Business Coach Sydney
How to 'Sell Your Way Out of the Recession!
We’re continuing with the theme from our previous articles – sales and marketing effort is still a worthwhile investment – especially when people are less frisky with their money.
Recap
We wrote about how it is easier to keep your current
customers and revive old relationships than to find new ones.
We talked about the importance of looking after your customers – this means continuing to provide excellent goods and service and it means providing great customer service, as well (it’s not the same – look after them, make them feel the love – stop laughing, put it into context and say it again)
We talked about selling them some more – making sure they know of your full range and are asked up-sell questions and come back questions and are contacted periodically by your business.
We talked about exploring what else you can do for them – even proposing a gap analysis - what do they buy and what don’t they and doing targeted marketing so they are asked to buy those things they aren’t buying.
A New concept - Activity
Not so new, perhaps but new to these articles (I have been known to bang on about this in sales training and business coaching sessions and I’m sure I’m not the first)
Your marketing/prospecting/selling activity is very important.
How much is your business doing?
Honestly, don’t back away from this question (do you know the answer?)
How many of your business’s potential customers hear a coherent sales message from your business each day?
I will wager that it is less than it could be and less than you’d like it to be and, if you’ve read this far, less than is required for you to be shrugging off all talk of recession with a blithe “not hitting us, mate”.
(Either that, or, like us, you are ambitious for growth, recession or not)
So, what to do about it?
I’m a business coach so don’t expect a magic answer here. The answer is “more”
That’s right, obvious and trite though it may seem, if you do more marketing/prospecting/selling, as long as you are not completely hopeless or your product isn’t completely rubbish or overpriced (and you’ve got this far, right), then you will win more business.
I’ll say it again – do more.
How? Well in ways that are appropriate to your
market and your customers, of course. If you’re an expensive
business coach like me, it’s no use placing an ad in the local paper shouting “DISCOUNT BUSINESS COACHING, MAY ONLY” – it’s not consistent and people will not respond to it.
It would be glib to list “ways to market your business” here – I find those articles boring, so I’m not going to succumb to the temptation.
You know what works for your business, don’t you? If you don’t, get some help – call us or call a marketing agency. We know a couple – call us or email and ask for their contact details – we’ll send them over.
What I will do, is illustrate a new and trendy way to reach your customers, with some supporting evidence.
Video on the web
It’s the new big thing – video on your website or in an email. I’m told by the smart guys at Lights, Camera, Sold that if you have video on your
website, then sales conversion rates are three times those for if you only have text.
Also, in a real estate context (Lights Camera Sold is a real estate-focused video company) the perceived value of house advertised on the web with text increases when you publish photos and increases by a further 6% when you include video.
So video increases your chances of engaging your customers long enough for them to buy something and it increases the perceived value of what you’re selling.
Granted, my evidence is focused around real estate but the trend is clear. Web 2.0 – the interactive Internet – demands more than brochure wear for your website. You must have interactivity, pictures, real information and video is increasingly expected. With the new FTTH investment, expect it to become more so.
I’m attaching an example of what I mean – internet video in an email. I was asked to star in a video testimonial for a business whose services I use regularly (and who is a friend of mine, too). The link here will show you the video (using smart technology from Lights, Camera, Sold) and you can see me looking stupid on camera.
I’m illustrating a couple of things:
• The power of video to make you pay attention (I bet loads of you click through just to see what it’s like – I would)
• The power of seeing real people endorse a product – no actors here (and you can tell, too)
• The power of doing something a bit different and finding an excuse to show it to as many people as possible.
Closing question:
What excuse can you dream up to make contact with your market? And how can you communicate to them in a meaningful way?
Go on, do it.
Sell More Stuff - It's Important
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The Importance of Focus
Planning, Setting Goals and “Why are you Doing it, Anyway?”
Time to cut costs and jobs or time to invest in your business?
Interview with Tim Shaw - Social Media for Small Business
Jon Dale is a Sydney business coach and small business owner. He likes to think of his business as a tool that you can use to make change in your business - to help you grow or get back some control. He believes we all face common problems and that we can learn from what others have done to confront them. He also believes in the power of being disciplined and methodical about applying the principles and strategies he’s learned along the way.
