Posts Tagged ‘sales’

In my house, we have a wooden plaque with our coat of arms – a merged coat of arms created from my wife’s family crest and my own (with a few whimsical touches thrown in for good measure to make it “us”). On this plaque there are two phrases included which are our family mottos (me and my wife – not our historical family’s).

Every so often, my 10 year old daughter looks at the plaque, runs her fingers over the crest and words, and repeats the phrases to herself – fascinated by their meaning (which we explained when she was very little).

These phrases are not only our family mottos, not only the way we do business, but also the way we ‘do life’.

The phrases are:

“Te Dormio Te Amittere” – which is below our family crest. It’s Latin, and when translated to English, it means “you snooze, you lose” (in other words.. DO IT NOW)

And the other phrase is….

Ask for Nothing and you shall receive it in abundance – not sure where this quotation came from, but it’s very powerful (for us).

Both of these quotes are about the same thing – getting what you want by asking for what you want – and asking now!!!

The Power of Asking

Which leads me on to asking – or more importantly, the way you ask. This can make a huge difference is business and life.

When I was at university studying psychology, I remember this professor giving a series of lectures on the method of asking – and it has stuck with me today. He taught my class that a few choice words can be the difference between getting what you need/want, and not getting anything at all.

Let me give you an example….

Suppose tonight, you have a craving for a steak for your dinner – oh yes, a nice big fat juicy steak – with chips (or fries for my American friends) and all the works – now doesn’t that sound good?

Well you could go home and say “What’s for Dinner?” and hope that in a very unusual alignment of the stars, your partner just happens to want the exact same thing – its not going to happen.

Better would be to say “I fancy steak tonight. Can we have steak tonight?”- which says what you want. But hold on, this still gives lots of other options. You could get a response of “sure thing” (great), but you might also get “no”, or “were having fish” or a host of other replies. So the question is good, but not great.

So what about something more demanding, that says what is going to happen such as “I am going to have steak tonight – want to join me in a steak?” – which says that you are definitely getting your meal of choice – but what about your partner? Well they still have a multiple choice of options including “yes”, “no”, “I have fish here – were having fish” etc. So better, but still not there – you still may be feasting on Mr Fish tonight.

The best way to get what you want is to ask with the assumption already made. “I’m in the mood for steak – yeah, steak is what I am going to have tonight. Now, what time shall we eat our steaks? You hungry now?”. It says your having steak – and it assumes your partner is going to have steak – but it still gives them control about what time to eat – so everybody feels that they have a say. Of course they can still go down the “I don’t want steak” or “Looks, here’s fish” option – but it’s a better conversation to have than the “What’s for dinner?” question.

You have set your position – the rest is down to negotiation.

All of this applies to business questions and more importantly, to selling.  You just need to check your customer for feedback to make sure you haven’t crossed the line (in which case, pass it off as humour and take a selling step backwards).  But isn’t a conversation which starts with something like “Well here’s the quote – now that we have gone through it, when would you like to schedule the project setup meeting and order the hardware?” a good conversation to be having?

Last month, I went on holiday to China.  It was a good holiday. It was a great holiday.  But I was puzzled about the flights to and from China.

I flew with British Airways both ways, and noticed that the plane was 25% empty.   Economy was packed – not a free seat to be had, but premium, business and first class were practically empty.   Not surprising I guess, seeing we are teetering on the brink of another recession and people are cutting back.

But what surprised me was this – why were BA not upgrading passengers?  By moving people up one or two grades, they could get more people in the plane and therefore could make more money from the flight.

What is the cost of the Upgrade?

Ok, so maybe I am being optimistic.  After all, upgrading somebody from economy to business is just throwing money away.  Isn’t it?

But hang on – what is the real cost.   The fuel used is the same.  The cost of handling the passenger and their bags are the same.  They still have to have the same number of stewards.  The plane is going there anyway.   So what are we really talking in terms of cost to BA?   A better meal?

And what about the advantages?  They can fit more people on the plane, the flight is greener (more people equals better fuel ratio per flight/person), the stewards in upper class are not so bored.

But the real advantage is that people who only ever travel economy may find what they are missing from travelling premium or business.  They may like it so much that they may decide to travel in that class in the future.  In a nutshell, it’s a great sale at minimum cost.

Can you give a free upgrade?

So with things being as hard as they are, is it worth thinking about whether you can give a free upgrade to your own customers?  If things are fine and you are over busy, then that’s all well and good.  But if you have spare time on your hands, is there something else you could offer as a free upgrade?

What about the rights to the source code, or designs, or web content?  What about the test data you produced, or access to the specifications, or some after sales support?

Of course, the customer has to know they are being upgraded for it to be worthwhile and seen as good value.  Just handing it over is not enough.   But saying, “here is the agreed delivery, and as a special treat for your business in these difficult times and as a way of saying thank you, please accept (whatever you are giving them)”.

Point out this is provided as an upgraded for this time only, and that you normally provide this service/feature/benefit as part of your premium service.

You never know, your customers may like it up there in the expensive seats and decided to fly your premium service from now on.

I have just finished reading the Ultimate Small Business Marketing Book by Dee Blick.   Actually, that’s not true.   The fact is, I have just finished reading the Ultimate Small Business Marketing Book for the third time – and I only got the book a couple of weeks ago.

My method of reading a business book is that as I read the book, if there are tips and advice I think I can apply to my business, I turn a page corner over.  Then when I am done – I go through the turned page and turn them into ToDo tasks which I action over the course of a few months or weeks.   However, when I got to the end of Dee Blicks book, I found that the majority of pages were turned over.  So I re-read it, trying to find the key elements which I can apply.  You know what?  I didn’t know where to start, there were that many.

The fact is, this is one of the best Business Books I have read.  From the very first page (and I mean the first page – before all the copyright and print edition nonsense), its all good stuff.  Everything you need to know about marketing, selling, branding, and growing a small business.

Subjects include a Marketing Master class (what you are selling, why, pricing), using strong sales words in documents and proposals, Sales letters (including lumpy sales letters), newsletters, turning bin-able sales correspondence into must keep and respond items, branding, blogging, on-line promotion, exhibitions, and lots more – it’s all covered.  On every page there are ideas, backed up with examples of what won’t work, what will, and what will work in different situations.  There are hints, tips, tricks, examples and more advice than you could possibly imagine is in one book.

Which leads me to a problem.   With most books, I have between 1 and 20 ideas to improve and grow my business – easy to add to my Do list.  After reading this book, I have at least 100 (if not more) – so where to start?!?   So I am going to re-read it slowly, a page a week, and I am going to implement all the ideas I have highlighted, one at a time.  I have no doubt that these improvements will drive my business forward and generate even more sales.

If you need just one marketing book that covers it all, buy this book.

But if you can only buy one business book which will help grow your business, you should still buy this book: the Ultimate Small Business Marketing Book by Dee Blick.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

As part of my Google Optimisation experiments, I made a few changes to a number of my web site pages.  Now, I don’t get a lot of traffic, so it takes a while to see if anything makes a major difference.  But, I have seen one metric drastically improve overnight.

It’s on my contacts page.

I actually thought my contacts page was pretty good.  I had all the boxes ticked including:

• My company details listed – with my business address, and location
• Not making the contacts page ask for mandatory sensitive information (i.e, phone number is not mandatory)
• A clickable email address – in case people wanted to just, you know. . . email me
• A simple web enquiry form in case they preferred web form communication
• The company number with the internal dialling number in case phone was their preferred method of communication.

Despite all of this, the bounce rate was still at around 70%.  70% of people who made it to my contacts page never made contact.    I could not understand why.   I tried various versions of the web page – sometimes with the web form on the left, sometimes on the right, sometimes with the phone number in bold – I was only seeing differences of around 3 or 4%.

Then I added something – just a bit of text – to my contacts page.  Immediately, my bounce rate reduced to 20%, and the number of enquiries jumped.

When I think about it, it was silly not to have this text on my contacts page in the first place.  After all, people visiting my site don’t know anything about me, just as your visitors do not know anything about you.  I am asking them to provide their details to me, and they have no idea what I am going to do with them.

Which is why I think the following statement on my contacts page (in plain sight, directly below the contact form) has really helped get more people contacting me for business meetings:

We hate spam as much as you do!

We promise that we will never sell, share or trade your details. Ever!  We won’t even add them to any mailing list that we run.  We will contact you about your enquiry, and that’s it!

Now it could be said I should be adding them to a mail list and emailing them, but I have never had the time or motivation to create regular newsletters – I prefer the personal touch.   And so far, its working!

There is an old quote about selling Power Drills which goes:

The customer Doesn’t need a Drill.   What they need is a hole

The same is true with anything anybody sells – they don’t need the Thing – they need the Outcome.

They don’t need the car, they need to be able to get to somewhere whenever they want.   They don’t need a seat on a plane – they need to be somewhere else that’s sunny.  They don’t need the flashy new web site – they need more customers.   They don’t even need that consultancy service – they need answers and advice they can depend on.

It’s an interesting flip on sales thinking.  Are you selling the Thing, or the Outcome.

It’s one of the things I am testing in some web site, brochure and leaflet changes.   My web site was all about the service I offered – so I am trying versions that are all about what the Outcome is – and its showing good results.

So what are you selling?  The Thing (that nobody wants or needs), or the Outcome?

Is it time to check the wording on your adverts, web site and literature?

As a company, I love Amazon.   They grew from nothing, they offer a great service, they keep their stock/systems/prices up to date, and they even managed to come through the DOT COM bubble fairly unscathed.  When you think of Amazon, it’s also very hard to think of another online competitor.  In short, they are a great company.

But, they still make mistakes.  Silly, stupid, obvious mistakes.  Mistakes we can learn from.

One of their biggest is their automated emails.   That is a classic mistake.    You go onto Amazon, you search on Widgets (whatever your particular form of widget may be), you buy one, you don’t buy one – it doesn’t matter.   What matters is that 48 hours later, you get an email from Amazon telling you about the Widgets they stock.   Which is great, but in my view, it’s most likely you have purchased that widget – either from Amazon, Widgets.com or Widgets-Are-Us.Net.    I don’t need to purchase another Widget.

So where is the email from Amazon telling me about the products that compliment my Widget.  Where is my widget duster, my widget carry case, my widget extended warranty or my widget club membership.  In short, well is the add-on sell?

Are you following up your sales with widgets, widget add-ons, or nothing at all?

Can I help you?   It’s a common enough question.   You meet with a potential client (or speak with them on the phone), you do the introductions, a little small talk, and then to get the ball rolling you ask the question – “So how can I help you”.    I know…. I use this question all the time – but apparently, it’s a big mistake.  According to psychology weekly, it’s a mistake for a number of reasons:

• Not everybody is looking for help
• The word Help causes the brain to panic and stall
• Help is linked to problems and solutions – again not everybody has problems (assisting the launch of a new product is not a problem)
• The words Help and Problem have negative connotations

Instead, it is suggested we ask growth questions such as “What are you looking to achieve” or “What is it your looking to change or improve?”.  If both of these seem a little false, cheesy and hard to use, you can fall back on the “So, how can I assist you”?   Assist implies teamwork.

The next stage is of course the most important.  Once you have asked the question, its to shut up and listen to the answer.

Over the last few months, I have been looking to see if there was a free, easy and quick way to generate more business through my web site (I know, wouldn’t we all like that).   I posted a few questions on some web design forum sites (with links to my business web site) and I received back a whole host of ideas.  But most of the ideas pointed to the same change – a BIGGER call to action.   I made this change, and thought I would share my results with you.

Before, most of the pages on my web site had the same design – the same layout, with the same ‘contact us’ button you see here – a fairly (I thought) clear button for somebody to contact me – a clear call to action.  From the colour scheme of my web site, it stands out from the page, and there are various ways into the contact me form – from the button itself, to a Contact Us menu option on the main menu, and some hyperlinks within the text of the pages.  

This format did result in enquiries.   For the past 12 months, this resulted in an average 7 new enquiries a month (or 1.2% of all visitors using the contact form).  Of course, not all people actually pick up the phone, or fill out the form, so just for comparison, using Google Analytics, I know that in the last 12 months an average 18 people went to the enquiry form (with 11 not using the form).

Now, what I changed was to make the call to action bigger – a lot bigger – and I placed this at the top of the side bar.  Yes, the graphic may be a bit goofy (I selected 4 possible images and did a poll of a handful of people to see which worked best), but it’s big and bold and you can’t miss is.   It’s my ‘action man’.    This change has now been live for a month just to see the difference.   I know that it should run for a lot longer to get true A/B version comparison, but the results look encouraging.   For that one month, I received 11 new enquiries, (or 1.9% of all visitors using the contact form), with 27 people going to the enquiry form.   In total, the difference in total web traffic between the test month and the average for the last 12 months is almost identical, so its not a coincidence of more people hitting my site generating more enquiries – the big call to action does make a difference.

Now the next step is to work out how to turn those that hit the contact form and don’t call/complete the form into form fillers.

Today I went shopping for tyres for my car, and something occurred to me.   It struck me that I can’t actually remember the last time I went to a companies physical location to shop for anything – to traditionally shop.   For the tyres, I goggled all my local providers, went to their web sites, and checked on the prices of the range of tyres.   This has become my normal method of purchase now – using web sites to price up the products I want before I then go and purchase it (or order it if the price warrants an online purchase).   I suspect for more and more people, this is now the normal mode of shopping.

But you know what?  On a few of these sites, when I used the Price Enquiry button and was told to “Call now” for prices – I really could not be bothered.   I don’t want to get into a 5 minute conversation to get prices.  No, I expect to be able to find my prices on the web.  I don’t care if it’s a car tire, a tablet PC, a holiday or the services of a plumber – I want to know an idea of the price before I get in contact.

As I say, this has become the norm for me.   Yes, I will still ‘wander’ into shops for clothes, for food, for magazines and such.  But the times I use the web before I buy far out ways the phone up or wander in approach.   And I suspect that in the future I will start using the web for things like clothes and food shopping. 

Which brings me around to those companies with the ‘call me’ option as the ONLY way of finding out the price.  I went onto their web site (boosting their web hit count), tried to look at their prices, hit the call us area, and promptly moved onto the next site (so a web hit without a follow through).   Yes, car tyres are a commodity, but the tyres are actually part of a service (I am not going to fit the tyres to my car myself).   

So I am going so update my own site, and I am going to start listing typical project prices, and typical day rates – as part of an A/B site test.   If I demand to get an idea of prices before I make contract, you can bet there are others out there wanting the same from me.

So are you hiding your prices from your web visitors?  If so, is it costing you sales?

I am not a salesman.   In fact, I am hopeless at sales.  But that’s good – I don’t want to be a salesman – I am a technical person who loves what I do.  The problem is that in order to generate revenue from customers, I also have to do some selling.   But that doesn’t mean I have to like it and frankly, I am rubbish at it.   But, I have had a lot of success over the past couple of months using a technique which was suggested to me by a salesman at the end of one of my mentoring groups.

This technique is simply to hold back, and keep some bait for the fishing (this was how it was described to me).   Look at it this way, when we are meeting with a prospect or putting out a proposal, it is far too easy to give all the information, all the recommendations, all the relevant links and all of costs.   This is done on the belief that the more we provide, the better the outcome.   But then, we move into the follow up and chasing phase of the selling process… and then what?!?!   What do you say in those emails?

I have received my own share of emails saying just “Have you had a chance to look at the proposal, are you ready to sign up yet?”    Constant contact with the prospect is important, but the contact needs to add value.

Which is why holding back or 2 or 3 small items gives you the perfect reason for follow up and further conversations.   Much better to email or call the prospect with something along the lines of “By the way, in regard to the proposal, I thought you would like to also know that ….” followed by the extra bait.  But again, 1 item at a time gives reasons for chasing and follow up calls in the future.

I hate selling, I hate the closing even more, but using this technique makes phoning or sending those emails a lot easier, and I can confirm I have made a lot more sales because of it.