Face to Face Marketing and Door to Door Marketing 

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.

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Product Development Process – Developing New Market Offerings

Companies first find the target market than segment and then customers. After these companies go about developing products, which may be product modification or it may be a completely new product. Product offerings are increasing every year as consumers are looking for more and more variety of products. Companies which are unable to churn out new products fall back on competition and suffer the consequences. Companies face danger not just from competitors but consumer needs, technology, and product life cycle. New product development has its share of challenges. Research shows that 95 percent of new products fail in USA and in Europe failure rate is 90 percent.

Organizational set up has to be conducive to support new product development. Foremost companies must allocate funds for research and development, the conventional way is the percent of sales technique. Others chose to allow employees dedicate a certain amount of work time on new product development. Companies next have to organize the process of development. This can be done by product managers with new product development experience or by cross functional team with members chosen from various departments having the knack of developing new products.

Nowadays, companies are following stage process for product development.

1. The 1st stage is idea generation that is the search for new products. Companies pay a particular focus on customer needs and demands to decide on the new product. Idea generation can also be done by studying competitor’s product. Companies try to learn why competitor’s product ticks with consumer or what more customers want from that product. Companies also look at top management for idea generation. For example, Steve Jobs of Apple is known to participate actively in an idea generation. Research groups comprising of scientist, patent holders, colleges and universities also serve as the base for idea generation.

2. The 2nd stage is idea screening. Not all new ideas proposed can be converted into products. Companies list ideas into three categories promising ideas, marginal ideas and rejects. Promising ideas are further process by screening committee to be ready for the next stage. Screening should avoid the error where good ideas are dropped due to bias towards the idea generator. Another commonly occurring error is encouragement to a commercially unviable idea. Therefore, extra precautions are necessary during the screening process.

3. The 3rd stage begins when ideas move into the development process. Here a product idea is converted into several product concepts. Out of several product concepts, the one which looks fit is then placed against competitors to finalize marketing and positioning strategy. Product concept is introduced to a focus group of customer in a form of proto-type to understand their reaction.

4. The 4th stage involves developing of marketing strategy for new product. The marketing strategy involves evaluation of market size, product demand, growth potential, profit estimate in first few years. Further marketing strategy plan is developed with the launch of product, selection of distribution channel and budgetary requirements for the 1st year.

5. The 5th stage involves the development of the business model around the new product. Business models start with estimation of sales, frequency of purchase, and nature of business. Next estimation of cost and expense involve in production and distribution of new product. In that basis profit estimations are reached. Discounted cash flow and other methods are used to understand feasibility of new product.

6. The 6th stage involves the actual production of new product. Here more than one possible product are created, from proto-type to finalized products are produced. Decisions are taken from operation point of view whether is technically and commercially feasible to continue production. If analysis is showing cost not within the estimate then project is abandoned.

7. The 7th stage involves market testing of new product. The new product is ready with brand name, packaging, price to capture space in consumer’s mind.

8. The 8th stage involves launching of product across target market backed by a proper marketing and strategy plan. This stage is called commercialization phase.

Introduction of new product is part of survival technique for any firm. And with very high failure rate companies have to follow a scientific process to create new market offerings.

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Articales from http://www.managementstudyguide.com

Retail Category Management

Category Management

The mechanism of selling merchandise in small quantities from a fixed location directly to the individuals for their end use is called as retailing. The fixed location can be anything like super market, hyper market, department stores and so on.

Merchandise – Merchandise refers to the various products available at the store for sale to the end-users. It is the display of the merchandise which actually attracts the customers into the store.

Let us suppose all the products available at the store are stocked at one place only. Would such a display impress the customers ?

The answer is NO. Presentation of products is essential.

As a solution to the above problem, the retailers came out with the concept of category management.

The concept of segregating similar products into separate groups is called as category management. The complete range of merchandise available at the retail store is divided into separate product categories consisting of related products.

Categories in a retail store refer to the various groups which consist of products belonging to a similar family. The retailer smartly displays all the related products together as distinct categories for his as well as the end-user’s convenience.

Example

Toothpaste, Tooth Brush, Mouth wash, Tongue cleaner, soap, shampoo, body wash, cosmetics etc, can be displayed together under a single category called personal care section.

Vegetables, Fruits, Tinned Food, Juice, meat, dairy products form a single category.

Certain retail stores also classify their merchandise into women, men as well as kids category.

Department stores also have separate categories like:

Apparels, Footwear, Jewellery, Electronic appliances, Mobiles, Watches, Home furnishings, house hold appliances and so on.

Category

• The complete range of merchandise at the store is divided into separate groups consisting of related products. Such groups are called as categories.
• Each category is treated as a separate business entity.
• The retailer calculates the profit and loss of each category separately.
• Each category contributes in its own way to the profitability of the store.
• The retailer does not promote a single brand but the complete category.
• The concept of categories has gone a long way in developing a strong bond between the retailer and the supplier.

Why Separate Categories ?

• The classification of products into separate category benefits the customers and makes their shopping a pleasurable experience.
• The customers as per their interest, pocket and need can walk up to the respective categories, check out the various options and decide what to buy and what not to buy.

Eight Step Process of category management

• Define the Category

The retailer must sort out the similar products which can be included in a single category. He must make sure that the products bear a strong connection with each other.

• Role of the Formed Category
• Evaluate the current Performance of the category
• Decide targets for the category.
• Devise an overall Strategy to promote the category.
• Formulate specific steps to increase the sales of the category.
• Implementation of the above steps.
• Review and feedback.

However some retailers find the above process cumbersome and only follow the below five steps:

• Form and Review the category.
• Decide the target consumers of the particular category.
• Planning and formulating strategies for the category.
• Implementation of the above strategies
• Results Evaluation

Category Captains

The retailer generally appoints one individual who supplies all the products of a single category. This individual also called as supplier is known as a category captain.

The suppliers are equally responsible for the category and contribute their level best to maximize the revenue of the particular category. He works in close coordination with the retailer and is responsible for the profit and loss of his assigned category.

7 More Sales Core Competencies

In 2008, I posted two blogs covering 14 of the 21 core competencies identified by the Objective Management Group Sales Person Assessment.  Between then and now, much has taken place that I’ve written about, and as I fly from Atlanta to Portland, Oregon, I have some time to write about the remaining 7 core competencies.  I know that you’ve been waiting with baited breath.

1.  Establishes early bonding and rapport:  The ability to quickly establish confidence and trust in the first meeting, rather than taking several meetings to develop a strong relationship.

2.  Uncovers actual budgets:  The skill and the consistency in knowing what the investment parameters are going to be so that you eliminate money, time or resource objections at time of presentation.

3.  Discovers why prospects will buy:  As elementary as this sounds, most sales people do not find out exactly “why” a prospect will buy. They know what is important, they have an idea of what a prospect will consider or look at, but that is entirely different than knowing exactly why someone will buy.  You know that you have this competency when you get decisions instead of “think it overs”.

4.    Qualifies proposals and quotes.  Those that have this competency and execute it consistently will make sure that they will get a decision or, at a minimum, a very clear future once they present.  Those with this competency only make proposals and quotes when they know that the prospect is committed to buying.

5.  Gets commitments and decisions:  This competency manifests itself prior to making presentations.  It needs to happen once you have uncovered the compelling reasons someone will buy, you have their commitment to buy, you know the budget issues and you know that you are talking to the decision maker(s).  Once these items have been covered, a great sales person simply asks the prospect to make a decision, yes or no, when the presentation is completed.  More importantly, they make the commitment to decide stick.

6.  Possesses a strong desire for success in selling:  this is defined as being passionate about your success.  It is someone that enjoys selling.  Someone with the appropriate desire is someone that looks forward to generating new relationships and is passionate about pursuing and achieving their goals and the goals of the company.  They don’t just set goals; they achieve them.

7.  Commits to succeed in selling:  I have identified three types of commitment:  1) WIT: Whatever it Takes.  2) WITALAIITU:  Whatever it Takes as Long as it Isn’t Too Uncomfortable.  3) Coast to Coast: When they are just going through the motions and coast from the beginning of the day to the end of the day.  However, there is only one level of commitment that contributes to extraordinary success:  WIT.

Think about these 7 core competencies and how they relate to your ability to execute an effective sales process.  These 7, along with the other 14, should be considered the “root causes” of your sales issues.  If you are to continue your improvement in sales, then you might consider working at the correct end of your problems:  Theses 21 core competencies of selling.

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