There is nothing more time consuming and off putting than either getting too close too quickly or spending time following up on leads with prospects that are just not ready to buy yet.

Spending time with current or potential customers that are in no position to make a decision is not a great use of your company’s valuable selling assets. Instead they should be focusing their time on leads which are ready to start looking seriously at what you are offering and don’t require “converting” because they are already aligned with your model as shown by your marketing and their continued interest, so it’s just a question of details.

Likewise, diving in with a phone call too early to new prospects can push them away, especially those that are unsure or still in what I call the “grey” transition phase, where a problem exists and they are not entirely convinced of what they should do or where they should go to get it fixed.

The pipeline is not just a funnel, its wave

The cycle that prospects move through to become customers reminds me of the idea adoption cycle where people have to first realise that there is a problem and then second understand that you are the best choice to help them. This moves in phases of understanding where knowledge is the key to being able to transition each phase.

Unconscious problem, conscious problem, unconscious solution, conscious solution.

Likewise, prospecting and selling should follow a similar process, using marketing and automation to generate consciousness about the problems that a prospect may be experiencing and guide them through the phases on a journey to a solution with you as the supplier.

You can use technology to help you ride the waves

Today’s marketing and its supporting technology along with more traditional methods gives customers many opportunities to meet and interact with your company. By blending multiple channels together and using technology you can deliver the right messages, consistently, to your prospects and customers over a specified period of time on auto pilot.

You are creating a workflow which triggers a sequence of events or activities requiring limited human intervention and allowing your prospects to decide how close they get to you before deciding to take things further.

Just because somebody filled in a lead form does not mean they are ready to buy and for the majority of leads that’s probably true.  Instead they are all at difference phases of the idea adoption cycle and our use of technology is to help people transition these waves without becoming and obstacles to them.

The main purpose is to build and reinforce the foundations of a relationship

Even though you may be able to technically deliver the features, advantages and benefits of hat you are offering your marketing will not be effect until it moves into the zone of creating a relationship founded on trust and rapport.

Your campaign sequence therefore should build on a relationship step by step and carefully balance your sales messages with the kind of content that truly does build a relationship and that is helping people to understand who you are and how you can genuinely help.

It’s not just the content the matters, it’s the frequency too.  Blasting people down with a wave of emails, letters and other messages which may offer good values is a sure fire way of overwhelming and undermining any relationship that you may have built up in the beginning. You’ve just rolled the dice and ended up on a snake, instead of moving up the ladder.

Be clear about how often people will receive communications from you so that they know what to expect.  A short course may be a 7 day continual email / snail mail combination package where they have specifically requested to receive the content of this period. Other communications and newsletters may only go out monthly or quarterly.

Once you have permission to send, it does not give you license to abuse, so use it wisely and carefully.

The phases of a campaign that builds a relationship

Getting to know you

Your first communications should acknowledge and respond to their request, clearly stating who you are, why they are receiving this and what they can expect.

Delivering value

Then you provide useful quality information and keep delivering.  This could include joint ventures, news and opinion from your niche and insightful research.  The number of quality communications you send during this phase should be representative of the value of the product or service you are delivering.

This is a great way to position you as the expert and deliver some really powerful marketing and show your prospects and customers just how much you know about this topic.

Remember that the quality of your product or service will likely be judged by the quality of the information you provide.

Opportunities to buy

Here you get to promote a product or service, only once you’ve got the foundation of a relationship in place. Again they will be information based and could even offer comparisons, reviews, customer success stories.

If it’s not your product share your own view about why you are recommending it

Putting it all together

In amongst these core emails you should also consider putting into your sequence answers to common questions or objections so that you can cover them as part of your sequence.

Always have research that backs up your views as doing this will help to uncover the unspoken questions, concerns and objections that prospects may have and bring the sales much closer to your door.

Your campaign should also make use of alternative media such as text, video or audio that has you and other expert’s discussing or debating a specific topic.

The time, order, content and media should be a carefully planned psychological sequence that connects you with your audience in a compelling way.

The Automation Technology

There are a few technical components that you are going to need to get this working.

The first is CRM system which enables you to capture prospect and customer data and profile them.  There are some excellent packages our there and some very powerful open source technologies that you can adapt for your purpose.

Next you will need an auto-responder that is capable of broadcasting over multiple channels such as email, snail mail, social media, mobile sms etc.  This maybe a blend systems of a single piece of technology.

Lastly you will need a fulfilment operation to ensure that snail mail and other physical media gets packed and sent to your prospect or customer.

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3. Save Marketing Money And Avoid Confusing Customers – Get Your Contact Details Correct

Right now either businesses are spending a ton of marketing desperately trying to generate leads any which way they can or they’ve stopped marketing all together.

Either way its not going to be good for your business, but there are ways to get your message to market that are low cost and performance based and that is the only place where you should be spending time and money right now.

Pay-Per-Click / Pay-Per-Lead – Only serve adverts in areas that you can compete and satisfy (especially if you’re a local business) and use the Google optimizer to pay only for conversions (lead that take action) not just leads.

Email – DON’T SEND OUT BLAST EMAILS, instead working with a publication in your niche and have a mail with an incentive sent out to that audience which has opted in to receive communications and ensure that the replies (from readers) go back to you and follow up each lead with the promised incentive. Always try and run a test first and negotiate the price you pay.

Newsletters – the same can be done with newsletters as with email. You’re looking to advertise (the right way) in relevant and niche based newsletters (typically email ezines) where people can respond directly to you.

Article Marketing – DON’T GENERATE TONS OF USELESS ARTICLES JUST FOR BACK-LINKS, instead write articles for printed publications or on-line sites in your niche where you can help the audience and offer an incentive to generate interest.

Social Media – DON’T RELY ON THIS AS A BIG MONEY GENERATOR, instead see it as being over rated for business building (for most businesses), but realise that you can use paid advertising on sites like Facebook which do convert well using the same principals as email and newsletter marketing.

Snail Mail – Yep, it is not dead and still works (the right way) and it’s the best way of creating deeper relationships as its seen as a closer touch (more personal and human) than its digital counter parts so blend it into your marketing strategy.

Your content should be used to engage, facilitate, nurture and educate so be careful that you don’t start “selling” too early or you may just burn those leads.

Most of all be very targeted and measure your results and avoid megaphone mud slinging sales and marketing approaches.

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2. Measuring Marketing Effectiveness
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Despite these conventional beliefs selling and marketing is more akin than most believe, and effective business development is best achieved when selling and marketing forms a coalition to achieve the same outcome.

Topics covered in the guide include:

• The problems associated with conventional selling and marketing.
• Why buyers have the advantage and how to align yourself with it.
• Using positioning as a powerful sales and marketing tool.
• The big overlap in sales and marketing ignored by business.
• Increasing your offers value and creating more opportunity.
• Knowing what is generating profitable results and what isn’t
• Using conversation as an effective sales, marketing and innovation tool.

“This guide is just great, highly practical and full of gems.”

– Ron Holland

Top Biz Guru & Billion Dollar Biker

Nic Windley has been a professional sales person and marketer for over 15 years since graduating from University with a Degree in Electronics. He has worked in both small and large companies and held roles from product manager to country manager and now consultant, online marketer and business strategist.

The fifty page change paper will be sent free of charge to anyone who visits http://www.nicwindley.co.uk/triangle-of-change.html and fills in the download request form.

###

Notes to editor:

To download a biography for Nic Windley in PDF format;

http://www.nicwindley.co.uk/wp-content/files/nic_windley_biography.pdf

To download relevant Questions and Answers in PDF format;

http://www.nicwindley.co.uk/wp-content/files/nic_windley_questions_answers.pdf

To download this release in PDF format;

http://www.nicwindley.co.uk/wp-content/files/sales_marketing_coalition_press_release.pdf

To download a low resolution JPG image of our guide for your website or magazine;

http://www.nicwindley.co.uk/wp-content/files/14_Secrets_Guide_Low_Res.jpg

To download a high resolution PNG image of our guide for your website or magazine;
http://www.nicwindley.co.uk/wp-content/files/14_Secrets_Guide_High_Res.png

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When I finally sat down and actually researched and proved to myself what worked and what did not, things started to change.

This is a great interview between scientists on why evidence is so important and its why marketing and selling is really a science, not some overly creative trip down the river of blowing your sales and marketing budget and wondering what it’s all doing for you.  Not everything that glitters is gold.

This is also the reason why you need a scientific and systematic approach to your business development, as I use in my consulting work.

Claude Hopkins book on Scientific Advertising is a must read and demonstrates these key principles in the business of selling and marketing.

You can download a copy here;

http://www.nicwindley.co.uk/marketing-consultant.html

What evidence or proof do you base your business, sales and marketing decisions on ?

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I feel there could not have been a better time than now for a hung parliament to give us the much needed focus on those important debates that will be the deciding factors in navigating our way out of this mess.

This is especially so when you consider the lowly view that the majority of people have of politicians and the helplessness many feel with their lack of governing ability and childish antics.

And for most businesses with a management team or board of directors this is now the time to put personal issues and individual campaigns to one side and to work together, taking rounded decisions in the best interests of everybody, not just a one sided view.

This is not the time for beliefs, it is the time for truths, so here are a few political truths as to why many fear a hung parliament based on what I see is misplaced belief.

With so much of the media and staunch party voters including political figures such as Ken Clarke and Roy Hatttersley warning of impending disaster and those that have lived through hung parliaments wishing they never had to do it again, it’s no surprise that things look bad.

Veterans blame the lack of a governing majority for the problems during the last hung parliament in the 70’s, but many forget that Ted Heath of the Conservatives had been prime minister for the first three and a half years and faced traumas as great as Wilson and Callaghan’s time.

The 70’s were doomed to be problematic because of much greater issues than those in the Commons at the time. In fact it was the minority Labour government that eventually managed to introduce some significant social reforms which saw things coming under control by the late 70’s.

Whenever there are landslide majorities or victories, all attention switches to the drama that ensues as party figures bravely battle to win votes.  It’s yet another gladiatorial set of high drama, much the same that football provides for many, diverting them away from the realities of what really needs to be done.

It creates hope and raises expectations, causes unhealthy alliances to be formed and takes peoples focus away from what’s going on right under their noses and the needs for change even when the party just seems like it will never end.  Eventually they start believing their own hype and stop doing what they promised, the end is insight.

If there had been a hung parliament in 1997 a revolution of sorts would have followed.  Blair would have been forced to introduce electoral reform which would have brought together the progressive forces in British politics at that time.

Now is the time to bring together the forces in your business, its people, its customers and suppliers and to work together for the best interests of everybody.  Listen and act objectively and don’t base what you do on beliefs composed of greed and fear.

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If you are considering running a marketing campaign and you may also be changing your telephone number, moving address or updating any other information around the same time, then please think carefully before you do or you may be incurring a lot of unnecessary cost and customer confusion.

I’ve now had two customers and suppliers over the last month that have had a ton of marketing material printed up, only to find out that the telephone number they thought they had purchased was allocated elsewhere.

This is a costly and frustrating problem that could be avoided by checking and confirming details before committing to printing. Alternatively postpone your print work if your details cannot be guaranteed and wait until you have everything settled before proceeding with any work.

My advice is to make sure you have confirmation of your new number or address in writing and working before proceeding with any printing work, as it could cost you a lot of money and confuse your customers if you send out incorrect information.

Why not have your old number and post rerouted to the new location until you have it all settled. An even better or more flexible method is to have a national number or regional address.

A low to no cost non-geographic telephone number such as an 0845 number, or a P.O. Box or serviced office address is a good way of having a permanent fixed number or address while giving you the flexibility to move around and change your local telephone number or move in and out of premises as your businesses develops.

All you have to do is decide where calls and post are to be redirected which is a fairly simple and low cost decision and far less disruptive and confusing than getting the information wrong.

Website and email addresses can also be changed without loss of communications, traffic and rankings if redirects are done correctly.

It just takes a little planning and can make all the difference to you and your customers.

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Other periods in your life things are just plain difficult and nothing will get better until something changes and if you need change in your life then only you can make it happen, but you have to consider some very tough consequences.

The reason I wrote the Change Paper was because I’d been through some pretty tough experiences and while I was going through them nobody seemed to have any credible answers, apart from ring more people, see more people, stop being lazy blah! Blah! BLAH!

Things were a mess and got real nasty at times and I soon realised that the only way it was going to get better was if I changed something. But what ?

I was a knowledgeable guy and yet somehow the companies I ended up working for had me turned into a phone dialling robot and dare devil gate crasher of business parks and receptions. What the….!

Problems are good as they force you to look for answers if you are prepared to face the truth.

Where things were actually better, my career always came to a plateau and I realised that moving on up was going to require me kissing some real butt or becoming something I just wasn’t. Argghh….what the hell do I have to do to get around this ?

I had an itch to do bigger and better things and had to learn how to make things work differently as I just couldn’t find anybody with a credible strategy that I could actually use to build a business or better life.

This was a cross roads, I take the red pill and hunt for answers to my questions or the blue pill and simply carry on simply doing what I was doing before in the hope that things would eventually change for the better.

The upshot was that I learned that conventional thinking and a lack of alternative strategies kept me doing what I had always done, throwing up barrier after barrier, so I had to go searching for some answers.

Finally I came across a series of ideas, principles and strategies that started to change things for me in a way that I had always thought was possible, allowing me to use my knowledge and skills much more effectively and to get results that I could actually measure and define. It was an engineer’s dream come true, where reality starts to become a mathematical probability.

What I learned was that for those people in commodity markets where there is either a ton of “me too” suppliers already established, or that there is no real knowledge or skills that you can communicate effectively which can differentiate you and keep competitors out then you’ve got some tough times ahead even if the “going” may look rosy right now.

Change is inevitable and is never the real problem it’s the FEAR of change that is.

Everything changes, and if you can’t build a ring fence around yourself or your position in the market, then I would bet money that somebody’s going to come along and burn down your house, and all that money will just go somewhere else unless you’re very lucky, and we all know that luck alone is not a strategy, but we all need a little.

Most of us have been forced to do conventional selling and marketing because that is all everybody knows. Sometimes it works, but in a competitive, established, change resistant market it’s a route to nowhere.

I’ve always loved learning and especially loved being involved with leading (not bleeding) edge technology. In fact while I was at school I was so into my electronics and ahead of other students in my class that the science teacher had me taking a class on electronics.  Cool!

Later on I became a mentor to younger kids that had learning difficulties at school and turned around a lad who was struggling with his reading, not because he couldn’t read, but because he couldn’t relate to it or understand why he should bother.

Things happen for a reason if you embrace them and triggers fire bullets into new trajectories.

That was my first lesson in persuading resistant people and making a life changing connection. After the year was out his parents came up to me beaming that their son had come on in leaps and bounds and couldn’t believe how well he could now read. It was a great feeling to have been of such service and it’s something that I did instinctively without understanding how or why.

It was probably this event combined with some other significant triggers that got me involved in business, as well as my earlier apple selling days and the experiences of my family, many of whom had a variety of life experiences and ventures into working for themselves.

There are a ton of stories to tell here, which include losing the family home, having the banks force the closure of a family business, selling up to gangsters that literally threatened us out, almost going bankrupt and a whole lot more. When your down, life seems to just keep on kicking.

Anyhow, I got my degree (in electronics if you didn’t guess) and then pursued a career in sales and marketing but didn’t realise just how much of what we were doing was focused on the products we represented or sales techniques, battling with objections, pushing for orders, fancy marketing and just plain bad management.

There was just not enough focus on the problems faced by the customer or working to better understand how we could deliver more service or value to that customer. Something I now know a lot about, especially with some of the other businesses I’ve built.

At times it seems that everybody just wants a slice of the pie, but few are actually willing to really understand what they needed to do to claim it, apart from fighting each other for it and talking big.

Surely we’ve left our caveman days behind us by now and there are better and smarter ways of doing things ?

Squabbling over the same piece of pie is both energy sapping and time consuming and in the long run nobody wins.

Yeah, if you were to look into the past you’d find plenty of groups and economies that became rich (I purposely didn’t use wealthy) because they took riches from elsewhere using force. But over time they always lose in the long run. It’s not a strategy for building a better future world and we should be learning from these mistakes not repeating them. Sigh…

The best companies I’ve studied and dealt with always deliver value, and a lot of it. Just take a look at the supermarket John Lewis in the UK that not only delivers value to its customers but also understands how to distribute value to its staff and treat its suppliers as fairly as possible.

So yes, something does have to change and these outdated attitudes are no way to build a future for our selves or our businesses. Do you remember what the number one question is that any customer is always asking themselves ? Yes, it’s “why should I buy from you” ? And plain simply few companies actually do a great job of answering that simple but powerful question.

My experiences are certainly not isolated from the feedback I’ve received and in fact just the other day I got off the phone from a colleague who is still in one of the technology industries I left as an employee.

He’s a good guy and his story confirmed my beliefs and got me mad, but….

When you’ve got the pain of a bad experience it gets multiplied when others suffer.

Apart from agreeing with most of my beliefs he confirmed to me that the marketing does absolutely nothing for the sales team in terms of leads and so the sales people are once again forced to spend all of their time generating leads and trying to close sales with little support in the way of resources or good motivation and management skills.

Oh, there is a team of product managers that do have a marketing type function however all they seem to do each day is spend their time forwarding on product releases to the sales team when they would be better off trying to understand how their products could be applied to different customers and identifying markets for development with the sale team. Even better they could actually be helping to generate some leads.

Instead the sales team is being stretched to the Max and management is leaning down heavily on them to deliver everything. They lead with fear believing that their sales force is not motivated.

If they sales team really was unmotivated it’s simply because they get poorly treated by management, when what they really need is leadership.

In fact it’s getting to the point where they are struggling for numbers in other parts of the business so they’re adding extra pressure onto my friend and his team to deliver more with even less. And just wait until you find out just how much less. It’s shocking, and its why I eventually quit my JOB.

Those management dummies that cannot change are the ones that need their butts kicking.

Every hour of every day management are calling for updates and status reports on deals which is just ridiculous because they believe that their sales people are slacking or are just plain lazy when really its because management has no idea what’s really going on.

There’s no plan, just fear for their positions and jobs and instead of getting the basics right first they’ve got their sales people focusing on deals they have little to no chance winning. It’s crazy, as they are now competing against the very same manufacturers who’s equipment they are reselling and who are targeting the same big accounts. Its total lunacy because these manufacturers can sell this equipment cheaper and have the engineering resources to win deals (design ins).

All management can see are the big accounts and big numbers, but they are totally blind to the truth.

During the industrial revolution and for the most part up until the last 20 years businesses in many sectors and especially the technology sectors have lead with product first, but markets have changed and they become saturated with choice so hammering sales people does not get results.

You have to change your strategy, sooner rather than later.

So what are these bright sparks doing to motivate their sales staff during these tough times (this is happening during the 2008-2010 recession). Yes, they’ve reduced their basic salary AND taken away any bonuses and now they are wanting them to deliver more. Hello, is anybody home…?

I do see that bonuses and commission are a motivator as well as destructive as there are sales people that will do anything to get a sale even if their product or services is a pile of crap, so as long as what you are doing is adding value and helping customers then commission and bonuses are a good thing, but if you’re just fighting over the sample slice of pie, or don’t care what happens to your customer then its going to get nasty.

Listen up, the word is out and change is coming, either get on the train or get run over by it.

The sad fact is that my friend knows his customers and their problems AND what they really need. In fact he’s put forward a lot of sensible ideas, but guess what, they’re just being ignored and the same old bull crap keeps getting re-spun in the drier.

He’s a good guy and has some great ideas about how to improve things but nobody’s listening and his enthusiasm is slowly dwindling and because he can’t afford to rock the boat too much as he’s got to be careful about pushing things to hard because of life’s priorities, so things are just not changing,

So the upshot is that this idiotic company has lost the input of a good team member and I’m sure when the opportunity comes he will be jumping ship, sailing to islands greener and plentiful.

The people closest to your customers, often have some fabulous ideas. It’s a shame they are all too often overlooked and that people refuse to embrace any necessary changes soon enough.

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Easter celebrations are the modern day equivalents of a Pagan festival.

While most people both religious and non-religious celebrate the coming of spring, it is the religious folk that celebrate Jesus’s resurrection during a feast which comes at the end of Lent, a period of fasting and patience.

The general symbolic story of the death of the son (sun) on a cross (the constellation of the southern cross) and his rebirth, overcoming the powers of darkness, is a story that echoes from the ancient world where there are plenty of parallels to be drawn and rival resurrected saviours.

Bunnies are a leftover from the pagan festival of Eostre, a great northern goddess whose symbol was a rabbit or hare and the exchange of eggs is an ancient custom celebrated by many cultures.

The egg symbolises new life or rebirth, just like a chick being born and the bunny is one of the most prolific creators of new life on the planet, you’ve heard the saying “at it like rabbits”, so the rabbit make the ideal egg distributor today.

Today’s Easter bunnies and eggs are in fact a new part of that celebration which builds on centuries of storytelling as it was only at the beginning of the 19^th century that German confectioners started making chocolate eggs and bunnies as gifts and the rest is history.

So what can we learn from this ?

Keep finding new ways to tell your story

Everything needs new life in order for it to live on. Just like the egg the Easter bunny distributes, your marketing should be a shell which carries new life in the form of interesting and smart ideas
which you can communicate in ways that are easy to understand.

People love it when you give them what they really want

When you give people what they want, just like the chocolate bunnies and Easter eggs more people will want more of what you have to offer. Easter would not be such a formidable period for business if it was not for the love of chocolate.

Marketing is a story and words are your most powerful marketing tool

Easter is a small story within a much bigger story, which supports a core theme. Your marketing and communications should do the same without the gimmicks, puns, tag lines and tricks. It should reach out and connect with your audience at an emotional level.

Your marketing and your business should inform, educate entertain and NEVER bore

Easter is a period of fun and festivities, celebrating the coming of all things new with chocolate, gifts, parties, food and drink. People are reminded why they celebrate it and much gets written and talked about. There is a buzz in the air, at school, the office and home.

Find the starving market and you’ll find customers feasting on your products and services

Feasting comes naturally after a famine, so if you find a market that is starving for affection, service or product which you can deliver then there will be a feast on what your business has to offer. Find the problem or a current trend and build your business around that.

Smart packages will help your product or service stand out and command a better price

There are dozens of manufacturers of chocolate eggs and bunnies yet they all manage to sell their products by catering to different parts of a broader market, such as organic chocolate, dark chocolate, decorated chocolate and packaged in different boxes and with different extras like sweets and gifts to make each one different.

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For years bosses and trainers have lied to sales people and themselves about cold calling.

They regale stories of smashing down doors and dialling for dollars and how its an act of bravery that only warriors and hunters engage in, who hack their way through the jungle of barriers to get to the budget treasure which is buried deep in the customers company tomb and guarded by the evil spirit known as the decision maker.

Returning triumphant after defeating many foe and forcing the evil spirit to submit and finally relinquish the budget treasure they are greeted by rapturous applause by their employer.

Ask any sales person for the truth today and they will tell you that things just don’t work like that anymore and focusing on cold calling as your lead generation strategy is an act of suicide in this day and age especially if you’re going to survive for the long term.

Today’s statistics show that it’s a waste of a sales persons time and I’m a big believer in this as I’ve been there and done it and seen its effectiveness change rapidly and its why I wrote the Triangle Of Change guide.

Statistically You Cannot Make The Sales You Need On Pure Cold Calling

In order to get 1 sale based on these optimistic response rates you would have to make a staggering 1,600+ cold calls if you had 1 conversation in every 10 calls, and 10% of those turned into an actual meetings from which 25% converted into an opportunity and 25% of those into a sale.

If that sales person was banging out 50 calls per day over 20 working days in a month they may get

That’s roughly a sale every 1.25 months which would equate to 9.6 customers in a year if you’re lucky.  I still think its optimistic.

This does not even include things like all the additional meetings that are actually required along with administration and time involved in managing and organising plus everything else that goes into brining a sale to a close and dealing with your competition.

Businesses that are still focusing on this activity instead of creating great products and services and understanding how to communicate them effectively are either plain greedy or just stupid.

Cold Calling Is Another One Of Those Myths As Financially It Just Makes No Sense

The continual divide and confusion about what selling and marketing is actually for and how its done is the real problem which is why I wrote the Change Paper as it describes a strategy for blending sales and marketing together which is way more effective than conventional thinking.

The average sales person earns around £40K, and I earned £80K+ in direct sales, so why would you pay someone this sort of money and have them waste their time on cold calling ?

You either wouldn’t pay them at all or you would have them on a commission only basis which is absolute insanity for that person if they cannot be guaranteed to receive any quality leads on a regular basis.  I know because I’ve been there too.

The same numbers could be said about conventional networking which I will also get onto one day.

There Are Better Lead Generation Strategies But Few Do It Well

The use and effectiveness of cold calling needs to be change.

As a rough estimate only 3% of any given market is actually looking for your product or service and they are likely engaged with a competitor or with you already.

The later you enter into the foray the less likely you are to actually get any real business so the only way to stack the odds in your favour are to engage much earlier in the process.

That is where positioning comes in and where intelligent communication takes over.

Your goal should be to establish yourself as the most credible source of supply and to be there when your prospect is ready to buy.

The problem with that is you are either doing conventional marketing or selling and its not getting you anywhere.

Instead you need to find a middle ground where you develop intelligent communications with your key audiences which keep a valuable channel open giving you the opportunity to be there when your prospect needs you.

Some people refer this as demand creation, I prefer to use AIDA and work on getting peoples attention, interest, desire and earning the right to ask for action so that when the time comes you will be there when they are ready to make a decision.

The Sales And Marketing Middle Ground Is The Only Way Forward

Its a blend of selling and marketing that facilitates buy-in and must serve your prospects as much as it serves you.

For those companies forcing lead generation and selling onto their sales people expecting them to “do the business” you are doing your people a disservice.  When sales people are not given quality leads to achieve their targets the company faces some big issues; a) higher costs per sales b) high turnover of people c) closure.

If you take a keen interest in developing a system to feed your sales people with leads then the opposite happens and you get increased revenue, improved productivity, better relationships, more credibility and an improved business environment.

Your allowing your people to do what they do best and that’s give your prospects and customers more of what they actually want, and that’s not more of the same bull that everybody else is producing.

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They’re painful and costly experiences but I learned far more from them than I had done at any other point in my working life.

You can’t avoid the mistakes, so make them as they will make you more effective.

I’d had a pretty good career and not had many problems and earned some good money but my last employed role in corporate life was becoming an absolute nightmare, full of aggression, politics and just darn right bad strategy, while at the same time I could see things changing in the outside world, on the streets if you like, and I wanted to be a part of it.

I needed a way out but didn’t know what to do or how I could truly serve others.

An opportunity came along which looked pretty good from the outset but things soon went wrong and I paid dearly for it.

Follow what’s right for you not because it glitters.

This last move into a self employed position was money motivated and was an investment into another business, not really my own, I had a funny feeling that things were not right after being there for a while but I refused to listen to myself as I thought that other people more experienced in this sector knew better.

It wasn’t long before I realised that I had been turned into a commodity. We were in a market full of incumbent suppliers with a story that sounded pretty good, but didn’t really fit with the customers at that time and there was a mass of alternative sources of supply coming from more than one supply chain.

We were doing all the same old things that everybody else was doing and there was just no way that we were going to cut through the market clutter doing that. It died.

Don’t stop doing what works for you.

When I look back over my earlier career at the most effective parts I realised that I hadn’t been like everybody else. I had been able to stand out and stand up for something I believed in and found ways to get that across. It was a natural thing which I had done instinctively but wasn’t conscious of what I was doing and how I did it at the time.

It’s what also makes me a difficult employee for companies that just want people to do as they are told, or are not open and flexible or have similar beliefs and attitudes.

In fact so effective was it I actually got my first boss moved out of the way as my customer raved on about me to the MD, after I rescued a deal that was collapsing, and gave my boss such a bad rap for trying to sabotage it, that they moved him to one side (a job for the boys) and later offered me a loftier position, which I declined.

Anyway back to the world of self employment. So now I’m starting to panic as this opportunity has gone stale on me and I’m in a bit of a mess. I got myself some work on the side and tried to figure out what to do next.

I decided to pick up where I’d left off with some of the things I had been doing over my earlier career which involved sales and marketing and specifically the web and decided that it was a cool place to try and find out what I wanted to do.

Sales and marketing is probably at its most confused point in history right now as there are just so many beliefs, channels and techniques and “general” sales and marketing continues to prevail and its ideas are being spread across these expanding communication channels causing more confusion.

Stop procrastinating and get involved.

Various things started to happen as I played around with a few ideas and ran a ton of tests and experiments to confirm my own beliefs and what I had been studying.

What had shocked me the most about sales over my career was the lack of information, strategy and help to find the customer the right solution.

The same was true about marketing and I was convinced and had demonstrated on a few occasions that sales and marketing were one and the same beast and that it was so different to general beliefs, but I needed to understand just how to make it work more effectively.

While employed you forget how much is done by others because of the resources and skills in place which you can call on at any time to solve a problem or work on a project. It’s easy to take that kind of thing for granted.

Realising how little I actually knew, because I had learned so much and could see what I needed to do to complete the picture I was faced with yet another hurdle.

Due to limited resources and funds I had to do everything myself and on shoestring budget.

I panicked in the face of all this stuff I was being forced to learn and started to find all sorts of excuses or problems and was getting a lot of stick from people around me.

This just slowed everything down and when your brain starts swimming about like this it’s very difficult to focus on anything. Procrastination kicks in and things become a hard slog.

But I stuck at it.

Don’t be scared of the complexity, it gets less complex with experience.

I took over a small website that had only sold a few hundred pounds worth of products and decided to do things a little differently. It wasn’t long before it brought in over £70K worth of sales but it was messy and was not where I wanted to be, but it did prove some of the basic principles.

This was a mistake in one sense as I had jumped into a market that I had no real passion about, just a desire to serve and learn how to turn what were ideas about selling and marketing into a reality that I could build on and scale up.

As an engineer I loved taking things apart, understanding how they worked and putting them back together again even if it wasn’t always in one piece, much to my mother and farther disgust.

This drove me to understand that technology was a fundamental building block of a sales and marketing system not just a business tool and that you could automate, test and engage your audience in a unique way.

I was testing it from a technical and systematic approach, however there were very important parts of selling and marketing that I had not yet introduced into the system as I was focused on the technical and systematic nuts and bolts behind the scenes.

Have confidence in what you are doing.

While all this was going on I had also been doing some consulting work but in the beginning I hadn’t really got my act together so found myself being used as an expendable employee.

I always ended up doing the same old general sales and marketing stuff which I knew wasn’t the right approach, yet I needed the money so put up and shut up and did what my customers asked of me.

This was my own fault as I had only just about got the top level part of my own system sorted and was still working on the nuts and bolts, so I was probably not confident enough about taking a position on it just yet.

Bouncing from job to job the nuts and bolts started to coming together. Finally I got a project with a customer which didn’t require a lot of technology but did require me to apply my now developed sales and marketing skills.

Never assume, test and evolve.

This company had spent a ton of money on a refit and was losing custom. It had alienated itself from its market and needed to reconnected but thought that fancy products and services were enough. I had just the approach that was systematic and measurable so I confidently took on the job.

The results were great and we packed out the place for quite a few nights running using a series of campaigns and activities which I had formulated around some research I had done.

I felt the business needed changing but they were reluctant in making too many changes but made enough to make an impact.

Where things went wrong was because I’d assumed my customer understood what I was doing. We finished the initial campaigns and they asked what they should do so I suggested that they do more of the marketing that I had done and keep the changes we had made.

They kept the changes, however their marketing became just general marketing once again which failed to make any real connection with their customers.  It was just a stack of offers and deals and the results were poor.

I hadn’t realised how far I’d come and made the mistake of assuming my customer had. I needed to do more.

The problem was this customers wanted marketing that was quick and dirty or value for money which was based on general marketing ideas and when we looked at the past and what that had brought them it was very little return indeed.

Maybe what I should have done was more for the money to prove the point and drive it home, but at the same time I realised that they were reluctant to change things.

What I needed was a way to impart the knowledge and these methods that didn’t always need me to be there and was more cost effective for smaller budgets.

Embrace new frontiers.

This leads me into a whole new chapter. All this was going on during a recession and made both finding what actually worked and what I wanted to do even tougher, but I didn’t give up, just went down a few twists and turns that way laid things. The system and formulaic approach worked. I had also learned how to research markets and balance supply and demand. It’s time to scale it up and apply it.

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You see there are just far too many businesses trying to out do one another using overly creative marketing produced by these vary same companies and all they end up with is more confusion and empty pockets.

If these so called “marketing professional” were any good at what they did they would be able to use their own marketing skills to win new business right ? WRONG!

They are in fact so questionably effective that they need another company to hold their hands and help them to do it.

Here is a quote from their special hand holding partners website;

Many companies in the creative and marketing services industry find that marketing themselves, ironically, is not the easiest of undertakings.

If that’s not a wake up call to all businesses to instantly fire their marketing agencies if they are still wondering what they get back from their marketing spend then nothing is.  And if that’s not enough to push you over the edge then try this on for size.

The company describes itself as;

Rainmaker is the most influential new business consultancy to the professional services sector; providing strategic counsel, direct representation and sales communications.

Now, if you’ve read any of my material you will probably have a good idea about my feelings on selling and marketing. They are one and the same, just a different medium.  Your marketing should be able to sell for you, that’s what its for, unless of course you are in some mass commodity market where image is everything and your prepared to spend a lot of money creating it.  I strongly suggest you avoid this like the plague, especially in the business to business (b2b) marketing arena as you marketing should be a sales tool first and foremost.

The Change Paper may shed some light on this and in future blog posts to come.

I have no idea how good or bad this company is and make no claims either way.  Its the end customers that are choosing these marketing agencies on the basis of their improved sales communications, which are not even created by the marketing company they have selected that I feel sorry for, and why I wrote this post.

Professionalism is a given, its expected of any business, however its not a measurement of effectiveness.

People, you need to know this, you need to spread this and you need to fear this as the marketing company you’ve just hired probably couldn’t sell toffee to an apple.

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Growth occurs where you have a very simple equation that describes the coming together of demand and supply.  The greater the demand and the weaker the supply the faster the business growth develops, similar to the simple equation to calculate force which Newton describes in his second law, Force = Mass x Acceleration or F=ma.

There are however other factors that will impact the trajectory of growth in your business which come from shifts in the market that alter what is now deemed in demand and ultimately where supply comes from.

For example just before the last financial crisis, otherwise known as the “credit crunch”, everybody wanted high return investments and accepted the associated high risk, but due to recent financial failings everybody now wants limited risk investment.  So although the product that people are now seeking still remains an investment it has evolved  from being a high risk type to a low risk one.

Suppliers and advisor’s of these high risk investments are now considered to be untrustworthy, so customers seek alternative sources of supply to go with their new style of product.

So its not just about getting your product and service right in the beginning, its also needs to be adapted to suit market demands and ensure you continue to supply or you run the risk of turning what was a high growth business into a plummeting growth business as that demand shifts away from you and moves elsewhere.

Demand Meets Supply

The discovery of demand may come as a results of you falling into a new market through circumstance or by the opportunity of chance (right place, right time) triggered by a customer request or a specific event occurring.  Sometimes its through careful planning using market research which purposely uncovers hidden demand.

To fulfil this initial demand you may develop a product or service from either a technical point of view to meet that demand and evolve your business operations to allow growth to occur, or you recognise the market needs and create the business infrastructure and if required the means to develop a product or service to meet that demand, or find a suitable source.

Either way you you have identified a need in the market with high enough demand that you can fulfil and you are now at the beginning of your growth cycle.

Moving To A New Plateau

For start-ups & younger business who have growth potential, an effective commercial strategy will make a world of difference in the results you achieve both long term as well as short term and will ultimately govern the speed your business develops.

Established organisations who have already gained a foothold in the market and growth has either reached a plateau or needs assistance to move it towards new goals typically has many hidden sales and marketing assets that if uncovered and realigned correctly can bring about rapid changes in growth trajectory.

For the businesses in turmoil that has a fundamentally sound model, it is often a disconnect with its market or an over reliance on sales and marketing strategies that are not measurable and proven which need to be identified and addressed quickly and systems put in place to improve stability.

Sales and marketing is also a critical tool for taking your business into new territories as it can identify live market changes in demand and provide a closed loop feedback mechanism to your R&D department or product development and supplier selection teams.

Avoiding Sales And Marketing Waste

In the modern world, nothing happens until somebody sells something and that is true of every business, organisation and individual.  Without the selling of ideas, concept, visions and beliefs there would be no identify, co-operation or future of any kind as everything would just grind to a halt.

Most businesses recognise the importance of selling and marketing, however the strategies they end up adopting are fundamentally based on traditional approaches that cost most companies an excessive amount of time and money and in turn creates a risky business environment.

Just asking business owners what their advertising does for them in terms of sales results and you will find that most could not tell you.

For reasons I described above a business can find itself in a place without the right strategy which is probably based on sales and marketing ideas that don’t provide the kind of control, insights and financial return that a sound sales and marketing strategy will deliver.

In an attempt to resolve the situation a business may bring in trainers or marketing partners that advise them to select an approach which appears to make sense on the surface, usually because everybody else is doing it that way, however more often that not it is mainly a cosmetic fix up that does not deliver and real longevity.

What you actually end up with is expensive advertising or promotion or being forced into dealing with complex and inefficient sales processes.  Worst of all you start becoming reliant on just a few good people or paying for sales and marketing infrastructure that you just don’t need or constantly educating confused customers that just don’t get what you do or trust your company.  So just hall ow is anybody supposed to sell anything with this going on ?

Sadly, and in many cases much more could be achieved with far less or as manufacturers would say it can be done faster, better and cheaper.

These problems can eventually lead to the untimely death of a business and the numbers detailing business closures are indeed staggering .

Growth No Longer Has To Be Elusive

The problem is that many of the methods still being employed for selling and marketing just don’t belong in the modern world. Not because of technology, but simply because people are more sceptical and overwhelmed with choice while being more informed than at any other time in history.

Sales and marketing has become separated and disjointed. In many cases it’s wrapped around the suppliers business and not around the customer.

The sales and marketing functions should be treated like the human body in more effective medicines and therapies as a complete system. Where you get down to the root cause of the problem and treat it directly, not just the visible outlying symptoms.

This will enable you to focus on what really works and delivers results which directly affects the growth of your business.

Looking at your business like a system will help you to uncover hidden opportunities and by using a systematic approach to develop your sales and marketing as a whole, activities can be compounded generating larger and faster returns over traditional methods.

Employ A Systematic Approach Based On Proven Formulas

In manufacturing systems are used to guarantee quality and cost. In distribution logistics systems are also used to guarantee supply. So why in business are we not using sales and marketing systems that can deliver real leads and customers ?

One of the biggest steps you can take towards achieving sustainable growth is systematising your sales and marketing approach, so that you have repeatable and predicable outcome that keeps the business focused on results, enabling staff to spend time where you biggest return for both the customer and you as the supplier.

Sounds simple, yet its the one step that is mostly overlooked, avoided and misunderstood because its creates transparency and accountability that most sales and marketing approaches try to avoid.

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Even Sir Alan Sugar, who’s been labelled himself for producing some questionable products said (and rather well) during one of the apprentice shows:

“I sent you out on a mission to France, to sell quality British products. I gave you a list of organic farmers, people who use tender love and care to create something special, that they take a pride in. And I wanted you to take that product and say “This is what us British produce, this is not mass-produced tut…” and what you do, is you go and buy a breeze block-load of bloody cheddar cheese!”

Your Product Or Service Is Not “Tut” Because YOU Think So

Just because you think your latest product or services is great or whizz bang doesn’t mean that your customers will agree and serving up any old tut because you think you can is not a strategy for growth.

Having the right product or service is AS essential as being good at selling and marketing.  It won’t be long before your customers find out that what you say is not the way and they will vote with their feet and leave.

If your constantly looking for new customers to fill this gap because your products or services don’t meet with your customers expectations then you are going to have a pretty tough life in business.

How To Avoiding Having “Tut” Products Or Services

The right product or service is one that that customers need, want or desire.  It has to fill a gap that is not currently being filled either well, or at all, and it must be done consistently.

Good sales and marketing can be an essential part of the innovation process as your market is usually the best source of ideas as they will be the ones that ultimately have the problems or desires that your innovations can address.

If you don’t treat them right, they are unlikely to tell you anything, especially ways that you can badly treat them again.

When you truly take the time to understand your market, opportunities will continue to open up before you, but failing to do so will close the door in your face.

It’s insulting to anybody to be fed a pack of lies about a product or service or presented with something that is just so ordinary and boring that its not worth their time and effort to be bothered with, so why would you do that ?

Why is it that so many companies think they can get away with supplying tut when the premise of business is based on serving your customer.  How long would a restaurant last if its food was tut, if the clothes you bought from the same shop kept falling apart because they were tut would you go back ?

Create Value Before Your Products And Services Becomes “Tut”

I remember working for a software company that charged premium (hefty) maintenance fees for an excellent product, yet customers were beginning to complain because they didn’t see any value in the maintenance fees as all they were getting was a CD with the latest revisions on it

So we decided to add some considerable value and made more effective use of the application and support engineers on the team by building in a series of regular visits and live project development assistance with customers on contract.  This enabled us to work more closely with the customer and was a win win for both of us.

People using the software got extra support and help to get projects done and we got to understand what worked and what didn’t and to build more effective case studies and stories which helped to sell more software and to keep more customers on maintenance contract while we delivered more value.

So lets stop trying to force feed customers with breeze block-loads of cheddar cheese products and services and start creating something with real substance and flavour that addresses the needs of a market today, something that suppliers and customers care about and are passionate about, something that will make your customers love you.  We all want to be loved.

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Well, I’m not going to say much here except that today I received a piece of outbound marketing from none other than…..GOOGLE.  Yes one of the worlds biggest online inbound marketing forces and they are sending me an outbound marketing piece to promote Adsense.

Why are they doing this ? Well, not everybody is online, nor are they online all of the time and good outbound marketing still works well if done properly and it helps to create a true closed loop environment.

I’m not going to comment on the piece itself even though I think it could have been improved, but the sheer fact that they recognise the need for a multi channel strategy and to reach beyond their digital space is enough for this post.

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A new medium does not translate into success if your message and market just don’t match.  What and where your market is and where it goes to look for sources of information will be important to where and how you should start marketing your products or services.

Putting all your eggs into one basket on-line will lead to more difficulty, while spreading your wings into other channels not only  reduces your risk but also tells you more about your market and how it reacts.

Only recently I’ve been working with a company in the advanced manufacturing sector who had a basic website but no off-line marketing materials.

We focused first on getting the core message right and building that into existing off-line sales and marketing channels to see what impact it had.  This also gave us some kind of starting reference point.  The results were very interesting and it made a major difference which we confirmed by analysing the traffic to the existing website which was actually coming from search terms related to the companies name or directly to their web address.

Less traffic was actually coming form search relevant keyword terms for the product or services itself so if you had built a website expecting to capitalise on traffic you may have been disappointed. However there are opportunities to do some search relevant inbound marketing work but it will not be the only source of leads and customers.

This confirmed what we thought was happening in that most people had either asked somebody else, or had read something from a press release or some of our direct response style teaser marketing and went on-line to find out more using either the web address or by typing the companies name directly into a search engine.

This was import as it told us that relevant and effective outbound marketing was AS important and influential (if not more right now) as inbound marketing and analytics on the existing website helped to confirm that.

Not only that but we compared current letters which had received little to no response with the new teaser pieces and in just sending out a handful we had one potential customer tell us they wanted to pre-order 2 machines AND an invite to display the technology on this potential customers stand at a relevant industry exhibition all in an account which they had been struggling to connect and do business with.

So, outbound marketing is still as relevant as it always was.  It’s not the medium that is the problem it’s the ineffectiveness of the strategies being employed. By combining the outbound and inbound worlds you get a much better idea of what is happening and why.

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What I think it really comes down to though is not having enough value to offer your customers or prospects in exchange for making contact other than just trying to push them along towards a sale.

Contacting people a few times is just not enough and many of the statistics I’ve come across say it actually takes at least 7 positive contacts just to grab attention before making an actual sale because modern life and the modern buyer are dealing with constant need and desire changes as internal and external factors affect what’s important to them or their business at any given time as well as a barrage of continuous sales and marketing messages.

Sellers cannot control when a buyer is going to be ready for a solution but they do need to be there when they are.

Just the other day I decided that I needed a dictaphone as the constant note taking and information brain farts was becoming a struggle to keep up with and document as I didn’t always have pen and paper to hand. Argos had a great offer on so I walked in and purchased the day I was visiting a local town that I was shopping at which was actually further away than my own town which also had an Argos.

If the right deal is there when you need it, you get it, it’s that simple.

Have you every been travelling on the motorway and you start to feel a little restless right around dinner or lunch time so you stop off at a service station and while you’re walking around you get an attack of the munchies.

You think to yourself, “No, I’ll just wait until I get to….” and then you come across the sign that says “Coffee and Pannini To Go”, you walk by and the stomach churns a little, but you feel sure that you can make it to your next stop. On the way back from the bathroom you get hit by a second sign “Don’t Go Hungry! Food Court Entrance” and a nice aroma wafts out of the food area and suddenly you find yourself saying “Well, I could just as well get a bite to eat here, lets have a look”.

If that second sign had not been there you may never have stopped to look and eat. So being there are just the right time was enough to tip the balance in the favour of this service station instead of the next stop.

So how do you make contact with customers and prospects and avoid annoying them at the same time ?

Revealing Questions

Send out a list of Frequently Asked Questions that shows more sides to your products, business or service than just your own. This is also a great way of overcoming objections.

Solid Justification

Just think of a number of REAL reasons that people should buy from you which are justifications that they may be struggling with themselves.  Keep them short and sweet.

Let Your Audience Speak For You

Send comments and testimonials from real customers.

Almost Gone

If you have a limited number of something then let your customers know and by when.

Mistakes Happen

Own up to your mistakes and make them part of the conversation and make sure they are real mistakes not just some ploy.

Last Chance

Resend a mix of the above with the most compelling elements and a special offer with the title “2nd and Last Chance”

Don’t be fooled into thinking that your marketing is some magic brush or wand that you can wave over your business and just by sending out one campaign it will fix everything. You need to have a sequence of follow up’s that clearly builds on your theme and reinforces your message, not just some fancy generic advertising campaign that’s full stuff that nobody understands or needs.

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When faced with difficult or seemingly impossible situations most think about giving up, but its often those that are prepared to face their fears and to keep on, keeping on, that go on to reap the rewards from their efforts.

Fear cripples us all in some shape or form.  I remember fearing public speaking, so I joined Toastmaster International which helped a great deal.

What did you fear and how did you overcome it ?

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Recently I’ve seen numerous companies make contact with people saying they were interested in how somebody could help them but during the lead up to the discussion they started dropping a ton of hints that they were really only interested in exchanging services or getting somebody to buy from them. Wanting to sell is not the problem, it’s the lack of honesty in the first place that is.

So they have the discussion and I can see a disconnect (I’ve been selling and marketing for a while so I recognise the signs or sense them), they show interest but it just looks false. Afterwards you test them with a few emails or tweets and get the expected response confirming your belief that this was an attempt to sell without selling and if the other person is not buying they don’t engage.

Just think for a minute what kind of message you are sending into the market, is that an honest trust worthy approach ? Is anybody likely to buy from you or refer you ? Nope!

Similarly you see people come on-line saying how new they are to the on-line world (internet), yet they some how know how to use html to get text links (unfortunately in the wrong place), or they’ve been working on a website for 9 months but pretend to act like they know nothing about it all so they ask you for your opinion on this and that and then tell you that they would be happy to provide you with this and that and all you need to do is ask.

They rarely want your opinions, instead they are only interested in selling you something without appearing like they are selling. Its not the fact they are trying to sell, it’s the way they are trying to do it that is annoying and is actually turning these people into a commodity with little value.

Face to face or club based networking is just as bad as both parties are ultimately trying to “sell” something while avoiding doing any selling at the same time and it’s like watching a cat and mouse game of story exchanges and other blah and guff that leads both parties to eventually find little value in continuing any further.

It’s especially prevalent in social marketing where I see a lot of confused soft selling approaches where a blog or website does not clearly stand for anything in particular. No potential customer could understand what they could do for them because they are too scared to actually tell anyone.

Instead they ramble on about a bunch of weakly connected topics to a theme that’s difficult to understand in the hope that people will “get” them. But if people don’t know what you stand for (you have to sell and market your message) then how can anybody buy into it ?

Influence is selling and marketing. Everybody has to make money and that comes from a business or a job. It’s not the money that is the problem, it’s what people do with it. Money, selling and marketing are not bad, they are essential and should be at the core of every business.

Why should a business providing great value to their current or potential customers be frightened about selling and marketing in a way that builds trust, openness, value and a worthwhile long term relationship.

Stop sneaking around and start being really honest.

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Now, most companies at this point would have given up, or started to panic, but I knew their was a deal waiting to happen and it just need the right moves.

The reason I felt confident was because we had done some objective analysis of the situation which included how the supplier compared to other alleged suppliers (competition) alongside the needs and habits of the prospect (now customer).

First this customer was a technology leader and was releasing a new product into the market which required a part of the process to be automated. There was no alternative but to automate to ensure throughput, quality and consistency and they had to automate using a system similar to the one that this supplier (my customer) had proposed as it had to meet certain process conditions.

The prospect was already buying in product which had already been processed from another supplier but the cost was high and they were at the mercy of the suppliers capacity and capability to ensure they could meet market demand which was risky and costly.

During numerous meetings this potential customer had also told us how they had recently invested in a number of new injection moulding machines which happened to be one of the most expensive and reliable on the market. There were site expansions going on and big investments, so this was a company that was committed to making investments that would help it to gain a competitive advantage and maintain its position as a leading manufacturer.

Price was not the issue, but reliability and capability to deliver was.

We had also worked on developing relationships in the market with various complimentary manufacturers, especially the consumable materials suppliers that these machines applied and through discussions with them it confirmed our beliefs about the company, the people involved and some of the misleading information being fed back.

So, just before Christmas the prospects sends over the alleged competitive quotes. One was from the USA which when you ran the numbers actually worked out more expensive with transportation, VAT and duty costs and was far more riskier than a more localised investment.  Neither was it a customised machine, more of  a “this is what we do that is near to what you want” and we knew the prospects specification was tight and this proposal was not a good fit.

The other quote which was indeed a lower price and came from a design house that had no specialist expertise in this area of automation and build.  On closer inspection they were unable to meet the process conditions and demands of the prospect and from experience we knew that most of these companies got it wrong.

Having seen numerous projects scrapped and lay dead on the floor, it was just unbelievable that a company like this would waste £50K worth of their money along with the wasted time in trying to make it work only to eventually be forced to relegate it to the factory floor and later the scrap heap just because somebody said his mate down the road could do that job.

That’s a painful lesson that prospects and customers do not want to repeat. What we are really selling is a guarantee that there money is being invested where they are exposed to less risk and their is higher value.  The Change Paper demonstrates why this is so important.

So their price (my customers) was actually in-between the alleged competitors but their value was considerably higher as they had over 100+ successful installations, therefore the risk of a system not working was very low, invested over £100K in research and development, meaning they produced the most effective and reliable systems, the design could meet the processing conditions and they had been finalists in the BEEA (British Engineering Excellence Awards) meaning their engineering skills were recognised as being amongst the best.

This prospect was not going to make a decision to buy elsewhere as it just did not make sense but needed to feel in control. We gracefully bowed out as the price reduction they wanted was too aggressive and then re-entered the game to see how the alleged new investment had gone……it hadn’t and with some additional discussions and demonstrating them how they (my customer) could help their prospects business with other automation and services a deal was closed Jan 2010.

Never walk away from an opportunity unless you are sure you are not in the running, but don’t pester your prospect if you cant truly meet their needs.  Being a clear leader in your field make a massive difference if you position it correctly. Don’t focus on the technical details of the product when responding to your customer, as once it reaches these stages its not a technical issue it a commercial issue.

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3. Sales Consultant

Just being in a position to “listen” or watch the conversations unfold can be very eye opening and you begin to get a feel for what people are saying, doing and why.

It’s always been said that people buy from people and social media IS the real time marketing equivalent of that as people prefer to read and listen to opinions about products and services from fellow consumers and peers which is great if you have a business with the resources and capacity to create that presence and your customers are using social media to discuss what you do for them.

None the less, simple tools like twitter can have an immediate effect with little technical skill or masses of content creation if you are willing to find and connect with people, contribute and share and sometimes the most random connections turn out to be vary valuable.

Instead of just wading in with haste in reply to something or making statements that don’t necessarily reflect your mutually held beliefs and instead of just touting corporate policy, take the time to take the “corporate” out of the conversation and realise that through value, trust and authenticity, which means real people with real views, you can get heard above the crowds and word spreads.

Be open to the truth, no matter how much it hurts

Exposing your business to social media will attract the good and the bad. People will share with you their views and be pretty direct about it. In fact Dell discovered to its horror what customers really thought about its service from Tweets on Twitter and Facebook comments. Dell worked on acknowledging and understanding the problem and find a resolution. The end result was a $6.5m global revenue increase attributed to Twitter alone. Wow!

What’s strange is that people have been complaining to businesses for a long time but the message did not seem to get through, probably because the internal communication systems were even worse than their external ones, so businesses can even benefit from adopting social media methods internally to connect people and teams together and allow them to share their voice and to do away with the old draconian structures. Almost like an ordered chaos.

Don’t just spend blindly, engage and create (mash up)

When times are tough and you are either faced with a recession or limited marketing funds, channels like social media can become even more important as there is a very low, if not almost zero direct cost of entry, just your time and effort (which has indirect costs of course).

It’s easy to see what your efforts bring as you can monitor traffic to your site and see what activity occurs and conversions such as people taking a defined action like downloading something.

Free tools like google analytics are a good place to start if you have a limited or zero budget and you should start small and grow you activity gradually, and remember to keep at it and be consistent.

Let real people, with real personalities share your values

To make social media work you need the right people who are impassioned about using social media and yes that could be you the owner if you are a small business. If it’s new to you then there will be a bit of a learning curve, but start with the simple platforms like Twitter and go from there into either your own blog or use established networking and social media sites such as Facebook, or for business eCademy.

ComCast in the US has done a great job of putting a real personality in touch with its marketing as it actually offers friendly Twitter customer support with real staff along with their profile and photo of the person instead of the company logo. This makes for a very friendly and personal interface, just the sort of open customer contact point that can create shared value.

Think before you communicate, ask does my response reflect the above points

I’m sure like me you’ve written the odd email and hit the send button, then realised that if you had waited for your feelings to settle down a little and leave the room you would have had more clarity and probably would have replied in a different way avoiding upsetting or offending somebody in the process which was not the real intention of your response, just the knee-jerk reaction we all naturally suffer from.

In one extreme case a representative from Ryan Air waded into a Twitter conversation giving them the “big I am” corporate cold shoulder which as you can imagine was not well received. Soon after the Tweets were pulled and I’m sure somebody had their legs slapped or indeed fingers removed (joke btw).

Be willing to test, and be willing to focus where you meet your market

Its easy to get caught up in all this stuff and be everywhere and get nowhere. I’ve got accounts all over the place, some of which I gradually learn to use and build, some of which I have focused on more because I could see better potential, others just languish. There is nothing wrong with that.

However it is impossible to be everywhere, touch every conversation and have worthwhile exchanges so you need to find what’s right for you and spend time communicating with your audiences in that place, developing your presence and what values you will be sharing.

Whether you realise it or not every business these days is being discussed on the web, like it or not, so you may as well take part and learn from it.

Find your own social media voice

In the beginning you may struggle to find your own voice in all of this, but like all good musical artists or painters and writers you start by reusing what you aspire to be and in doing that, and exploring it and pushing boundaries you begin to define who your are and what your relationship with your world is and your own voice will find itself.

There are a ton of gurus and experts out there saying it has to be like this or like that, the bottom line though is its different for everybody so step into the playground and find your own place, in your own way.

It might be worth giving giving some thought to why your voice should be there in the first place and I found these interesting points on escaping mediocrity. Its like doing some market research on the conversations currently taking place in your market to understand how yours might fit in.

1. How are they talking about this niche?
2. Are they speaking in broad theoretical terms or very tactical terms?
3. What’s their personality?
4. What needs are being unmet?
5. Is my voice needed?

Still unsure about social media marketing

A survey entitled ‘How Do Small to Medium Businesses Market Themselves?’ from Daryl Willcox Publishing has revealed that 27% of those questioned used social media platforms such as blogging, Twitter, Facebook and online forums as part of their marketing activity. More interesting facts can be found on UtalkMarketing.

I thought you might appreciate this nice piece of work which illustrates the point nicely.

What part of social media do you need to do better ?

Related posts:

1. Why I Wont Be Swapping Search For Social Marketing
2. Using Twitter For Business Marketing
3. Direct Marketing

One of the reasons that stops businesses from measuring their marketing effectiveness is they believe its too early in the process to start when creating or developing their new marketing channel and its especially so with the internet or web marketing because the technology feels so new for many businesses.

The reality is though that you should be designing in the systems for tracking your marketing both on-line (web) or off-line (direct mail, catalogue, adverts etc.) as methods exists for both.

The web provides a more integrated or automated approach where as off-line marketing may require some manual work to generate the numbers.

The REAL reason though that you should be marketing is to generate leads and new business, so justifying your marketing expenditure should be mostly, if not always if you’re a small business, based on the revenue your marketing produces. In my earlier career as a sales guy I always believed that this should have been the case and now there is no escaping it, especially in tough economic climates.

When you look at it like this it seems simple but most marketers get lost in data that does not support any profitable business generation and at the heart of every business their must be profit.

Determining absolutely what your lead generation and customer acquisition statistics are is essential to understanding whether a particular activity is profitable and therefore worthwhile doing again or not. Marketing is not an exact science and does require some testing.

To get your marketing effectiveness measured correctly you should do the following:

Audit Your Current Marketing ROI

First use tools to separate you marketing. For off-line you can use separate phone numbers, email addresses, voucher and offer codes or other web sites and mail order coupons as examples to distinguish where leads are coming from. For on-line you should use marketing analytic tools to understand who is visiting your site, from where they came, what activity and leads are generated and later what sales are made. You can measure SEO or natural (organic) search, pay per click (PPC), blogging, social media, email, affiliate, webinars, articles and any other paid or free sources.

Once you have handle on this you can work towards closing the loop to determine how your leads generation and sales orders are relating to one another which gives you insights into sales cycles, which events triggered a prospect to become a customer and which sources generate the most customers. With your monthly sales figures to hand you can get indications of what your visitor-to-lead and lead-to-customer conversion ratios are.

Set Lead Gen and Sales Goals

Without a goal its going to be difficult to determine where you are going and what needs to be done to get there.

Knowing the work involved should give you an indication of the time scales, costs and resources needed from which you can build a plan of execution and budget.

Determine What Steps You Need To Take

As well as tracking or analytics you will also need to do some research to determine what keywords will enable you to pull in prospects on-line or where to send your marketing off-line to generate leads.

You also need to review your marketing to see whether its following lead generation best practises and then follow a proven process to execute your plans in the correct order to generate the most effective results.

Related posts:

1. 6 High Return Marketing Ideas for Getting Results During Low Return Economic Periods
2. Internet Marketing
3. Strategic Marketing Consultants

You see, its those very same stomach churning reactions that reduce the learning and earning power.

Who wants to learn or look at adopting a new strategy around sales and marketing when they’re getting upset and respond with knee-jerk reactions that downplay the whole thing?

Not many that I know of! That’s why it’s worth bringing those two belittled, battered and abused words back into our lives, yes the dreaded Marketing and Sales words. Exposing yourself to sales and marketing actually eliminates the irrational behaviour, which would in turn help more to understand it and discuss it, and see what was good and bad, ultimately meaning that more people and businesses would get more of it right and there would be less negativity toward it and more focus on learning instead of hating.

The one thing that I would like you to take away from this is; MARKETING AND SALES IS NOT ALL BAD, its not all lies, manipulation, conning people or getting one over on the other person or using them. I would agree that there are plenty of people out there that abuse the knowledge of effective sales and marketing and they take it to places that only seek to service their own greed, but even the most subtle and unappreciated methods of selling and marketing come from the belly of the same beast. Yes. there are two sides to every coin!.

So I am going to go out on a limb here and make a statement that just might upset a lot of people, responsible marketing and sales principles and strategies are based on EXACTLY the same strategies that those slippery, dirty spammy operations use.

So LOVE and HATE come from the same place. Just like the recent debates over whether the internet is a good or bad thing. Its not the thing itself, its how it’s used. With me ?

Whether your a hater of sales and marketing or you neither love or hate it, you should still see the benefits that learning about the art of proven and current sales and marketing strategies could bring into your business and personal lives.

Without sales and marketing EVERYTHING would grind to a halt and I mean everything. There would be no cooperation, no problem solving, no exploring new frontiers, no new, no good. The world and without doubt every businesses within it would fail.

If you don’t do marketing or sales you wont sell (get peoples BUY IN) on anything.

There is no question that you NEED sales and marketing, especially if you are in business.

Embrace the change, don’t resist it.

When presented with something different or new our natural animal instincts are normally to resist, dismiss or attack it, its the self defence fight or flight programme built into all of us.

One of the best strategies to overcome this is to develop reassuring patterns which requires effort or energy in exactly the opposite direction of what we are trying to hide or run away from. Just like people that hate their jobs but need them, need to pluck up the courage to change them.

Fear of the unknown stops us from achieving better results than we have now, because deep down we are scared of looking in the mirror and finding truths that we just don’t want to admit exist.

Avoiding loss may be even more powerful than the fear of the unknown because of the implied consequences of getting it wrong (there is no wrong by the way, only feedback) and it ensures that we stay firmly rooted in our beliefs and opinions desperately trying to hang onto the status-quo.

Is this how far the human race has come ? Come on people lets get smart, because we are smart creatures aren’t we ?

Lets stop fearing the unknown and share and learn about sales and marketing approaches that are commonly used in our everyday lives by both the best and worst sales and marketing operations in the word because integrity and honesty as well as mind blowing results lies amongst it all.

Sales and marketing influences behaviour, decision and most of all emotion whether its for the greater good or the solo slippery snake. It knows how to tap right inside your psyche and what motivates you to take action, how to pressurise you, frighten you, excite you and compel you. From the single transaction to building a long term relationship.

When we don’t embrace the change the outcome can be the untimely and agonising death of an idea, concept or business. Just look what happened to UK manufacturing because it didn’t change its attitudes and adopt new ways of doing things and in more recent times the music industry has suffered from the same erosion of business as it fought music downloads instead of embracing it. Even for some time television channels with the rise of the internet, but thankfully some of those guys seem to have learned from the past, but not all.

Not changing can bring about the exact dramatic results you tried to avoid by resisting it.

Change can and is good and we all need it.

You’re already a strategic manipulator of your own tribe

By now your blood may be boiling and your thinking about lashing out at sellers and marketers for making you do things that you thought you had complete control over.

The truth is though that WE ALL MANIPULATE PEOPLE around us every day. No one is “better” or more “superior” than sales and marketing people. What differentiates us is the way we each choose to sell and market ourselves, what we do and how we can help others and the methods by which we do it is mainly affected by what we find comfortable to do, driven by our likes and dislikes.

For those of you with children you will appreciate that ensuring your little cherubs clean up, wash themselves properly, tidy things away and do their homework can require a certain approach. You know that when your child refuses to do something and talking to them in a logical manner does not always work, the threat of losing privileges or a favourite item or positively motivating and rewarding them can mean the difference between something being done or not at all.

Husbands, wife’s and partners use exactly the same approaches with each other, exchanging chores, calling to tell each other that they love them, enquiring about their day or an event or reading them the riot act because of their absence down the pub.

Even single people exchange glances, move expressively, open with the right words and compliment each other to show their interest in another person. Choices like the clothing you wear, your make up and perfume aim to persuade and convince others, your mini strategy to getting what you want.

Business people, whether they are one man brands or large corporations all need to engage their audiences, create interest and motivate people into feeling that they are the right place for a potential or existing customers to invest their money to achieve a desired outcome. Creating appealing products or services, offering more choice, creating add-ons and up sells and special offers all seek to to achieve that same aim.

Become a truth seeker and open your eyes to the good in sales and marketing

What is going to make the most difference in your life and businesses is realising that your feelings about sales and marketing are created by beliefs and experience otherwise known as knowledge.

And its knowledge that will help you to lean more about how people motivate and influence you and others. The more you know the more you can avoid the traps and pitfalls and the more able you will be at seeing just how sales and marketing can truly help your business and life.

Its things like social influence and persuasive psychology combined with decision making processes that can both protect you and make you stronger and more capable.

Being informed and educated will make you more able to see what options are available to market your business. You can then choose which sales and marketing strategies feel right for you and your businesses and you can filter out what truly deserves to be hated and what deserves to be loved.

So, have you ever taken the bait and got sold on a loser ? Are their sales and marketing strategies that you are either unsure how they would work, or if they would actually work for you ? Do you think sales and marketing is complicated and tiresome and if so why ? What do you love and hate about sales and marketing ?

Go on, tell use how you really feel. Unleash the fury

Related posts:

1. Save Marketing Money And Avoid Confusing Customers – Get Your Contact Details Correct
2. 10 Sales & Marketing Predictions To Improve Your Business In 2010
3. Direct Sales

Related posts:

1. A Successful Internet Marketing Plan – The Basics

Ok it’s Friday so here’s a nice idea to end the week.  If you’ve heard of the Mad Men series then you’ll love this idea (if not why not!).  Jump along to MadMenYourself and get a stylised version of your marketing Mad Men self.  What do you think eh ?

p.s. the music on the site is groovy man!

No related posts.

Well as part of a strategic marketing consultancy I thought I should answer this question.

Having a strategy is an important part of developing a businesses and working out where you are going. Your marketing strategy is the route you will take to create customers and generate sales and therefore profits for the business.

Your marketing strategy not only states your goals, objectives and describes your routes to market but it also pulls together all of the different channels and media that can be used and ensures a consistent approach that connects, engages and converts customers which can be measured, tracked and modified for improvement.

Marketing has evolved into a very different animal to what it was 10 or even 5 years ago especially with the rapid adoption of technology, but the core principles remain the same which sadly many get wrong which only undermines their marketing and selling efforts.

Strategic Marketing Consultants Help Define Strategy

A strategic marketing consultant will help you to develop or even lay down a strategy (How To) that ultimately generates interest in your products or services, which will in-turn lead to need or desire and later enquiries or leads and finally profitable sales to meet the growth goals of your business.

Using a Strategic Marketing Consultancy Will Grow Your Business

There are a number of ways that you can stimulate growth in your business which may come from new or existing products, services and markets and ultimately becomes a mix of all of them. A strategic marketing consultant will help you to determine which of these strategies is the best place to generate the desired growth and achieve the goal and objectives laid out in your top level strategy.

Existing products and services in existing markets

Here your business is looking to expand its market share (the amount of business you do in the market) to similar or the same types of customers you are already working with. This can be done by selling more to your existing customers or attracting more of the same sorts of customers. Having a clear understanding of who you customers really are and why they will buy from you is essential to gaining ground. Eventually though you may reach a market saturation point (the growth return from your efforts slows down) and you will have to look elsewhere for business.

New markets for existing products and services

New markets can be geographical regions or segments of a market. For example you may be the best supplier in Wales and decide that you can take it nation wide across the UK. Or you provide an excellent service to Lawyers and believe that Doctors would appreciate the same services. The key here is to choosing markets that you are likely to succeed in.

New products and services for existing markets

Innovation combined with sales and marketing is the corner stone of business growth. Finding ways to improve the product or service you deliver to customers to stay ahead of your competitors and to continue delivering value to your customers is an essential component. Staying close to your market and understanding changes, shift and trends or the feedback from your customers will be the starting point for stimulating the development of anew product or service.

New products and services in new markets

In this category you are working from the outside in, which can sometimes be an advantage while at the same time carrying with it a higher degrees of risk. Sound market research that can be tested and proven where the balance of supply and demand works in your favour and a clear position for your proposed development can be identified will be essential to making this effort a success. It may take time to gain the initial traction and a little tweaking to get your ideas right but basing them on sound research will provide the confidence to continue your efforts, from which the returns could be very high.

Strategic Marketing Consultants Blend Together A Marketing Mix

Once a strategy has been defined you need to look at the tools which will be used to deliver results.

The most famous of these was referred to as the 4P’s but modern references have evolved into the 4C’s.

The 4P’s consisted of product, price, place and promotion which were very much focused on the supplier and their business. The problem with this approach was it didn’t connect the business with the reason it existed, and that’s its customers.

Where as the 4C’s actually focuses on the customer and replaces the 4P’s, describing customer needs & desire, cost, convenience and communication making it a far more customer orientated approach. This is not new however, its been part of the strategy used by successful direct marketers for years before it was formalised like this and I am sure it will evolve again, but the principles will remain the same.

Strategic Marketing Consultants Build & Execute Marketing Plans

So, you’ve got all these great ideas and now you need to get started. For most businesses they are not always sure where to start and how to implement or just don’t have the time or resources to make it happen. A marketing plan is your strategy (How To) combined with things such as resources, costs and time scales (The What). In the beginning your plan may be based purely on strategy until its been tested and the implications understood and for most smaller businesses it may only ever be based on strategy until the business grows further.

Strategy is no good though with out execution and delivery. So if you don’t have the resources to make it happen, nor the ability to service the extra demand you must think carefully before moving ahead.

Strategic Marketing Consultants Deliver Results

The bottom line is a strategic marketing consultant can help to build, plan and execute like having a commercial director in your business on a part time or interim basis without the permanent staffing overhead.

Related posts:

1. Consultants needed now more than ever
2. Granularity signals the death of strategic business leadership

First of all take it from me, once a sceptic (few years back now), that the twitter machine can and does open up new avenues, contacts and enquiries REAL fast and of a very high quality and relevancy.

Why ? Well your twitter channel is a micro version of a blog and allows you to find, follow and communicate with people in a “micro” way.  Its power is in the real time nature that these communications take place and how connections are made.  It’s a bit like an instant messenger and a chat room and bookmarker rolled into one.

A tweet is a short message like gossip on a grapevine.

Just the other day I got a retweet (a tweet re-broadcasted) on one of my posts on Analytics by Jamie from a local website development company.  I sent a tweet back thanking him and he replied saying they would like to talk to me to see if I could help them.

Now, I took the time to retrace the retweets to the source and got personal by sending them a message directly, and I was thanked for my efforts by the response I received.

How Can Businesses Use Twitter As A Marketing Tool

Breaking Barriers

Most businesses have people that are just not connected with their key audiences directly such as the Managing Director becuase they mostly don’t have the time to write long blog posts or get involved with Facebook.  As a results they are missing an opportunity to connect with their audience and learn a lot about the people they serve.

That’s where twitter comes in, as all posts are just 140 character in length so instead of writing war and peace you only need a small short meaningful statements that will engage or interest people.

Staying Connected

Twitter makes connecting and following relevant people in your “space” easy.  It’s not all about who’s famous or has the most followers though, its about relevant connections and even the little guy or girl can bring about some surprising outcomes.

Once you have assembled your tribe you can lead or follow as you choose deciding when to enter into the conversation or what conversation you should start.

Value Broadcasting

You can also use twitter to make annoucements about events or special deals.  Promote articles or interesting news, just about anything that people in your tribe might find interesting or useful.

How To Get Started Using Twitter As A Marketing Tool

First create your profile @ Twitter.
Next write some updates – you can add short links using a link shortener such as bity.ly
You can search twitter for interesting stuff and people or search online using a search engine.

For slightly more advanced communications

1. Hastags “#” are used to tag messages so #latestnews will get your tweet listed under latestnews.
2. Chats can be exchanged with people by using the “@” symbol followed by a username or using “D” followed by a username.
3. RT@username is used for retweeting which is re-broadcasting to your network what somebody else said on a peripheral network.
4. OH: is used for overheard.

You can connect with me on twitter @business_growth.

Happy twitter marketing!

Related posts:

1. Twitter Launches Business Services
2. Why I Wont Be Swapping Search For Social Marketing
3. A Successful Internet Marketing Plan – The Basics

Email marketing is a powerful way of establishing credibility by drip feeding valuable information to your prospects and customers at little to no cost.

Unfortunately most people abuse it by sending emails to people they don’t know with information they probably don’t want, in a way they definitely don’t want it, otherwise known as spam.

The best way to avoid the spam trap is to have people “opt-in”, meaning they volunteer to receive information from you and your business directly to their in box by request.

Once you’ve go them you need to keep them and that’s continuing to deliver interesting and relevant information.

Establish Credibility & Develop Trust Over Email

If you use your marketing systems and more specifically your email marketing to deliver valuable information and build trust you stand a good chance of turning your email subscriber list into a buyers list.

By simply opting into your list they immediately identify themselves as “interested” in your product or services and want to get to know you and become familiar with you, until they are ready to buy.

Once you have established your credibility will also be open to future offers from you and your business.

Communicating regulatory will help you to earn trust and respect and once your readers trust and value your opinions and judgements then it’s highly likely that they will also buy from you.

They key to making this work is establishing credibility which in turn will have the affect of making your product or service attractive and make you stand out over and above your competition. Because you have gone the extra mile and worked to create a relationship with your potential customer they are most likely to choose you over anybody else.

Just consider two companies selling the same product or service but one supplier has developed their “Email Insights Into Your Favourite Topic” which gives readers in-depth knowledge into that favourite topic of theirs along with unique and interesting ways of doing it differently, or guides on make it better, improving the experience or getting more return from their efforts and you build on this along with market trends, motivational quotations and stories and real life examples.

Somebody who gets this regularly will have gotten to know you without question and will have understood that you are extremely knowledgeable on the “favourite topic”. This turns you into a magnet for your customers and key audiences who will be drawn to you when it comes to making a buying decision about a particular product or service that you specialise in.

Unfortunately I can’t give you “How To” as each business is different and will require a unique approach to creating trust, but getting people to trust you is key to ensure that they will be willing to pay you for anything.

Low To No Cost B2B Marketing By Email

What stops most people from getting done is that it looks difficult and complex to do.  However with the right software and their are tons of different systems out there, which I will talk about in a different blog post, sending an email newsletter today is in fact a technical cinch and you can even make it a hands free system that works on autopilot.

The hardest part is being committed to spending the couple of hours to sit down and write the content. But it soon gets easy once you remind yourself that its costing you nothing and its winning you trust and loyalty.

Try writing yourself a quick outline on a series of specific subjects with some music playing in the background or find a quite place if you prefer the peace and get to work building as you sip your favourite glass of wine, spend sometime to find the best situation to get the creative juices flowing. Focus, write quickly, edit later and you will be amazed at what you can achieve.

Building Your B2B Email Marketing Content

In getting you content right you should always stay on topic and never forget that your sole aim is to win over your subscribers and establish credibility making you the main source of expertise for that problem or need that your product or services can help to resolve.

What content you put into your emails depends on your industry but it could include topics such as.

1. Industry news and the latest happenings.
2. Information that builds support for your product or services.
3. Relevant guides, white papers or links to other sources of information and tools.
4. Special tips and insider secrets.
5. Announcements about products and services or useful changes within your business or to you website.
6. Questions and answers, reader polls.
7. Customer feedback and case studies.
8. Offers, discounts and deal for subscribers only.

It really depends on how comfortable you are with your writing ability and how close to the material you are or want to be.

If you are struggling for ideas yourself there are a couple of sources you could use to help generate your content and they include using free online content resources or hiring a ghostwriter to write for you.

Writing Your Own B2B Email Marketing Content

This is your chance to stand out and let your personality shine through.  Don’t worry, it might seem alien at first to be so free but traditional marketing which was “professional” or “corporate” or some other style was so painfully restrictive that it never really connected with people, so the modern business world is catching up and its now the current trend to be yourself and tell it like it is.  Nobody is expecting a masterpiece, they want to get to know you.

By doing your own writing you have complete control over the content allowing you to carefully craft your style and personality, blending it into the mix of your content.

Using Free Resources To Build Your B2B Email Marketing Content

If thinking about writing your own content has you running with fear of where to start, don’t worry help is at hand.

There are many sources online and by simply searching the search engines using keywords relating to the information you are looking for you may dig up some good ideas from which you can build your own content.

There are also huge libraries of articles online in places such as ezinearticles, articlebase or goarticles.

Using this method is a great kick start and idea jogger, but if you intend on reusing the work as it is then you must give the author credit and be aware that it will not be your personality but that of the original authors coming through.

Better still, use the article as research for writing your own if you can.

Have a Ghost Writer Build Your B2B Email Marketing Content

This is the quickest method if you are looking for original content but it does cost money.

You are hiring someone who will write a piece the way you want it without having to worry about the details.

If you are picky about the “voice” or style of your content it may take you some time to find the write writing partner.

Places like elance and guru and getafreelancer are example of writing services that allow buyers and sellers to connect with one another.  Always check a writers references and ensure you clearly brief them and have a timeline in place.

Present Your B2B Email Marketing Content Correctly

Whether you are writing it yourself or hiring a ghostwriter or even using somebody else’s content you should try and proofread the content and get the layout correct before sending it out as ultimately it will reflect on you.

You layout or structure is as important as the content itself and it be consistent to further create familiarity and credibility around you and your works.

Simple things like having a header and footer, use a table of contents and dividers or white space to break up your text really make a difference.

Logistics Of Sending Your B2B Email Marketing Content

So how often should you be sending out emails? Once or twice a month is a good place to start.  Some even go every 2 months, some every week.

Again it depends on your business and industry and how much content you have and the time you have available.

You must be able to deliver something NEW with every issue and remain a welcome guest and not an unwelcome pest.

Leave it too long and people may forget you, deliver too much and they may never read it.

Create a plan, stick with it, test it and and see how people respond and then change as necessary.

Get Your B2B Email Marketing Content Delivered

There are a number of ways that you can deliver your emails using either a service remotely hosted from your website or self hosting the application on or near your site.

It really depends on whether you automate some parts or manually process it.  As the numbers in your list grows you will need to give serious thought to automation to manage things like subscribers, unsubscribes (people who no longer wish to receive your email), bounce backs (mail that is not reaching its destination) as this can become very time consuming.

We use a hosted application here on our server which does the trick but there are some technical bits and pieces to getting it working.

You may also need to consider deliverability issues relating to blacklists and spamming.

Sometimes you may not be aware that your own clean site is actually listed as a spamming site because you just happen to be on and IP address (like an internet identification number) that was related to such an incident or your domain that you bought is flagged as a spamming source.

It can be overcome, however it does require some technical knowledge and patience.

A pay as you use service is responsible for ensuring that you don’t suffer from these issues so it may be your best option in the beginning.

Getting People To Sign Up To Your B2B Email Marketing Content

There are a number of ways to get people to sign up to your email marketing content which I will talk about in more detail in a later article.  They include and are usually FREE;

ebooks
Whtepapers
Software or Application Downloads
Courses
Members only access
Articles
Surveys

Promoting Your B2B Email Marketing Content

Again I will go into this in more detail in a later article but it includes using;

Websites & Blogs
Marketing activities
Hover Ads

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1. Marketing Automation Magic

I had discussed this with them many times before, and they had resisted the change because they didn’t have to….it was (tough) business as usual.

Well things finally came to ahead when the “business as usual” approach drove them into the ground and almost wiped the business out. As a last ditch attempt they said go on then see what you can do.

This I find very frustrating because if they had listened to me earlier, this difficulty would have been avoidable and they may be in a very different position today. Things are now moving in the right direction.

The graph below is REAL sales data from a live customer. I have removed their name and the figures but would be happy to share certain details with interested customers that my current customer is happy with me to discuss.

Data is live as of today and has not been manipulated or any data fitting used or strange scales to force the results.

This is a company operating in the tough manufacturing sector and they have not reduced prices but INCREASED them.

1. Their lead generation is now on autopilot but needs more work.
2. They spend more time with REAL prospects instead of time wasters.
3. They are building up a series of sales tools which is strengthening their value.
4. They have a number of partners feeding them leads and new business.
5. Their forecasting has improved giving them more control over their business.
6. They are feeling more confident about the future and their attitude is forward looking.
7. Cash-flow is starting to improve and there are plans to invest for the future in more effective sales and marketing.

Applying the right sales and marketing strategies can and does have a dramatic impact on a business even in a tough environment, but it does require change.

Businesses that are willing to embrace this change are the one most likely to survive and thrive.

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