affects not only the end users, but Finance, IT and Operations as well. Were all the potential stakeholders spoken with?
They have the wrong timing– Has your Team fully thought through the timing of their Sales Cycle / Proposal? Are they making a recommendation that does not take into account what may be happening at the prospect’s company? For example, what are their prospect’s priorities right now? Are they undergoing an expansion, or closing locations? Are they anticipating new Leadership to be on board shortly? Is the proposal helpful to them, or just another item to be dealt with? Understanding your prospect’s internal pressures and priorities is critical to ensuring your Team is presenting the right proposal, at the right time.
Discoveries is an absolutely critical stage of the Consultative Sales Process and should never be rushed through. This is where you will identify all their areas of ‘pain’ and seek to understand how different departments or areas of their company are interrelated and who all the stakeholders are (perhaps in different offices or even countries). This is the information you will need to fall back on to effectively manage Objections later – i.e. what has changed since you first discussed their challenges?
Without a thorough Discovery you will miss the essential information you need to not just build a better proposal but also build a better relationship as you are demonstrating your interest in solving their problems and not just rushing to make a sale.
It’s not about you, and you need to keep your eyes and ears open and focused on your prospective customer’s problems so you can guide the Sales Cycle to its logical end. Take the time to fully understand their areas of business challenges from their point of view.
If you are unsure of how to properly identify and qualify potential Sales Prospects, outsourcing this function to a company that has broad experience in determining ‘real’ opportunities from those you will only spin your wheels on is a sound option to consider. We will identify the type of Sales Prospect that is most probable to have the type of business challenges your solutions can be aligned to (your Target Market), and coach your Team on a Methodology to follow for a thorough Discoveries process, thus greatly increasing your probability for success!
You Dont Need a Better Sales Process You Need a Better Sales Message
When Sales needs to hunker down and improve its performance, what do you typically hear from sales management?
We need a better sales process.
Then, your sales management team and your sales training experts spin the dial to pick one of the many options available in the marketplace in hopes that it will help you rise above the economic pressures and rapid commoditization of your market.
Unfortunately, many of these programs struggle to deliver the results hoped for. In fact, a few years back, McKinsey & Company documented that 75 percent of the efforts at companies using one of the hottest sales process methodologies in the field solution-selling were deemed to be failures within three years.
Its not about the sales process
Sales processes and methodologies have been around for more than 20 years. Most companies have tried two or three of them. And most sales people have been trained on at least that many. Dont you think maybe something is missing?
Its about having the right messages to fuel your process
Several years ago, we performed a survey of marketing and sales executives. We found that 70 percent of the executives surveyed ranked commoditization or competitive differentiation as their number one threat to growth outside the economy. Why? There are more capable competitors than ever before. And customers are overwhelmed by the amount and complexity of information. As a result, customers, in their confusion, were telling salespeople that they see all the competitors as the same. Your challenge is to avoid commoditization and set yourself apart from the competition. And thats not something that can be accomplished with a new sales process.
Your message is your most strategic competitive asset
Your sales conversations are becoming the last battleground in competitive differentiation. And, your messaging, even more than your methodology, is what matters most in this hypercompetitive environment. In fact, you could argue that your message is your most strategic competitive asset when everything else appears the same.
So, how do you develop messages that make a difference no matter which sales process your organization uses? Corporate Visions can help. Our Power Positioninghelps you find your unique point of view so you can create clear points of differentiation between you and your key competitors.
Professional Qualified Sales Experts present products and services, calling on companies using our proven door to door Marketing agency , door-to-door sales technique and door to door Marketing agency in mumbai.
We convert potential customers to sustainable clients in the shortest space of time( door to door sales, door to door Marketing agency ). Our professional teams interact with customers, educating them on our clients’ products/services, as well as generating immediate sales or leads with interested customers.
Marketing and advertising budgets have come under increasing pressure. door to door Marketing agency and Door-to-door sales is a low cost distribution channel, and is an effective way to gain more return on investment. It secures increased value with minimum spend, allowing access to a customer base which is not always reached by existing marketing strategies.
Through Door to Door sales,customers can choose the most suitable deals, especially because they have a chance to ask questions and have the offering clarified by our qualified sales experts in mumbai
We believe our experience, our sales ability and the detailed processes we have in place ensure we successfully launch new products to the market. Our sector experience and data insights ensure we are calling on the right outlets to maximise return on investment during the critical launch phase.
We have proven experience in launching challenger brands to the market along with well-established range extensions and completely new products.
We believe Fulcrum is the door-to-door-sales agency in pune best suited to owning the responsibility of launching your new product – why not give us a call to find out if we can help you?
I did door-to-door sales for nine years, in hundreds of different cities and towns all across the india. Through long, hard, agonizing trial and error, I eventually developed enough skill that I could take any product into any area on any day and make sales.
In the beginning, I struggled. But when I was about to give up on myself and quit (like 99.9% of people that try door-to-door sales do within their first few days), experienced salesperson to give me a chance to get on track.
What I saw that day changed my life forever.
I watched as the experienced salesperson drove to an area where he had previous sales success, and listened as he explained to me why he parked his car in the exact spot he did to start his day and laid out his exact plan of attack. Within the first 10 minutes, I learned a valuable lesson that not only made my door-to-door sales career much easier, but has also been the key to bringing in millions of dollars in revenue for my own companies, and those of thousands of others I’ve consulted to:
A current customer is the easiest person to make a sale to – many, many times easier (and less expensive) than trying to get new customers.
Most business owners operate a risky, day-to-day, transactional business, believing that the reason for getting a customer is to make a sale. That’s their biggest problem: making nothing more than “a” sale to a customer. After that initial transaction, they simply hope that their product or service or location is good enough that they will get a repeat visit from that customer.
On the other hand, sharp business owners (and door-to-door salespeople!) know that the point to making a sale is to get a customer. We have systems put together to maximize the value of that customer by making future offers to them, so that they buy more of the same product or service, or a different version, or even an entirely different product or service.
In other words, we recognize that a current customer is the easiest person to sell to, and a prospect is the hardest and most-expensive person to sell to. Therefore, we concentrate on maximizing the value of every new customer we get.
If you want to grow your business during these challenging economic times (and even during boom times), your time and effort should be invested in working to turn prospects into customers and retain them to market to in the future. While your marketing is doing its job to get you prospects, you need to be working on turning those prospects into customers. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be:
Inviting Informative Enjoyable
The biggest fear of most new customers is the dreaded “buyer’s remorse.” You want to minimize this as best you can, and if you’ve provided a quality product or service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made, the risk will be lower.
However, returns can still occur. Here are the two most effective ways to deal with this:
Offer to refund money — no questions asked Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product
These offers alone will also lessen the impact of buyer’s remorse, because the customer will trust you more just because you showed the confidence in your product or service to offer these options in the first place.
There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:
Offer a special price as an opportunity for them to test the market. Offer a lower price with a legitimate reason, such as clearing out inventory to pay a tax bill, for your kid’s braces, or another tangible reason. (Added bonus: Customers love you for doing this, because it makes you so much more human to them.) Offer a referral incentive. Offer a smaller, less expensive entry-level product to build trust. Offer package deals. Offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer. Offer extra incentives, such as longer warranties or free bonuses, if they order by a certain date. Offer financing options, if applicable. Offer a bonus if they pay in full. Offer special packaging or delivery. Offer “name-your-own-price” incentives. Offer comparative data or other comparison tools. Offer to let them trade up or upgrade to something better if they want. Offer additional, educational information to help them make the decision.
The options are really only limited by your imagination and marketing skill. You can use these or other ideas to discover what works the best for your specific business, with your specific products, services and target market.
Even if you ever find yourself doing door-to-door sales.
marketing agencies in pune
Mapping The Buyer’s Journey
How far is today’s B2B buyer through the decision-making process before engaging a supplier? It’s a bit like asking, “How high is up?” The actual number probably doesn’t matter. What’s important is that today’s self-educated B2B buyer—or more aptly, buyers—increasingly turn to sources other than salespeople for product information.
But if you insist on numbers, a recent survey by the Consumer Executive Board (CEB) of 1,900 corporate decision makers found that buyers are, at a minimum, 57 percent of the way through the buying process before they contact a potential supplier. Some respondents reported being as much as 70 percent complete with the decision-making process before reaching out to a vendor.
“That doesn’t leave much time for changing customers’ opinions,” says Peter Pickus, Executive Adviser at CEB. Stated another way, as much as two-thirds of the process that B2B sales teams traditionally used to close deals may be obsolete. “The fundamental implications are clear: marketers must figure out how to influence potential customers where and when they are conducting pre-purchase research.”
“The hardest thing about B2B selling today is that customers don’t need you the way they used to,” add CEB executives Brent Adamson, Mathew Dixon and Nicholas Toman in an article published in Harvard Business Review entitled “The End of Solution Sales.”
The trio contends that top performers in today’s B2B selling environment don’t just sell more effectively, they sell differently. “Boosting the performance of average salespeople isn’t a matter of improving how they currently sell; it involves altogether changing how they sell. To accomplish this, organizations need to fundamentally rethink the training and support provided to their reps,” they state.
The digital revolution Although the CEB survey of B2B buyers was only conducted last year, the fact that buyers are completing a lot more prepurchase research online before reaching out to a supplier is not news to most. What’s startling is that few suppliers have taken direct and focused action on how to change their go-to-market models to address this shift, says Jason Robinson, Senior Vice President for Sales and Marketing of MarketBridge, a technology enabled services firm.
Supply siders’ inaction has not been for lack of a fallout from the shift to more educated buyers, Robinson says. Sales productivity is suffering, with an estimated 67 percent of sales reps not meeting their quotas, Over the past several years, B2B customers have:
• Been increasingly difficult to reach, leading to sales productivity metrics dropping off a cliff • Complained that sales reps are woefully underprepared and seemingly not attuned to the fact that today’s customer is privy to endless amounts of information and perspective prior to ever engaging with sales • Stopped inviting sales reps back to take the process forward, which means the money and effort invested in reaching those customers has been wasted
With digital and online channels playing a significant role in the purchasing decisions of today’s B2B buyer, conventional wisdom holds that organizations need to continue to invest in their digital strategies, including search engine performance, digital advertising, social media, websites, communities and blogs. The MarketBridge report, “The Ultimate Guide to the New Buyer’s Journey,” emphasizes that the critical part of addressing the new buyer’s journey is not merely creating digital tactics, but focusing on how your organization engages prospects once they engage digitally.
“Brands are spending too much time and effort on widespread marketing but are not engaging customers on a direct level,” the report states. “Once the buyer is actually ready to engage with a human inside a given brand, they will do so quite often through a digital channel and will expect a real-time response. When the appropriate digital engagement doesn’t take place around a key consumer segment, revenue loss is a very real scenario.”
The paradox of buying teams
Not only has the explosion of communication platforms and interaction channels ratcheted up the expectations of B2B purchasers, there are more influencers and decision makers within each prospect company involved in the purchasing process. “Reaching consensus and closing deals has become an increasingly painful and protracted process for customers and suppliers alike,” CEB reports.
Whereas an IT supplier might have once sold directly to a CIO and his or her team, today that same sale may also need buy-in from the chief marketing officer, the chief operating officer, the chief financial officer, legal counsel, procurement executives and others. CEB found that, on average, 5.4 people now have to formally sign off on every purchase.
While this complicates the sales process, the good news, says Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Corporate Visions, Inc., is that there are a number of people that still need to be sold to. For all of the hype about buyers being 50 percent or more through the buying decision, there is still a lot of selling left to be done, Riesterer says.
“A buyer may feel it is 60 percent of the way done, but if there are 5.4 decision makers, one person may be 60 percent done, but the salesperson may have to bring the other 4.4 people from 0 percent to 100 percent. In actuality, the math to get them all to 100-percent ready [to buy] means the purchase decision is really only 10 percent of the way done when the salesperson is called in,” Riesterer says.
He argues that if companies continue to focus so intently on the notion that buyers are so far down the line in terms of a purchase decision, they may shift too much of their overall budget to front-end tactics such as social selling and automated marketing, and neglect to invest enough in sales training.
“When you think of marketing automation and what it’s focused on, and you think of content marketing and what it’s focused on, I would argue that most of that spend is to get one person to 57 percent completed with the buying decision. How much is spent on sales enablement? Are you confident that your spend and your time are allocated proportionally?” he asks.
Death of the salesman — not Riesterer argues that a steadily declining lead-to-conversion rate (pick your number on that statistic, too) and studies that show six out of 10 prospects end up making no decision at all is further evidence that the so-called educated buyer either isn’t educated enough or the sales reps aren’t trained well enough to close the deal.
“Are people really looking at the entire picture of what your sales team still needs to accomplish once they’ve been given the name of one person who is 57 percent of the way done?” he asks. “Has anybody really thought about what still has to happen? It isn’t just finishing the last 43 percent. It involves these other 4.4 people—potentially some of them from zero— and getting them as far along as the person who raised his hand. It’s taking them all over the line together.”
It’s wrong to assume that a sales development team can just book an appointment and the buyer (or buyers) who come to a meeting will be fully educated about how they’re going to get value and what problems they’re going to solve.
“There is still a little black art in there,” says Ray Smith, CEO of Datahug, a predictive sales acceleration technology provider. “Yes, they are coming to you with higher expectations. But what they really want from you is not someone who is going to sell to them in a hardnosed, shipping boxes way. They’re looking for advice and they’re looking for references and case studies on how similar companies—maybe even competitors within their industry—have solved their problem.”
“The misconception around saying the customer is better educated is trying to derive the corollary that if they’re better educated, then the rest is easy. That’s not the case,” Smith says emphatically. “When you look at the data analysis on the back end, you see that good sales reps are good because they’re so good at the follow-ups and the engagement. They do all of the right things to prove that the art of selling is alive and well.”
1
Relevance of Mass Media to Society
The Fourth Estate
Mass media perform a vital and a crucial role in society. They are called the Fourth Estate, as they are one of the pillars of democracy along with the executive, legislature, and the other socioeconomic forces that bind a society together. In this context, it is important to note that they are both the watchdogs of public behavior of elected officials and custodians of popular goodwill as they seek to report on the goings-on in society.
Hence, mass media are especially relevant to society because without the media, we would never know what is happening in the world around us and be without the moral compass and ethical conscience needed to hold society together. The point here is that like all opinion makers, the mass media has both a duty and a responsibility towards society and this is the reason it is considered a vital part of modern democracies.
Recent Trends
Given the important role that mass media plays in society, recent trends that indicate that the mass media is reneging on its social responsibility and instead becoming hostage to special interests and vested agendas. The phenomenon of paid news, manipulated content, and bargaining with corporates in order to portray them in favorable light or outright demands for bribes in order to not air content are all pointers to the degeneration that has taken place within the context of the contemporary times. Further, the mass media themselves have become susceptible to corrupt practices and given the fact that they are the gatekeepers for democracy, these tendencies must be avoided. As the scandals over many prominent media houses in the UK and the US reveal, the mass media are no longer independent purveyors of truth but instead have become the tools of special interests.
Transition from Newspapers to Digital Media
According to many observers, the transition from print media to digital media (TV, Internet and Social Media) have made mass media more powerful as it gives them access to Billions of viewers and lack of geographical constraints as is the case with newspapers. Hence, they are now bestowed with superior powers over society. This raises the prospect of falling prey to manipulation and pushing agendas easier. However, it needs to be mentioned that this is precisely the reason they should not succumb to the temptations of taking the easy way out, as they now are responsible for events on a global scale as opposed to happenings on a local or regional level.
Final Thoughts
It is indeed the case that mass media are critically relevant to society because of the various reasons discussed above. Further, it is also the fact that the mass media are now in a position wherein they can make or mar the chances of celebrities, politicians, businesspersons, and sportspersons. Hence, the responsibility, which has been vested with them by society, has to be exercised judiciously and not carelessly or with a hidden agenda. In conclusion, the mass media have surely come a long way since the time they used to report on city and council events. Now, they have a global platform and global responsibilities, which means that they should have a conscience as well.
As a person who believed that the velocity with which a lead converts to a deal is not considered enough, I was skeptical whether the book Slow Down, Sell Faster! by Kevin Davis would work for me. This skepticism did not last long. Once I understood that the title of the book recommends that the rhythm of selling should fit to how customers want to buy, I felt comfortable. I am of the belief that sales velocity should be measured by how fast milestones in the buyer’s journey are reached, not how fast sales activities are carried out. My comfort with the contents of the book continued to increase the further I read it.
In the first part of the book, Davis suggest an eight step circular buying process model providing guidance for sellers, what to do and whom to access within the customer organization to help the customer navigate through his/her journey of buying. I appreciate that he does not promote this model as a one-size-fits-all approach to success. To the contrary, he makes it perfectly clear that his model is focused on “buy-learning” where potential customers do not yet have all the necessary information to make a buying decision, compared to “buy-knowing” where buyers can make a decision quickly because they already know as much as they need to make a decision.
To make the model actionable for sellers, Davis assigns a metaphor of real professionals to each of the eight phases. These metaphors describe the ideal behavior of a sales person to help the buyer move through the respective phase. Here is an illustration of the concept: The first phase in the buying process is labeled “Change.” The sales role best suited to facilitate the buying process at this stage is “Student,” someone who is learning about changes affecting a potential customer. In the following “Discontent” phase, the appropriate sales role is that of a “Doctor,” a person who diagnoses the cause of the discontent, and so on.
-Davis’s model includes two phases after the customer’s buying decision, reflecting his belief that the purpose of selling is not closing a deal but opening a relationship
These sales roles metaphors illustrate well what a successful seller needs to do in the different phases of the buying process. However there is a danger of confusion if your company’s job description uses some of these same labels in different ways.
The remaining chapters of the first part of the book deal with the major aspect that make a deal complex: the fact that there are several people involved in the buying decision, each having different roles. As Davis’s book is based on seminars he teaches, it is understandable that specific jargon is used to describe the various roles in the buying team. I particularly liked the concept of the power broker. I am less sure about the role of the ROI authority, the person who can make funds available and is the ultimate decider. I am sure the role exists and is crucial, I am just not so sure about the label.
The buying team roles are then mapped to where and how they are most likely involved in the eight step buying process model, thus giving the sales person guidance when best to speak to whom. Combining the roles of the buying team and the buying process makes it very clear why “calling high” is not as sure a recipe for success as many sales experts want to make us believe.
The second part of the book then describes the sales roles of “Student,” “Doctor,” etc., in detail. With real-life examples the model is brought to life. In those examples, there are some details where old salesmanship shines through. But this does not in any way diminish the value of the concepts which are leading edge thinking of how to approach selling in the 21st century.
With the third part of the book, Davis demonstrates his expertise on how a sales team can be introduced to the new thinking he is suggesting. Sales managers play a crucial role in such initiatives. The book also covers the aspect how managers can use the eight sales roles as a very effective basis for coaching their people and thus make sure that the concepts are applied to greater sales success.
Davis is obviously someone who carried a bag in the field. However, unlike many others, he is able to conceptualize his experiences to make them comprehensible to others. The book is definitely not of the category “this is what I did and I see no reason why you should not be successful doing the same.” Instead it provides a very good framework for sales organizations wanting to remain successful in this new era, where customers have much more power than salespeople have been used to.
Professional Qualified Sales Experts present products and services, calling on companies using our proven door to door Marketing agencies , door-to-door sales technique and door to door Marketing agencies in mumbai.
We convert potential customers to sustainable clients in the shortest space of time( door to door sales, door to door Marketing agencies ). Our professional teams interact with customers, educating them on our clients’ products/services, as well as generating immediate sales or leads with interested customers.
Marketing and advertising budgets have come under increasing pressure. door to door Marketing agencies and Door-to-door sales is a low cost distribution channel, and is an effective way to gain more return on investment. It secures increased value with minimum spend, allowing access to a customer base which is not always reached by existing marketing strategies.
Through Door to Door sales,customers can choose the most suitable deals, especially because they have a chance to ask questions and have the offering clarified by our qualified sales experts in mumbai
We believe our experience, our sales ability and the detailed processes we have in place ensure we successfully launch new products to the market. Our sector experience and data insights ensure we are calling on the right outlets to maximise return on investment during the critical launch phase.
We have proven experience in launching challenger brands to the market along with well-established range extensions and completely new products.
We believe Fulcrum is the door-to-door-sales agency in pune best suited to owning the responsibility of launching your new product – why not give us a call to find out if we can help you?
I did door-to-door sales for nine years, in hundreds of different cities and towns all across the india. Through long, hard, agonizing trial and error, I eventually developed enough skill that I could take any product into any area on any day and make sales.
In the beginning, I struggled. But when I was about to give up on myself and quit (like 99.9% of people that try door-to-door sales do within their first few days), experienced salesperson to give me a chance to get on track.
What I saw that day changed my life forever.
I watched as the experienced salesperson drove to an area where he had previous sales success, and listened as he explained to me why he parked his car in the exact spot he did to start his day and laid out his exact plan of attack. Within the first 10 minutes, I learned a valuable lesson that not only made my door-to-door sales career much easier, but has also been the key to bringing in millions of dollars in revenue for my own companies, and those of thousands of others I’ve consulted to:
A current customer is the easiest person to make a sale to – many, many times easier (and less expensive) than trying to get new customers.
Most business owners operate a risky, day-to-day, transactional business, believing that the reason for getting a customer is to make a sale. That’s their biggest problem: making nothing more than “a” sale to a customer. After that initial transaction, they simply hope that their product or service or location is good enough that they will get a repeat visit from that customer.
On the other hand, sharp business owners (and door-to-door salespeople!) know that the point to making a sale is to get a customer. We have systems put together to maximize the value of that customer by making future offers to them, so that they buy more of the same product or service, or a different version, or even an entirely different product or service.
In other words, we recognize that a current customer is the easiest person to sell to, and a prospect is the hardest and most-expensive person to sell to. Therefore, we concentrate on maximizing the value of every new customer we get.
If you want to grow your business during these challenging economic times (and even during boom times), your time and effort should be invested in working to turn prospects into customers and retain them to market to in the future. While your marketing is doing its job to get you prospects, you need to be working on turning those prospects into customers. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be:
Inviting Informative Enjoyable
The biggest fear of most new customers is the dreaded “buyer’s remorse.” You want to minimize this as best you can, and if you’ve provided a quality product or service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made, the risk will be lower.
However, returns can still occur. Here are the two most effective ways to deal with this:
Offer to refund money — no questions asked Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product
These offers alone will also lessen the impact of buyer’s remorse, because the customer will trust you more just because you showed the confidence in your product or service to offer these options in the first place.
There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:
Offer a special price as an opportunity for them to test the market. Offer a lower price with a legitimate reason, such as clearing out inventory to pay a tax bill, for your kid’s braces, or another tangible reason. (Added bonus: Customers love you for doing this, because it makes you so much more human to them.) Offer a referral incentive. Offer a smaller, less expensive entry-level product to build trust. Offer package deals. Offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer. Offer extra incentives, such as longer warranties or free bonuses, if they order by a certain date. Offer financing options, if applicable. Offer a bonus if they pay in full. Offer special packaging or delivery. Offer “name-your-own-price” incentives. Offer comparative data or other comparison tools. Offer to let them trade up or upgrade to something better if they want. Offer additional, educational information to help them make the decision.
The options are really only limited by your imagination and marketing skill. You can use these or other ideas to discover what works the best for your specific business, with your specific products, services and target market.
Even if you ever find yourself doing door-to-door sales.
marketing agency in pune
The End of Solution Sales
The hardest thing about B2B selling today is that customers don’t need you the way they used to. In recent decades sales reps have become adept at discovering customers’ needs and selling them “solutions”—generally, complex combinations of products and services. This worked because customers didn’t know how to solve their own problems, even though they often had a good understanding of what their problems were. But now, owing to increasingly sophisticated procurement teams and purchasing consultants armed with troves of data, companies can readily define solutions for themselves.
In fact, a recent Corporate Executive Board study of more than 1,400 B2B customers found that those customers completed, on average, nearly 60% of a typical purchasing decision—researching solutions, ranking options, setting requirements, benchmarking pricing, and so on—before even having a conversation with a supplier. In this world the celebrated “solution sales rep” can be more of an annoyance than an asset. Customers in an array of industries, from IT to insurance to business process outsourcing, are often way ahead of the salespeople who are “helping” them.
But the news is not all bad. Although traditional reps are at a distinct disadvantage in this environment, a select group of high performers are flourishing. These superior reps have abandoned much of the conventional wisdom taught in sales organizations. They:
evaluate prospects according to criteria different from those used by other reps, targeting agile organizations in a state of flux rather than ones with a clear understanding of their needs
seek out a very different set of stakeholders, preferring skeptical change agents over friendly informants
coach those change agents on how to buy, instead of quizzing them about their company’s purchasing process
These sales professionals don’t just sell more effectively—they sell differently. This means that boosting the performance of average salespeople isn’t a matter of improving how they currently sell; it involves altogether changing how they sell. To accomplish this, organizations need to fundamentally rethink the training and support provided to their reps.
Coming Up Short
Under the conventional solution-selling method that has prevailed since the 1980s, salespeople are trained to align a solution with an acknowledged customer need and demonstrate why it is better than the competition’s. This translates into a very practical approach: A rep begins by identifying customers who recognize a problem that the supplier can solve, and gives priority to those who are ready to act. Then, by asking questions, she surfaces a “hook” that enables her to attach her company’s solution to that problem. Part and parcel of this approach is her ability to find and nurture somebody within the customer organization—an advocate, or coach—who can help her navigate the company and drive the deal to completion.
But customers have radically departed from the old ways of buying, and sales leaders are increasingly finding that their staffs are relegated to price-driven bake-offs. One CSO at a high-tech organization told us, “Our customers are coming to the table armed to the teeth with a deep understanding of their problem and a well-scoped RFP for a solution. It’s turning many of our sales conversations into fulfillment conversations.” Reps must learn to engage customers much earlier, well before customers fully understand their own needs. In many ways, this is a strategy as old as sales itself: To win a deal, you’ve got to get ahead of the RFP. But our research shows that although that’s more important than ever, it’s no longer sufficient.
To find out what high-performing sales professionals (defined as those in the top 20% in terms of quota attainment) do differently from other reps, Corporate Executive Board conducted three studies. In the first, we surveyed more than 6,000 reps from 83 companies, spanning every major industry, about how they prioritize opportunities, target and engage stakeholders, and execute the sales process. In the second, we examined complex purchasing scenarios in nearly 600 companies in a variety of industries to understand the various structures and influences of formal and informal buying teams. In the third, we studied more than 700 individual customer stakeholders involved in complex B2B purchases to determine the impact specific kinds of stakeholders can have on organizational buying decisions.
Our key finding: The top-performing reps have abandoned the traditional playbook and devised a novel, even radical, sales approach built on the three strategies outlined above. Let’s take a close look at each.
Meaning and Significance of Corporate Crisis Management
What is Corporate Crisis Management ?
We live in a world that is uncertain and unpredictable. Hence, our best-laid plans can go bust because of a variety of reasons, not many of whom are under our control. This is the case with corporates as well and especially so in this turbulent age where the global odds and complexity coupled with rapid change and fluidity mean that corporates have to be ready for any eventuality. Therefore, crises must be anticipated and when they take the corporates by surprise, there must be a team or a department that can first respond to the external world and then the management can initiate appropriate strategies to deal with it. For instance, the global carmaker Toyota had to recall nearly a million vehicles because of defects in the structure. This is a corporate crisis that needs deft and savvy media management because the brand image of the company can take a hit if the perceptions are not managed properly. Similarly, when Apple was hit by accusations that it was sourcing its components from sweatshops in China, the corporate communications team had to swing into action and reassure the external world that the situation was being managed.
Significance of Corporate Crisis Management
The examples cited above are just representative ones and there are innumerable cases where corporates had to manage the media and the external world in response to crises. In India, the Satyam scandal meant that the continuity of business programs had to be rolled out and the media called for a detailed briefing. Similarly, when Infosys announced that they were delaying the joining dates of fresh recruits, they had to similarly battle negative reporting in the media. All these cases call for exceptional corporate communications teams and the way in which these crises are handled goes a long way in shaping public perceptions about the company. Considering the fact that we live in a 24/7 news culture where perceptions change by the minute there is a need to handle and manage the media more than ever. In addition, when crises strike, there is a clear need to handle the aftermath of the crises and manage the news cycle to the advantage of the company.
Lack of Crisis Management leads to Chaos
What happens when corporates are unable to handle crises effectively? The result is that there would be chaos and confusion about the way in which the message is being sent. For instance, the ailing airline, Kingfisher, made such a bad job of conveying their position to the media in the context of the crisis over its operations that the consumers formed an image of a company whose management did not care about them. This case highlights why it is necessary to have competent crisis management teams and the corporate communications department is the first point of contact with the external world. In conclusion, corporate crisis management is a critical function of any corporate and the way in which the corporates handle the crises reflects how well the investors, consumers, and the regulators view the corporate.
Managers’ reasoning for not coaching their people as much as they should or want to, is the lack of time. They might therefore welcome tools, like the one, I believe I was alerted to through a LinkedIn Group, promising efficiency gains in coaching field sales people.
Setting the scene
The product is a sort of voice recorder than can replay specific recorded advise on sales behavior to reinforce sales training. Permission of the prospect granted, it can also be used to record face to face sales conversations. This is actually a clever idea. Conversations of telesales people with their prospects are recorded frequently for quality assurance purposes. Applying a similar procedure for face to face conversations would considerably reduce the time managers need for coaching their people in the field. They could save the travel time needed for observing the conversation directly on the prospect’ s premises and coach their people on the basis of these recordings. There is another interesting positive side effect for managers who find it hard to stay in their observer role while being on a sales call with one of their people. Not being present in the call simply eliminates this challenge.
The use case
On the website promoting the tool, a set of short video clips is made available to illustrate the use of the tool.
In a first clip, a sales manager passes by the cubicle of one of his salespeople. He asks this person whether she has already prepared for an important sales call she is going to have the next day. The answer is not yet, but it is on her to-do list for later today.
The next clip is showing how the person is preparing for the call with the help of this new nifty tool.
More interesting, for the point I want to make, is the next clip. The manager passes by the cubicle again with obviously the same question, whether preparation has been done. This time, the salesperson is affirmative. The manager reminds the salesperson not to forget to use the new tool to record the conversation. He also asks that a copy of the recording of the conversation be sent to him for review purposes.
Obviously there followed a clip how the tool is used during the conversation.
More relevant again is the next clip. The manager is calling the salesperson, asking if she had a moment for a short debriefing. He had listened to the recording and would like to give some feedback how she could further improve her conversations in further calls.
Observations
The initial impression is that the manager described above does do coaching. Yet, I am not so sure I would agree.
The presumed coaching happens in the debriefing after the call. This is certainly well meant but not necessarily effective. Against what criteria is the sales manager going to evaluate the recorded conversation? There is no explicit common understanding between him and the salesperson on the objective of the call. At best the manager could test how well the salesperson applied what she had been taught in previous trainings and comment on these observations. Any further comments would be highly subjective as there is no commonly agreed purpose and expected outcome for the call.
From the way the manager acted during the preparation phase of the call, we can infer that he follows a command and control management style. Given this style, it is reasonable to assume that the salesperson will not speak up if she would disagree with the manager’s potentially subjective conclusions which result from the lack of a common understanding of the purpose and the objectives of the call. The manager therefore would never get any feedback of the effectiveness of his coaching. He might though wonder about the limited effect his coaching has on his people.
An alternative proactive coaching scenario
Instead of just checking whether the salesperson can confirm that she has prepared for the call , the manager should get involved in the preparation. Discussing the call plan the salesperson has prepared and maybe even role play critical parts of the anticipated conversation would first, assure that there is an alignment about the purpose and the objective of the call. Secondly, possible misconceptions by the salesperson could be detected and corrected prior to the call and thus increase the likelihood for a successful outcome of the conversation with the prospect.
Yet for managers adhering to the command and control style, such discussions with their salespeople are not easy. They will tend to tell the salesperson exactly what to do for the case at hand. Intuitively they might even sense the danger that by doing so, they can now be held accountable for the outcome of the call. Therefore they prefer to stay in safe territory with the behavior illustrated in the video clip. As is well known, there are however coaching techniques which can be applied to avoid this risk. In addition, such techniques reinforce learning better than straight ‘how to do’ instructions.
By having been involved in the preparation, the manger then also has the criteria fore a more objective debriefing. Here again though, the emphasis should not be on telling what ought have been done and what to do the next time in a similar situation. The more effective way is guiding the salesperson to discover for herself what could be improved.
Conclusions
Admittedly this alternative approach takes some more time, especially in the preparation phase. Yet there is a higher likelihood for a positive impact for the concrete call at hand; an opportunity completely missed in the scenario shown in the clips. There is also a higher probability that there is a learning effect in this alternative scenario. As mentioned earlier, with the approach illustrated in the clips, there is a fair chance that the whole time invested in coaching might actually be wasted.
There is another interesting lesson that can be learned form this discussion. There is a tool presented in these clips that has a some potential for efficiency and effectiveness gains for managers and salespeople. However those gains cannot be had if the tool is applied in the context of bad processes. Tools can reinforce good processes, but they never can compensate for flawed processes.
What comes to your mind after having read this post?
Nothing beats the reality that one gets when you can interact with potential clients face to face physically moving from door to door within a community or household to household, face to face field marketing is also called personal selling or door to door marketing, customers are met directly in order to sell their products, using this method of field marketing we rely on our skills and persuasive abilities. During the period where we get to interact with the client face to face we get more chance to pass across edible information which would be useful to all our customers at that time and it’s also an opportunity for us to get feedback and to gauge your opinion about our business.
I did door-to-door sales for nine years, in hundreds of different cities and towns all across the india. Through long, hard, agonizing trial and error, I eventually developed enough skill that I could take any product into any area on any day and make sales.
In the beginning, I struggled. But when I was about to give up on myself and quit (like 99.9% of people that try door-to-door sales do within their first few days), experienced salesperson to give me a chance to get on track.
What I saw that day changed my life forever.
I watched as the experienced salesperson drove to an area where he had previous sales success, and listened as he explained to me why he parked his car in the exact spot he did to start his day and laid out his exact plan of attack. Within the first 10 minutes, I learned a valuable lesson that not only made my door-to-door sales career much easier, but has also been the key to bringing in millions of dollars in revenue for my own companies, and those of thousands of others I’ve consulted to:
A current customer is the easiest person to make a sale to – many, many times easier (and less expensive) than trying to get new customers.
Most business owners operate a risky, day-to-day, transactional business, believing that the reason for getting a customer is to make a sale. That’s their biggest problem: making nothing more than “a” sale to a customer. After that initial transaction, they simply hope that their product or service or location is good enough that they will get a repeat visit from that customer.
On the other hand, sharp business owners (and door-to-door salespeople!) know that the point to making a sale is to get a customer. We have systems put together to maximize the value of that customer by making future offers to them, so that they buy more of the same product or service, or a different version, or even an entirely different product or service.
In other words, we recognize that a current customer is the easiest person to sell to, and a prospect is the hardest and most-expensive person to sell to. Therefore, we concentrate on maximizing the value of every new customer we get.
If you want to grow your business during these challenging economic times (and even during boom times), your time and effort should be invested in working to turn prospects into customers and retain them to market to in the future. While your marketing is doing its job to get you prospects, you need to be working on turning those prospects into customers. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be:
Inviting Informative Enjoyable
The biggest fear of most new customers is the dreaded “buyer’s remorse.” You want to minimize this as best you can, and if you’ve provided a quality product or service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made, the risk will be lower.
However, returns can still occur. Here are the two most effective ways to deal with this:
Offer to refund money — no questions asked Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product
These offers alone will also lessen the impact of buyer’s remorse, because the customer will trust you more just because you showed the confidence in your product or service to offer these options in the first place.
There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:
Offer a special price as an opportunity for them to test the market. Offer a lower price with a legitimate reason, such as clearing out inventory to pay a tax bill, for your kid’s braces, or another tangible reason. (Added bonus: Customers love you for doing this, because it makes you so much more human to them.) Offer a referral incentive. Offer a smaller, less expensive entry-level product to build trust. Offer package deals. Offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer. Offer extra incentives, such as longer warranties or free bonuses, if they order by a certain date. Offer financing options, if applicable. Offer a bonus if they pay in full. Offer special packaging or delivery. Offer “name-your-own-price” incentives. Offer comparative data or other comparison tools. Offer to let them trade up or upgrade to something better if they want. Offer additional, educational information to help them make the decision.
The options are really only limited by your imagination and marketing skill. You can use these or other ideas to discover what works the best for your specific business, with your specific products, services and target market.
Even if you ever find yourself doing door-to-door sales.
Marketing business in Budhwar Peth
How to Balance Finance and Creatives to Create the Perfect Sales Promotion
Obedience and discipline without this nothing fruitful can happen because everything disintegrates. And yet without the magnanimity of disorder, the happy abandon, the entrepreneurship venturing into the unknown and incalculable, without the risk and the gamble, the creative imagination rushing in where bureaucratic angels fear to tread without this, life is a mockery and a disgrace. Jeremy Bullmore
Some are here for order, some want to disrupt that order, Fixed Fee Sales Promotion permits both in a perfectly balanced concoction.
Whilst both intentions are absolutely essential for success, its often creatives that are made to relinquish their right to escape the confines of an arbitrary reality.
Fixed Fee sales promotion removes these limitations, and returns their creative freedom.
The service creates a perfectly intertwined reality based on imagination and feasibility, creating free-flowing functionality between both finance and marketing.
Time and Motion Man
Time and Motion Man meticulously analyses the current and past, to best demystify the window that peers into the future.
In the instance of sales promotion, the analysis of past promotions is crucial for measuring how future sales promotions could perform. Likewise, the risk manager can lay a path to deliver success and permit creativity, within a fixed budget.
Time and Motion Man will extrapolate all costs through the past and utilise any existing intelligence, then fix the cost, placing a cushion of security on promotion.
The Mad Inventor
The Mad Inventor can then put Time and Motion Man to one side, and use the data provided, to begin to construct their catapult, ready to expel the empowered promotion. All this, with the comfort of knowing wherever the prizes land, the cost is covered.
Utilising data, comparisons and expertise enable the promotion to flourish from unhindered creativity.
As a result, the Mad Inventor spread their promotion nationwide. Thus, filling the catapult with more prizes, and pulling the jaws of the catapult further to allow them to give more prizes to more people.
A victory for both parties, a perfect partnership of creativity, feasibility, and logic to create a powerful promotion primed to deliver results.
Nothing beats the reality that one gets when you can interact with potential clients face to face physically moving from door to door within a community or household to household, face to face field marketing is also called personal selling or door to door marketing, customers are met directly in order to sell their products, using this method of field marketing we rely on our skills and persuasive abilities. During the period where we get to interact with the client face to face we get more chance to pass across edible information which would be useful to all our customers at that time and it’s also an opportunity for us to get feedback and to gauge your opinion about our business.
I did door-to-door sales for nine years, in hundreds of different cities and towns all across the india. Through long, hard, agonizing trial and error, I eventually developed enough skill that I could take any product into any area on any day and make sales.
In the beginning, I struggled. But when I was about to give up on myself and quit (like 99.9% of people that try door-to-door sales do within their first few days), experienced salesperson to give me a chance to get on track.
What I saw that day changed my life forever.
I watched as the experienced salesperson drove to an area where he had previous sales success, and listened as he explained to me why he parked his car in the exact spot he did to start his day and laid out his exact plan of attack. Within the first 10 minutes, I learned a valuable lesson that not only made my door-to-door sales career much easier, but has also been the key to bringing in millions of dollars in revenue for my own companies, and those of thousands of others I’ve consulted to:
A current customer is the easiest person to make a sale to – many, many times easier (and less expensive) than trying to get new customers.
Most business owners operate a risky, day-to-day, transactional business, believing that the reason for getting a customer is to make a sale. That’s their biggest problem: making nothing more than “a” sale to a customer. After that initial transaction, they simply hope that their product or service or location is good enough that they will get a repeat visit from that customer.
On the other hand, sharp business owners (and door-to-door salespeople!) know that the point to making a sale is to get a customer. We have systems put together to maximize the value of that customer by making future offers to them, so that they buy more of the same product or service, or a different version, or even an entirely different product or service.
In other words, we recognize that a current customer is the easiest person to sell to, and a prospect is the hardest and most-expensive person to sell to. Therefore, we concentrate on maximizing the value of every new customer we get.
If you want to grow your business during these challenging economic times (and even during boom times), your time and effort should be invested in working to turn prospects into customers and retain them to market to in the future. While your marketing is doing its job to get you prospects, you need to be working on turning those prospects into customers. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be:
Inviting Informative Enjoyable
The biggest fear of most new customers is the dreaded “buyer’s remorse.” You want to minimize this as best you can, and if you’ve provided a quality product or service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made, the risk will be lower.
However, returns can still occur. Here are the two most effective ways to deal with this:
Offer to refund money — no questions asked Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product
These offers alone will also lessen the impact of buyer’s remorse, because the customer will trust you more just because you showed the confidence in your product or service to offer these options in the first place.
There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:
Offer a special price as an opportunity for them to test the market. Offer a lower price with a legitimate reason, such as clearing out inventory to pay a tax bill, for your kid’s braces, or another tangible reason. (Added bonus: Customers love you for doing this, because it makes you so much more human to them.) Offer a referral incentive. Offer a smaller, less expensive entry-level product to build trust. Offer package deals. Offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer. Offer extra incentives, such as longer warranties or free bonuses, if they order by a certain date. Offer financing options, if applicable. Offer a bonus if they pay in full. Offer special packaging or delivery. Offer “name-your-own-price” incentives. Offer comparative data or other comparison tools. Offer to let them trade up or upgrade to something better if they want. Offer additional, educational information to help them make the decision.
The options are really only limited by your imagination and marketing skill. You can use these or other ideas to discover what works the best for your specific business, with your specific products, services and target market.
Even if you ever find yourself doing door-to-door sales.
Marketing business in Hadapsar
8 Benefits of Sales Promotion
8 Benefits of Sales Promotion
A successful promotion has the ability to nurture relationships with consumers through retention and engagement. Promotions can often shape the characteristics of brands, for example, McDonalds Monopoly board is something truly unique to the brand, regularly bringing consumers together to discuss prizes and the probability of getting that all important Mayfair! This article will underpin the key benefits of sales promotion, and what it can create for your brand.
Sales promotion benefits
Creates differentiation
The word brand was initially coined in farming as a way to differentiate cattle. A brand needs to be different to survive, a sales promotion can be an exemplary way to make a brand stand out from the crowd. It holds the potential to add unique value to a customer through a competition or unique experience, creating a reason to choose your product in a crowded market.
Again, take the McDonalds Monopoly, for instance, consumers walking in and peeling off stickers with hope and eager anticipation that they may just have a winner. This often results in a free apple pie but creates that true brand experience which is different to Burget King or KFC.
Creates communication opportunity
Communication is an art, an art which creates formidable relationships with consumers that make your brand unique. A sales promotion allows brands to communicate on packaging and enables them to focus campaigns around an event.
Sales Promotion Advantages
Creates word of mouth
A brand is not the only one who can communicate a sales promotion! Word of mouth is one of the most positive forms of communication, especially if it is coming from a friend or colleague as they are usually a trusted and reliable source! Give your consumers a reason to be surprised and they will pass on the feeling of goodwill.
Creates a platform to cross-sell and upsell
If a promotion is based around giving money off a next order or something in a similar vein, then it can hold valuable opportunity to get sales around another product.
Sales Promotion creates cross selling
Creates a reason to buy
All the points above drive sales and make customers decision-making much simpler if a brand is offering a similar product but something additional, then the consumer will often select that product and get more for their money!
Sales Promotion Increase sales
Creates a focused marketing approach
A sales promotion often becomes an event for the firm and then allows a company to focus all its channels of marketing. A focused approach can force a brand to change the way they market themselves thus creating brand identity through those changes.
Creates greater revenue
Put simply, more sales from your promotion will create higher revenue. However, brands need to always calculate their costs and ensure they are aware of how many people may redeem the promotion and ensure that it is a profitable endeavour.
Sales promotion creates greater revenue
Creates a source of information
When customers attempt to redeem brands can often retrieve data such as email addresses and their home address. This creates the opportunity to target a customer through segmentation, you can then use direct mail or email campaigns to create personalised marketing.
Data opportunies with sales promotion
Sales promotions are indeed beneficial for driving revenue, creating brand identity and allowing brands to acquire new customers! For more advice on sales promotion management visit the Mandos promotional risk management page.
Nothing beats the reality that one gets when you can interact with potential clients face to face physically moving from door to door within a community or household to household, face to face field marketing is also called personal selling or door to door marketing, customers are met directly in order to sell their products, using this method of field marketing we rely on our skills and persuasive abilities. During the period where we get to interact with the client face to face we get more chance to pass across edible information which would be useful to all our customers at that time and it’s also an opportunity for us to get feedback and to gauge your opinion about our business.
I did door-to-door sales for nine years, in hundreds of different cities and towns all across the india. Through long, hard, agonizing trial and error, I eventually developed enough skill that I could take any product into any area on any day and make sales.
In the beginning, I struggled. But when I was about to give up on myself and quit (like 99.9% of people that try door-to-door sales do within their first few days), experienced salesperson to give me a chance to get on track.
What I saw that day changed my life forever.
I watched as the experienced salesperson drove to an area where he had previous sales success, and listened as he explained to me why he parked his car in the exact spot he did to start his day and laid out his exact plan of attack. Within the first 10 minutes, I learned a valuable lesson that not only made my door-to-door sales career much easier, but has also been the key to bringing in millions of dollars in revenue for my own companies, and those of thousands of others I’ve consulted to:
A current customer is the easiest person to make a sale to – many, many times easier (and less expensive) than trying to get new customers.
Most business owners operate a risky, day-to-day, transactional business, believing that the reason for getting a customer is to make a sale. That’s their biggest problem: making nothing more than “a” sale to a customer. After that initial transaction, they simply hope that their product or service or location is good enough that they will get a repeat visit from that customer.
On the other hand, sharp business owners (and door-to-door salespeople!) know that the point to making a sale is to get a customer. We have systems put together to maximize the value of that customer by making future offers to them, so that they buy more of the same product or service, or a different version, or even an entirely different product or service.
In other words, we recognize that a current customer is the easiest person to sell to, and a prospect is the hardest and most-expensive person to sell to. Therefore, we concentrate on maximizing the value of every new customer we get.
If you want to grow your business during these challenging economic times (and even during boom times), your time and effort should be invested in working to turn prospects into customers and retain them to market to in the future. While your marketing is doing its job to get you prospects, you need to be working on turning those prospects into customers. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be:
Inviting Informative Enjoyable
The biggest fear of most new customers is the dreaded “buyer’s remorse.” You want to minimize this as best you can, and if you’ve provided a quality product or service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made, the risk will be lower.
However, returns can still occur. Here are the two most effective ways to deal with this:
Offer to refund money — no questions asked Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product
These offers alone will also lessen the impact of buyer’s remorse, because the customer will trust you more just because you showed the confidence in your product or service to offer these options in the first place.
There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:
Offer a special price as an opportunity for them to test the market. Offer a lower price with a legitimate reason, such as clearing out inventory to pay a tax bill, for your kid’s braces, or another tangible reason. (Added bonus: Customers love you for doing this, because it makes you so much more human to them.) Offer a referral incentive. Offer a smaller, less expensive entry-level product to build trust. Offer package deals. Offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer. Offer extra incentives, such as longer warranties or free bonuses, if they order by a certain date. Offer financing options, if applicable. Offer a bonus if they pay in full. Offer special packaging or delivery. Offer “name-your-own-price” incentives. Offer comparative data or other comparison tools. Offer to let them trade up or upgrade to something better if they want. Offer additional, educational information to help them make the decision.
The options are really only limited by your imagination and marketing skill. You can use these or other ideas to discover what works the best for your specific business, with your specific products, services and target market.
Even if you ever find yourself doing door-to-door sales.
Marketing company in Narayan Peth
The Media and Ethics
The previous article in this series looked at how the media is an important pillar of democracy and how unless there is a free and fair media, democracies cannot be well functioning ones. This article looks at the other side and that is the practice of ethics by the media itself. In a way, this article sheds light on the media, which is the other way round to what the media does i.e. shedding light on the other organs of democracy. At the outset, it must be mentioned that though the media largely observe restraint, there are instances where the media fail to do what they preach to others. That is the very conception of ethical behavior that the media demands is sometimes overlooked by the media houses. For instance, in recent years, there have been several scandals over the way in which mediapersons have engaged the other sectors in ways that can be called unethical.
Some of these instances relate to the Newscorp scandal that brought to light the collusion of the media house with investigative agencies so that the Newscorp papers get the scoops as well as engage in phone hacking and other unethical methods.
Elsewhere in the United States, we have had serious charges being brought against several media houses like the New York Times about the way in which they cover news. Closer home, in India, we have had leading industrialists accusing prominent media houses of extortion so that certain news items and reports would not be published. All these instances point to the fact that the media or the fourth estate that was preeminent and beyond reproach in earlier decades is falling prey to the same unethical instincts that the rest of the corporate world is mired in.
The point here is that once the media is corrupted, there is nobody to point out the several wrongdoings in democracies, and hence, it is by far the most important point that media in a democracy ought not to be corrupted. In addition, when the collusion with the government happens, it is more the case for concern. For instance, in India, the Nira Radia tapes exposed the unholy nexus of media collusion with the government and this was seen by many as an indictment of the media. Similarly, in the UK, journalists were questioned about their activities that included bribing senior members of the government to access juicy stories that were exclusive to their papers and television channels.
The latest instance concerns the venerable BBC or the British Broadcasting Corporation that until now was thought to the paragon of virtue. However, in recent weeks, it has become known that the BBC had covered up several stories that exposed the powers that be in the UK. All these instances are regrettable and point to the unholy nexus between the media and the politicians that is not healthy for democracy. Further, the nexus between the media and the powers that be often leads to the average person getting cheated.
Finally, while it is not the intention here to proclaim that mediapersons and the objects of their attention cannot form friendships or exchange favors. It is just that this cozy relationship ought to be restrained and cannot cross the threshold of the media acting in the interest of the powers that be instead of in the interests of democracy.
Outsource Our Sales Hiring Process?? We’d Never Consider It!
Outsourcing your Screening, Hiring and Onboarding processes to a company that has accumulated many years of strategic hiring in this area has many benefits that result in a lessened amount of ‘risk’ and costs.
Companies who do are experiencing high churn rates, or only hire infrequently, are at risk of costly Sales Hiring cycles and should consider the following tasks that need to be included in a successful Hiring Process:
Being able to understand and clearly articulate the deliverables of the role you are hiring for (i.e. net new business acquisition, existing customer management, etc.), and from that developing an accurate and realistic job description, not a ‘wish list’.
Assigning a key contact, preferably in Sales themselves (not HR) to act as the primary and principal ‘screener’. This seems to be done mostly these days by identifying key words in an Applicant Tracking System, which does not reflect or capture any ‘subtleties’ of that person’s skills, just that they used a lot of key words in their resume.
This approach though is slowly going by the wayside as employers are realizing that there must be a ‘human’ intervention / investment made at this stage to not let a good candidate slip through their fingers, and perhaps to a competitor. But this takes time that many of those on the Sales Management team just don’t have.
Once properly screened by someone either in Sales and / or possessing a very good understanding of the skills required for the role, interviewing can begin. However again, at this stage for the best results, interviews need to be conducted by those with a Sales background, not HR. More often than not, it takes a Hunter to know a Hunter, as is said.
More detailed expectations of the role should absolutely be shared at this time with the candidate, as well as discussions of what your culture is like, what to expect working for your Organization in Sales, and perhaps even meetings with current Sales People can be arranged to allow the candidate to speak with some of his / her future colleagues.
Vetting / Reference Checking of the final candidates. This step could be managed by HR now, provided they are given in writing what questions to ask from the person to whom the candidate will be reporting to.
Final Negotiations on salary, start date, onboarding details should also be discussed with their Direct Report so proper expectations are set.
Five Selling Techniques That Really Work And Five That Dont
The Best Sales Techniques And Some Of The Least Effective
Who couldnt use an arsenal of effective selling techniques? But there is a lot of conventional wisdom out there that, in reality, doesnt help you make the sale. Here are five of the best sales techniques that really work, as well as five classic go-to selling techniques that may, in fact, be hurting your sales efforts.
Selling Techniques that Work
1. Challenging the Status Quo
Most salespeople see the sales process as a linear process. At some point, it has an end the prospect will choose either you or your competitor. The truth is that those are not the only two end points. Theres another option no decision which is chosen all too often. Studies show that 20 to 60 percent of deals in the pipeline are lost to no decision rather than to competitors. Its only by challenging the status quo that you can get your prospects to see that change i.e., adopting your solution is necessary.
2. Finding Your Value Wedge
How much overlap is there between what you can provide to your prospects and what your competition can provide? Most B2B salespeople admit that overlap is 70 percent or higher. So rather than focusing on that parity area, you should focus on what you can do for the customer that is different from what the competition can do this is your value wedge. Your value wedge must be unique to you, important to the customer, and defensible.
Learn more about how to define your value proposition.
3. Telling Stories with Contrast
Messaging is about telling your companys story in a way that attracts prospects to your doors and turns them into customers. The challenge is that, if youre like most companies, you tell your story in a way that doesnt differentiate you much, if at all. But to create a powerful perception of value, you need to tell both the before story and the after story you need to tell customer stories with contrast. When you tell customer stories, dont be afraid to link data with emotion. Often the best way to do that is to talk about the people who were affected by the challenging environment they were working in. Then talk about how their lives became better, easier, more fun, or less stressful after using your solution.
4. Making the Customer the Hero
Every story has a hero. Who is the hero of your story? Is it your company and/or solution? If the answer is yes, then you need to rework your story and make the customer the hero. The customer is the one who needs to save the day, not you. Your role is that of the mentor. You are there to help your customers see what has changed in their world and how they can adapt and better survive and thrive.
5. Using 3D Props
There are many ways to tell a story. But one extremely effective and underutilized technique is to use 3D props. Props break the pattern of whats expected and can make the prospect sit up and pay attention. Props make a metaphor or analogy tangible. Props create a physical reminder and can continue selling even when youve left the room.
Five Sales Techniques that Dont Work
1. Selling Benefits
Everyone knows you need to sell benefits not features, right? Well, no. If you start your customer conversation with benefits, youre jumping the gun when it comes to how most prospects are looking at their first interactions with you and your company. Remember that 20 to 60 percent of pipeline deals are lost to the status quo. That means that you need to establish a buying vision the case for why the prospect needs to change before your solutions benefits will resonate. That means you need to effectively challenge the status quo and show how the prospects world can change for the better (see Selling Techniques that Work #1).
2. Competing in a Bake-Off
When you position yourself against your competitors, youre competing in a vendor bake-off. Its a spec war and you might gain the upper hand with one feature, but then the competition meets your feature and raises another. In the process, you and your competition are often having a very similar dialogue with the prospect, leading to the dreaded no decision. Instead of talking to the prospect about why us, focus instead on challenging the status quo by getting the prospect to think about why change and why now, and demonstrate the truly unique value of your solution (see Selling Techniques That Work #2).
3. Marketing to Personas
Many marketers use personas to develop messaging. And, on the face of it, it seems to make sense: defining the profile of your prospect will enable you to develop messages targeted to that profile. The problem is that personas are typically defined by who the prospect is demographics and behaviors. But the need to change is not driven by a persona. The fact that a prospect shares similar characteristics with the persona isnt what causes them to re-think their current approach and consider your solution as a new way to solve their problems. Instead of developing messages based on personas, focus on how to convince prospects that the status quo they are standing on is unsafe, then show them how life is better with your solution (see Selling Techniques that Work #3).
According to Wikipedia, an elevator pitch is a short summary used to quickly and simply define a product, service, or organization and its value proposition. And just about every sales organization under the sun spends a lot of time trying to perfect that pitch. The problem is that the standard elevator pitch tells your story not your prospects story. So instead of spending time refining your elevator pitch, focus on building the story that features your customer as the hero (see Selling Techniques That Work #4).
5. Delivering PowerPoint Presentations
The PowerPoint presentation has become the de facto go-to approach for sales meetings. Marketing churns out slides, then salespeople turn out the lights and rely on logo slides, bullet points, and animations to do the selling for them. The problem isnt with PowerPoint itself but with how its used and the right time and place for it. But when youre in intimate, executive conversations, use sales techniques that are visual, and can really make a lasting impact. Instead of spending time refining your slide deck, focus on telling a compelling story and using props to pique your prospects interest (see Selling Techniques that Work #5).
Corporate Visions has developed a portfolio of solutions to help your sales organization develop, refine, and use the sales techniques that will be most effective for your business.
Nothing beats the reality that one gets when you can interact with potential clients face to face physically moving from door to door within a community or household to household, face to face field marketing is also called personal selling or door to door marketing, customers are met directly in order to sell their products, using this method of field marketing we rely on our skills and persuasive abilities. During the period where we get to interact with the client face to face we get more chance to pass across edible information which would be useful to all our customers at that time and it’s also an opportunity for us to get feedback and to gauge your opinion about our business.
I did door-to-door sales for nine years, in hundreds of different cities and towns all across the india. Through long, hard, agonizing trial and error, I eventually developed enough skill that I could take any product into any area on any day and make sales.
In the beginning, I struggled. But when I was about to give up on myself and quit (like 99.9% of people that try door-to-door sales do within their first few days), experienced salesperson to give me a chance to get on track.
What I saw that day changed my life forever.
I watched as the experienced salesperson drove to an area where he had previous sales success, and listened as he explained to me why he parked his car in the exact spot he did to start his day and laid out his exact plan of attack. Within the first 10 minutes, I learned a valuable lesson that not only made my door-to-door sales career much easier, but has also been the key to bringing in millions of dollars in revenue for my own companies, and those of thousands of others I’ve consulted to:
A current customer is the easiest person to make a sale to – many, many times easier (and less expensive) than trying to get new customers.
Most business owners operate a risky, day-to-day, transactional business, believing that the reason for getting a customer is to make a sale. That’s their biggest problem: making nothing more than “a” sale to a customer. After that initial transaction, they simply hope that their product or service or location is good enough that they will get a repeat visit from that customer.
On the other hand, sharp business owners (and door-to-door salespeople!) know that the point to making a sale is to get a customer. We have systems put together to maximize the value of that customer by making future offers to them, so that they buy more of the same product or service, or a different version, or even an entirely different product or service.
In other words, we recognize that a current customer is the easiest person to sell to, and a prospect is the hardest and most-expensive person to sell to. Therefore, we concentrate on maximizing the value of every new customer we get.
If you want to grow your business during these challenging economic times (and even during boom times), your time and effort should be invested in working to turn prospects into customers and retain them to market to in the future. While your marketing is doing its job to get you prospects, you need to be working on turning those prospects into customers. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be:
Inviting Informative Enjoyable
The biggest fear of most new customers is the dreaded “buyer’s remorse.” You want to minimize this as best you can, and if you’ve provided a quality product or service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made, the risk will be lower.
However, returns can still occur. Here are the two most effective ways to deal with this:
Offer to refund money — no questions asked Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product
These offers alone will also lessen the impact of buyer’s remorse, because the customer will trust you more just because you showed the confidence in your product or service to offer these options in the first place.
There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:
Offer a special price as an opportunity for them to test the market. Offer a lower price with a legitimate reason, such as clearing out inventory to pay a tax bill, for your kid’s braces, or another tangible reason. (Added bonus: Customers love you for doing this, because it makes you so much more human to them.) Offer a referral incentive. Offer a smaller, less expensive entry-level product to build trust. Offer package deals. Offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer. Offer extra incentives, such as longer warranties or free bonuses, if they order by a certain date. Offer financing options, if applicable. Offer a bonus if they pay in full. Offer special packaging or delivery. Offer “name-your-own-price” incentives. Offer comparative data or other comparison tools. Offer to let them trade up or upgrade to something better if they want. Offer additional, educational information to help them make the decision.
The options are really only limited by your imagination and marketing skill. You can use these or other ideas to discover what works the best for your specific business, with your specific products, services and target market.
Even if you ever find yourself doing door-to-door sales.
Marketing company in Swargate
Code of Conduct in Journalism
Need for a Code of Conduct
In recent months, the media world has been hit with several scandals related to the way in which they have tried to manipulate the system for their benefit. If in the UK, the Rupert Murdoch owned NewsCorp was caught bribing the police to access personal details of people and to hack into their phones, in Asia, there were several scandals related to the blackmailing of industrial houses in order to stop bad coverage. Further, the fact that paid news or infomercials (commercials passed off information) has dented the reputation of the media houses.
Hence, there is a need for a code of conduct for journalists if the present degenerative trend is to be stopped. Indeed, the need for a code of conduct is becoming stronger by the day as the journalists have been proved as susceptible as anybody has to the lure of money. As the recent scandals show, the media, which is supposed to be the watchdog in a democracy, has been suffering from credibility issues.
How the Code of Conduct Works
The most important reason why the media needs a code of conduct for itself is that the media along with the legislature, executive, and the judiciary is the purveyor of public good and hence, must be above suspicion. The code of conduct can be along the lines of having the journalists declare whether the article that they have published is being paid for by industrial houses or whether the information in the article has been obtained ethically. In other words, the journalists should be scrutinized for unethical practices and made to observe the code of conduct diligently. Apart from this, though there is a need to protect sources since that is the bottom line requirement of journalism, there is also a need to report news in an objective and unbiased manner. The function of the media is not to massage the message and spin the facts but to report them as they are. Hence, the code of conduct must incorporate ethical practices like not concealing key and vital information and declaring whether the information obtained is through ethical means and not through dubious means.
Voluntary Compliance is better than External Control
The other aspect of the code of conduct is that it must be made binding on the journalists and any attempt to circumvent the code must be punished. This calls for an ombudsman for the media who would oversee the various publications and ensure that the media is sticking to the code of conduct. Apart from this, each media house must have internal vigilance wherein the voluntary practice of adhering to the code of conduct must be practiced. As any industry veteran would attest, voluntary compliance is the best way for any industry and hence, like how some newspapers in India do (ex. The Hindu) there must be a Readers Editor and an Internal Auditor to check the content being published.
Closing Thoughts
Finally, prevention is better than cure and hence, the media houses and their unethical practices must be nipped in the bud and not allowed to outgrow the institution. This is the clear message that is being sent from the recent scandals where the institutions have been subsumed because of the presence of some bad apples.
Your Sales Manager / Team have been forecasting certain prospects for months now, yet they cannot get them to move to the next step and make a decision. They believe they have qualified all their requirements, presented a customized proposal with good price points but the prospects still resist moving forward regardless of your Team’s dedicated follow-up, and perhaps even a price reduction to get these deals done.
What is happening here?
There are four main mistakes that can get a Sales Manager / Team into the position of losing to the Status Quo. And these mistakes happen early in the Sales Cycle. Specifically, they have most likely rushed through the Discoveries stage to get to the Proposal / Recommendation. They can’t go backwards at this point now, and actually need to stop and readdress the entire opportunity. Here are four key variables that your Sales Manager / Team most likely did not fully qualify:
They have the wrong person– Right from the start as they did their pre-call research and / or qualified a lead they identified a contact that they suspected would be the Decision Maker for your particular product or service. However, they did not confirm if they were indeed the correct person, or if there were additional stakeholders.
They have the wrong level of authority – In addition to this confirmation, does the identified Decision Maker also have the access to funds and contractual / transactional signing authority? Can they provide an overview of their organization’s Purchasing Process?
If these questions are not posed at the beginning of the Sales Cycle, the Manager will find themselves too far down the road with the wrong contact and risk not knowing how to reach around them or worse, above them. They will have effectively become ‘stuck’.
They have the wrong ‘problem’– In their initial excitement of identifying where a prospect’s ‘pain’ is being experienced they failed to flesh-out any related challenges. Think of that iceberg slide everyone has seen – initial potential problems are fairly easy to spot, but it’s what lies beneath the surface where potentially large corresponding and related areas of opportunities are.
Rushing through Discoveries is a fatal mistake as the chance to fully understand related business challenges is not being optimized. For example, poor fleet management of office equipment affects not only the end users, but Finance, IT and Operations as well. Were all the potential stakeholders spoken with?
They have the wrong timing– Has your Team fully thought through the timing of their Sales Cycle / Proposal? Are they making a recommendation that does not take into account what may be happening at the prospect’s company? For example, what are their prospect’s priorities right now? Are they undergoing an expansion, or closing locations? Are they anticipating new Leadership to be on board shortly? Is the proposal helpful to them, or just another item to be dealt with? Understanding your prospect’s internal pressures and priorities is critical to ensuring your Team is presenting the right proposal, at the right time.
Discoveries is an absolutely critical stage of the Consultative Sales Process and should never be rushed through. This is where you will identify all their areas of ‘pain’ and seek to understand how different departments or areas of their company are interrelated and who all the stakeholders are (perhaps in different offices or even countries). This is the information you will need to fall back on to effectively manage Objections later – i.e. what has changed since you first discussed their challenges?
Without a thorough Discovery you will miss the essential information you need to not just build a better proposal but also build a better relationship as you are demonstrating your interest in solving their problems and not just rushing to make a sale.
It’s not about you, and you need to keep your eyes and ears open and focused on your prospective customer’s problems so you can guide the Sales Cycle to its logical end. Take the time to fully understand their areas of business challenges from their point of view.
If you are unsure of how to properly identify and qualify potential Sales Prospects, outsourcing this function to a company that has broad experience in determining ‘real’ opportunities from those you will only spin your wheels on is a sound option to consider. We will identify the type of Sales Prospect that is most probable to have the type of business challenges your solutions can be aligned to (your Target Market), and coach your Team on a Methodology to follow for a thorough Discoveries process, thus greatly increasing your probability for success!
You Dont Need a Better Sales Process You Need a Better Sales Message
When Sales needs to hunker down and improve its performance, what do you typically hear from sales management?
We need a better sales process.
Then, your sales management team and your sales training experts spin the dial to pick one of the many options available in the marketplace in hopes that it will help you rise above the economic pressures and rapid commoditization of your market.
Unfortunately, many of these programs struggle to deliver the results hoped for. In fact, a few years back, McKinsey & Company documented that 75 percent of the efforts at companies using one of the hottest sales process methodologies in the field solution-selling were deemed to be failures within three years.
Its not about the sales process
Sales processes and methodologies have been around for more than 20 years. Most companies have tried two or three of them. And most sales people have been trained on at least that many. Dont you think maybe something is missing?
Its about having the right messages to fuel your process
Several years ago, we performed a survey of marketing and sales executives. We found that 70 percent of the executives surveyed ranked commoditization or competitive differentiation as their number one threat to growth outside the economy. Why? There are more capable competitors than ever before. And customers are overwhelmed by the amount and complexity of information. As a result, customers, in their confusion, were telling salespeople that they see all the competitors as the same. Your challenge is to avoid commoditization and set yourself apart from the competition. And thats not something that can be accomplished with a new sales process.
Your message is your most strategic competitive asset
Your sales conversations are becoming the last battleground in competitive differentiation. And, your messaging, even more than your methodology, is what matters most in this hypercompetitive environment. In fact, you could argue that your message is your most strategic competitive asset when everything else appears the same.
So, how do you develop messages that make a difference no matter which sales process your organization uses? Corporate Visions can help. Our Power Positioninghelps you find your unique point of view so you can create clear points of differentiation between you and your key competitors.
