Posts Tagged ‘selling’

One of the things that has been playing on my mind for the last couple of years has been newsletters.   I have read many books, read many blogs and heard many presenters talk about how a newsletter can keep you in a customers/prospects mind.   Yes, it all sounds great, but why would anybody want to read a newsletter about my small insignificant company?  I mean, ‘breaking news – we have a new pot plant’ just seemed so ridiculous.  Yet people go on and on about having a newsletter.

Last week I had a breakthrough, thanks to a fellow freelancer who I met at a technical seminar.  Over lunch we got chatting about freelancing, about the time drain that is ‘social media’ and then about newsletters.   He said that newsletters had generated a lot of business for him – so I asked what he did.

Newsletters – Are not about News
The advice I received was that newsletters are not in fact about news.  He agreed that nobody really cares about you, or your company or your products, or your services, or the new office pot plant.  None of this does anything for them.  In a word, it’s not useful.

What he did was to turn it into something which delivered value – but didn’t try to sell.   Having your name. company name and company logo in front of people on a regular basis is enough to keep you in their mind.  He let the constant contact keep his name in everybody’s in tray, but added value to make sure the emails were opened.

So what was his technique?

Share your knowledge on what you do
Its as simple as that.  Don’t have a newsletter full of your latest projects – just have a newsletter full of your latest tips.  Create from what you know and do.

If you create databases, have regular updates on new functions you have created, clever SQL scripts for doing calculations, or methods of moving databases.  If you are a coder or web designer, have a newsletter with CSS examples, or useful subroutines or functions.   Provide value to make sure your newsletter is opened every time – and maybe even shared with other people.

It’s a small piece of the Puzzle
Now it may seem that by having a newsletter with a subroutine or function or other bit of code may be giving stuff away for free – and your right, it is just that – free work.  But, the bit you give away is a tiny, insignificant, but useful single part of the whole puzzle.   That routine may be useful to an old customer or future prospect, but because it’s so small, they cannot complete the whole jigsaw with just that one piece – they still need somebody to create the whole thing and put it together.

A useful technique is to make sure that when you do send out useful stuff in your newsletters, you include comment lines in any example functions and procedures to show what it does, how it works, and make sure to include your name, company and contact details (web URL, email and phone number).   That way, if it does add value, your details are always on hand should they look to expand their project and need your assistance (or your details are in the code at their office if they just cut and paste the code you send out).

After all, the whole point of a newsletter is to keep your name and contact details in front of your old contacts and future prospects.

How to get Four times the value
The other technique that I learned (from a 2^nd freelancer who joined in our conversation) was to get multiple value from each entry – by reuse.

I have written in the past about my technique of storing useful new techniques and functions I create in Evernote so I can use them in future projects – well this reuse idea just expands for the newsletter.

When I am working on a customer project and I develop a new useful function (say a SQL function to turn a date into a financial month and/or year), I copy that to Evernote for future use.  But now what I do is I also turn this into a quick newsletter for my contact list – it doesn’t have to be a long letter (in fact the shorter, the better) – I just explain what it is, how it works, and include the function.  Another free newsletter is created.

Then what I do, is I take the exact same newsletter text, and post it on my company blog web site – so it adds value and search ability to my web site.

One bit of created script or function (for a customer project that I am already being paid for) is then used 4 times – on the project, into Evernote for future projects, into my newsletter, and then on my company blog.  Maximum value for minimum effort.  Perfect.

Next time, I am going to talk about how I get names on my newsletter list, and what software I use.

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 am pretty sure you recognise the image on the right as a thing called the ‘sales pipeline’; the mythical funnel shaped flow of a sale process, with lots of customers going in the top (at the prospect stage), which then get whittled down in number, to eventually hit the thin bottom of the funnel as sales.  The sales pipeline has been around for decades.

Well, here is a confession. . . . I don’t have a sales pipeline shaped like this.

Whilst I am on confessions, I am going to say something pretty radical, which goes against everything which is 21^st century…. I don’t do Social Media sales.

Social Media – Not for Me

My company does not have a facebook page, it doesn’t have a twitter profile, and it doesn’t even get mentioned in Google+.

The reason is simple – I am still not convinced that social media works for small companies.    Oh, it may work for Nike, McDonalds and NASA. . . but who wants to follow the tweets of my company?  Nobody.   It would be wasted effort.

I have read all the blog posts and books which talk about making yourself a Leader in your field via social media – and they may work for marketing gurus or Business Leaders, but for a small company such as me – nah. . . . it just isn’t going to work.

I have my own personal Twitter accounts, Facebook Account, Goole+ and Linked in.   But they are mine, for my own social use (mainly about business growth) – they don’t try and sell my company.

My company sales Pipe

The sales pipe above, and social media is all wrong for me.  It’s too ‘scatter gun’.   People talk about using Social Media to get as many people in as possible, get them crammed into the top of the funnel, and don’t engage – just hope that you don’t piss them off so much and they stick around and eventually buy something from you. . . at somewhere down the line.

So my sales pipe is just that – it’s not a funnel, but a pipe.  Narrow at the top, narrow at the bottom.  I work with just a handful of prospects, and lead them through the process, to the final sale.   When I need to engage with them, I pick up the phone or visit them.

It may not be right for everybody, but its real, and it has helped me drive my sales up and up, and made 2011 my best year so far.

Maybe being non-social media, non-email campaign, but being Pro real conversation and meeting makes me and my company different.  Maybe that’s one of my USPs.

What do you think?

Times are still tough out there (so I am told), and judging by search queries being run through Google and posts on small business forums I visit, a lot of small companies are finding it increasingly difficult to find new customers.   The two biggest phrases I see from SME’s at the moment are “dealing with late payers” and “how to attract new customers”.

This is odd, because if small companies and freelancers are struggling in making sales, it does not really explain my recent experience dealing with small companies.

Over the last few weeks I have spent some background time working on a project for a customer, finding one or more suppliers to provide IT software development services.   The customer needed a company or two to provide a mixture of services such as web site design, some database design, and application development.  My task was to define the requirements, help find companies to perform the work, vet the companies and make recommendations.

How I found the Companies

Luckily, finding the companies was not my task – it was given to an office junior who used a combination of google searches (both using adword adverts and natural results), advertising on freelancer work sites, and using a small list of previous suppliers.   In all, I was given a list of 31 possible suppliers to approach with the specification of work required.

It’s worth noting that for the sake of integrity for this work, I did not put my own company forward for doing the work.  I was simply tasked to create the outline specification, recommend a supplier and then work with them during development of the systems.  The budget for the entire work package (not including my own companies time) was £198,000 – a fair chunk of work then.  Most ‘chunks’ of work were budgeted at between £17,000 and £34,000.

The shocking Response

After  discounting 2 companies (due to geographical restrictions on the project), 29 information packs were sent out – including the outline requirements spec for all work required, rough time lines (spring next year for completion so no pressure), asking them to get in contact with bits they were interested in and outline costs.  I didn’t include the outline budgets – I didn’t want to tell anybody what they should charge.

Out of the 29 packs sent out – the stats after 4 weeks were as follows:

• 9 companies never made contact – in any form.  No emails, no calls, no letters – nothing.  I have called all 9 companies and all 9 are still in existence.
• 7 companies made contact by phone, said that the information was good enough to work with, and would provide outline costs and timelines within 2 weeks – none of them sent anything through.
• 5 companies visited for meetings for more information.  Out of these 5, 1 company visited 3 times.  Out of the 5 companies, none provided any costs or timelines – they simply. . . .vanished.
• 2 companies responded with what I would call a standard information pack; a background of their company, projects they worked on in the past, and various services they offered.  Nothing was provided specifically for the project – no timelines, costs or even reference to the project.
• 3 companies provided responses with what they would do, how long it would take, how many people would be assigned, how they would do it – but all 3 would not give a price – any price.  No day rate, no total, no overall outline– it was as if pricing was a national secret.

Just 3 companies provided the information – what they would do, by when, and how much.  And guess what, all 3 got the business (they all wanted to do different parts).

What this means for you

The companies made it so easy for me.  I could happily recommend the 3 companies who got the work as they were the only 3 companies to respond with the information needed.  Any of the other companies could have been awarded some or all of the work too, just by providing the information that was required.

Now I am sure that if asked by a potential customer to provide a bid, you would create a quote in the agreed timeframe with the information requested.  But, it just strikes me as crazy that so many companies are searching on how to find work and customers, when the work was there all the time, and all they had to do was respond.

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

Imagine you were stopped in the street and were offered a Rolex.   It’s in a nice box, the box says Rolex, and the watch says Rolex.  It’s all sparkly, gold plated, and looks very nice.  There in the box is the printed Rolex guarantee. Everything looks good.

Now imagine the person offers you the Rolex for £50 – what is your first thought?!?   Would you think it’s a real Rolex?  Is it genuine?  Or is it a knock off from China that will fall apart after 2 days?

Of course, this situation happens in business when we offer our products and services – people judge us not only on what we say, what we say our products and services do, but also on the price.   Pricing too high makes it look like a rip-off, but pricing it too cheaply makes it look like an inferior product.

I don’t do web site design, but if I offered to create a full web site with as many pages as you need for £99, what do you think the quality of that web site would be?  Something you would be happy with?  I doubt it.

Feeling Guilty

It’s often said that as a freelancer or small business owner, if you send out a quotation or estimate and you don’t feel guilty about the price being asked, you are not charging enough.  It’s also said that trying to win business by being the cheapest is a fool’s game – there will always be somebody cheaper.   I always try and pitch my work on just about the other side of the guilty feeling (I always have a moment of doubt if I am charging too much).  But how can you tell if the price is right?

Pitching a Prestige Price

To test my pricing, now and again I pitch work at what I consider to be a prestige price.   A price which is way beyond my comfort zone – just to see what the reaction is.  Not because I am trying to rip anybody off (the service is still worth the money), but to see if I should be upping my game in terms of quality and service, and so charge more for the service delivered.

Now I only do this when I reach a certain point; when I have more business than I can handle.   Normally, I would not actually bid for work when I am too busy as I would be over stretched and so fail to deliver anything on time or with the expected quality.   But now and again, instead of just not bidding, I will bid with a much higher delivery spec and a much higher price.   Imagine my quote turning from a standard Ford or Toyota into a RollsRoyce of quotes.

With my business growing and busy, it doesn’t actually hurt me for them to go with somebody else.  But in the odd times when I win one of the prestige bids, it allows me to negotiate later delivery, hire staff to help, but also to review my prices longer term.  The extra stress of multiple projects and the sudden required business growth is offset by the larger than normal fee.

I don’t bid prestige with a figure which would hurt my business (through seeming to rip off the customer), but I do bid high because the situation allows, and to see what happens.  Typically, I will bid between 100% and 200% more than I normally would – depending on the size of the project and my perception of the customer.

But even if you don’t have prestige prices and you are trying to win work through normal pricing, make sure the prices is what other people consider normal.   Don’t be the guy (or girl) trying to sell the Rolex for £50.  People will see straight through you.

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!

One of the things I like to do from time to time, is reward people.   I reward myself when I do a good job (it acts as a positive boost to doing more good stuff), I reward my company (through purchases or investments), I reward those that help me out (friends who offer advice, accountants, etc) and I like to reward my customers.

Rewarding my customers has so many advantages:

• It’s a true reward – a big old Thank You for their business
• It keeps my company on their mind
• It gives me an opportunity to ask for favours

But, there are a few rules I try to stick to make the rewards worth while:

• I don’t reward at Christmas.   My customers are overloaded with cards and cheesy gifts – I want to stick out
• I avoid the cheesy presents
• I want to make the reward personal for them – but with as little effort by me as possible

Avoiding Cheesy Rewards

I don’t know about you, but I see so many pens and mugs with company names on them – that they loose any impact.  Pens generally get passed around from person to person, and mugs don’t give a good image when the logo fades and the inside is brown with tea stains.

Also, there are the ‘plastic’ gifts provided by the gift companies – highlighters, pen stands, mint holders, company card holders – all are (in my view) cheese.  They offer no value other than to give the recipient something to find in a letter.  They just don’t do it.

Finding something with Value that Lasts

So what I am talking about is something that has real value – something that lasts, something with your company name on, and that something the person will want to hold on to.   Believe or not, such gifts and rewards are available, and are fairly easy to find.   They are the things you use yourself and you value.

The example that my company is sending out this year is a one year membership to the Gourmet Society.  It’s a card which gives you either 25%/30% off a meal at thousands of restaurants around the country, or free meals (when you buy another meal).  Eveybody likes to save money, most people like to eat out, and the card needs to be presented to be used.  It carries our company logo, so whenever they eat out, it’s like our company is there, footing some of the bill.

The cost of a one year membership for each one of our clients is £25 – and for that they get the card (with our company name and logo printed on it) and a printed directory of the thousands of restaurants the card can be used in.  It’s pretty impressive when first received, and it’s pretty impressive each time you use it – for £25.

This is the type of reward I like to send out.

Making It Work Harder

Now to make the gift work harder, I am doing a few things.  Not only am I sending one card out to each major (or sub) contact of each company that has given us an order in the last 12 months (with a big Thank You for your business), but I am asking them for something in return.

I am using the opportunity to ask them to complete a new customer survey (so I get some feedback on how well our company is doing).  But, I am not asking them for more business – I am not trying to use it to sell.  It is genuinely a reward, a thank you – for selecting my company to provide a service when they could have gone elsewhere.  And it’s being sent in the summer, so it’s ‘out of the blue’ – a nice surprise rather than being a Christmas sales push.

But, whenever they use the reward, they will of course be thinking of my company.

The Legal and Money Bits

There are a few legal bits to consider when selecting the Reward.  First of all, it’s important to avoid anything which has high duty charges.  So gifts of alcohol, fuel and such are not allowed (or you will be fined if the revenue ever find out).  You also can’t  send a reward of money, property, cars and such.

To be tax efficient, it needs to carry your company name.  Giving a golf club may be a nice gift, but if it doesn’t have your company name printed on it, it can’t be considered a corporate sales promotion – and a promotional gift is how to make the revenue pay for most of the reward.

Currently, the first £10 of value of any such gift can be completely written off in terms of corporation tax – this applies per receiver/person per year.  Beyond this £10, you say just the 21% corporation element.   Don’t forget to include the cost in your tax calculation to get the money back on the ‘gift’.

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?