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Archive for the ‘Free Advice’ Category
Social Media – What a load of rubbish!
I can’t keep quiet any longer! What an absolute load of rubbish most people talk about Social Media & Networking and, more importantly, how to harness it for business use. There seems to be a whole industry growing up around myths and stories that have no basis in fact, so be warned.
Perhaps you’re still left wondering how best use it, or even if you should at all? Maybe you’ve already dived in but not finding it particularly productive or stimulating?
Let’s work backwards for a moment. Social networking is exactly about that, networking. Creating a profile, adding lots of ‘friends’ and then broadcasting your news to the world is a bit like walking into a room at a networking event standing in the middle and shouting sales messages to anyone who might care to listen. Meanwhile there are lots of people, all huddled in little groups, having interesting conversations between each other and getting to know each other.
Standing on your own spieling to the room simply doesn’t work – and you’d look ridiculous! As you might imagine, your efforts may seem a little strange and eccentric to others. Of course someone might come over and try to help you out, strike up a two-way conversation and help you get started but it’s not very likely.
You need to approach Social Networking in the same way you would a physical networking opportunity. Once you enter the space your first job is to wander about, get close to the conversations that are going on already, find the ones that interest you (and you feel you can contribute to) and then listen. Listening is the key to good Social Networking skills. It’s where it all starts. Once you’ve found a conversation you like, you can find an appropriate way to engage with it and add something of value.
This is how you can start to build a credible profile…
… which is vital if you want recognition in the Social Media space.
The Social Network across facebook
People who endlessly post comments about what they have to sell will find the Social Media landscape a very harsh and barren environment. If you’re a mega-brand and your positioning is already established then yes, you may be able to attract lots of fans and keep them entertained with the next product offering you’ve got coming up. If not, you’ll want to use Social Media to start to create that profile and help people to get to know you.
Avoid inane comments and drivel and certainly stay well away from the keyboard late at night when you’ve had one glass of wine too many but do let your tribe know what you’re enjoying right now. Be that a new product or service that you’re consuming, books, music, arts, comedy, etc., etc. Engage and comment on a range of issues that not only affect you but the people you want to connect with.
So the other golden rule is to engage… to be Sociable. It’s interesting to see people who pop into the space for just a few moments, stand there and shout about how great their product is and then promptly leave again. What would you think of a person who did this in the ‘real world’? Take time to read what others are talking about, contribute, comment, challenge if you like but above all be social. The same good communication skills are needed in this virtual environment.
Apply these simple and hopefully obvious rules and you’ll not only find the Social Media space an interesting place to be, you’ll make new connections and become recognised. Who knows… you might even find it brings you new business opportunities too.
Increase Your Productivity, Instantly!
Over a number of years I’ve watch hundreds of business men and woman chain themselves to some sort of penal system called… self-employment.
They’ve developed a twisted mentality that if it doesn’t hurt, they probably aren’t working hard enough. Sure, as every small business owner will tell you, if you want the results you’ve got to be prepared to work hard. Some of the hardest working and most dedicated people I’ve ever met have been self-employed.
However… I want to share with you an idea, a mentality, that I and many of my clients have found a powerful way to change your approach to working long hours as a self-employed individual. Above all, I’ve found it a powerful way to significantly increase productivity and reduce stress and risk of burnout.
Of course, there is a range of different styles and approaches to work. Some people are extremely disciplined and use structure to ensure they chunk through the work to get the results in time. Others are more scatter-gun and reactive; when it comes in the task gets dealt with according to (perceived) priority. This is never really a good idea, as it means your business and perhaps your customers or suppliers (or even your staff) are actually more in control than you are.
Finally, there are the smart ones out there who simply focus on each task but rely upon a second person to assist in the management and priority – having a PA or secretary who manages your time can work incredibly well. This method seems to be ideal for more creative types who find little satisfaction in structure and focus more on the process and even more on the final product.
You might well have guessed by now that much of what I’m sharing here with you now is very close to my heart. As a person who started in self-employment at the age of 19 I didn’t really know what to expect, or have any experience of being employed (self- or otherwise). I worked harder and harder but still struggled. I needed to learn more and increase my skill sets before I could deliver good results quickly.
After eight successful years of self-employment I returned to the UK and switched to become an employee and eventually entered corporate life. I’m pleased to say that my return to self-employment (about 10 years ago) has been the ideal move and I know I’ll never return to the ‘dark side’. I’m simply not employee material.
As an employee I worked for and with a mixture of different managers, all with different styles. For the most part managers seem to quickly develop a mentality that suggests that employees should never be trusted and if you’re not squeezing every last moment of time out of them you’re not ‘managing them’. Again, I fully accept that there are some employees who are simply lazy and they will find every opportunity to skive. But I’ve seen this mentality destroy real enthusiasm and form bitter, untrusting and even divisive relationships.
I’ve worked for bosses who demand punctuality to the minute and would rather measure your dedication by how many lunch-breaks you are prepared to give up, rather than by the results you actually output. I’ve also work for self-employed people who believe their own insane desire of working 14-16 hours a day should extend to people with far less investment in the business.
One boss would start his working day at 5:30am or even 4:30am (in the office) and take perverse pleasure from reminding all his staff that he had already put in half a day’s work before others had turned up! His life was consumed by work, he had no social life as he went to bed at 9pm every night, no friends and eventually watched a business worth millions collapse in front of his eyes.
So here’s my radical thought; if business productivity is all about results, sales, profits and growth, why do we always tend to measure work rate by in-put and not by out-put?
It's all about your Output, not how many hours you work that really matters!
The number of hours you work is nothing more than a measure of time it’s taken you to complete the given task(s). I’ve met some people who are clearly workaholics and their biggest frustration is that 24 hours in a day just isn’t enough. If you’re running your own business and working more than 10 hours a day I would seriously question your business model. ‘Work should be boring and predictable’ and most of all it should be able to run without you; that’s called having a business, not owning a job.
As the majority of what we do day-to-day is broken down into tasks and the fact that being task-focused is a good way to stay on track, it’s tempting to approach these tasks by the measure of time required. The reality is though, it’s the actual out-put of the task that creates the result, the sale, the profits, etc. The amount of time expended is almost irrelevant. Arguably the longer it takes the more it costs and your profit margin shrinks as a result of inefficiency. Always remember, even if you own the business, your time is (or should be) a cost to the business too. Do you include this in your calculations?!
Instead of looking at each day as a set of tasks to be completed in a set amount of time, why not focus on how best to achieve the output you want for each? This will help you to think about production and problem solving in a far more creative way. I promise you; you’ll also find you complete tasks far quicker and with lower stress – and you’ll probably enjoy yourself a lot more too!
Now I approach my working day very differently. Sure, the days and weeks still fly past for me and I’d still like to create more. However, rather than looking at the next busy week ahead and thinking about all the hours it’s going to take to achieve the desired result, I now look at the end outcome and decide how can I quickly, efficiently and effectively create the result wanted. It’s also a great way to recognise that teamwork and collaboration are the key to business growth and stability.
The time you put into your working life is nothing more than a measure of how much of your life you are giving it. So surely it would be better to maintain a focus on what you want to actually achieve, for you and others around you?
Nial Adams
What’s the Deal?!
Are you really getting your message across?
A client coaching session on Skype last night threw up some very interesting and fundamental questions. The client, who runs a career coaching service, has a real depth and breadth of knowledge. Harnessed with the passion she has (and I mean serious passion) she produces some amazing results with her clients.
She’d admit to still being a novice when it comes to marketing and promotion, hence the reason for our coaching sessions. Last night’s session was very different though. The end result was a culmination of some vital concepts that she’s now ready to adopt and apply in her marketing.
I’ve spent many an hour talking and writing about the need for every business to create a ‘compelling proposition’. This is one of the most important things I’ve learned in marketing over the past fifteen years. I’ve met so many business people who have immense knowledge of their subject, have a real ability to deliver the goods but the most crucial element in their marketing strategy is still missing – a killer product offering.
It’s been said many times that selling a service is significantly harder than selling a product. This should be obvious. Allow me to digress for a moment to give you a powerful example…
I’ve just helped a client open a new retail space, a Coffee Shop. He’s an award-winning Barista Maestro and what this guy doesn’t know about serving great coffee really doesn’t count. In the past six years of his career he’s helped a major national chain make hundreds of thousands of pounds in profit. He’s highly successful and now has a very bright future ahead in his own business.
This is because he has a fundamental grasp on the three main aspects of his business; 1) knowing his subject, 2) knowing his business and 3) knowing what customers really want. Let me expand on this for a moment:
Knowing your subject – if you want to position yourself in the top end of your market, and if you want to sell a premium product offering (and why wouldn’t you?) you really need to know what you’re talking about. The best way to approach this, as I’ve found, is accept that you will always be studying and learning about your subject.
If you think it’s time to stop reading, listening and learning then you’re going to watch your competitors pass you and pull ahead. You’ll simply perish.
Knowing your business – again, I’ve said it many times before, too many ‘business people’ just don’t understand that you need a cast iron grip on the day-to-day management of your business and that all starts with the core figures. Our Coffee Shop owner is fanatical about margins and labour costs. Even if you only ever focused on these two elements you will immediately surpass about 95% of the business community out there. (And remember labour costs include YOUR time too!)
Knowing what customers want – I know this is probably stating the obvious but when was the last time that you really, openly asked a customer how you could improve the offering you give? Or, what process do you have for measuring the satisfaction of your customers on a daily basis? For the Coffee Shop owner it’s really simple; fresh food, a top quality coffee and made well (he’s even had his own roast blended to his exact recipe!), an immaculate and clean store and, most important of all… a smile for every customer!
Honey's Caffe in Fakenham
Returning to my original point, about the Career Coach – we agreed last night that her knowledge was significant and her delivery produces tangible results. The one ingredient missing to-date is a clear and concise proposition.
You see, if you want to take your prospective customer to the point where they are ready to buy you need to ask them a very direct question – every good sales person knows that ‘asking for the business’ is crucial. And yet you can only do this effectively is the consumer knows what they are being asked to buy and why they should go ahead.
Take five minutes and step back from your business. Ask yourself this very direct question; ‘if I were a prospect, would I recognise a clear sales proposition? Would I be totally clear about what this company or individual is asking me to buy?’ – ‘could I confidently give a Yes or No answer?’
Then you might want to go a step further and ask yourself these questions – known as the Key Buying Criteria (here are just four of the seven):
1. What actually is it? [the service or product]
2. Why do I need it? [again, the service or product]
3. What will it do for me – how will I benefit?
4. Why should I buy it from this company and not somewhere else?
Trust me, this is concept is responsible for creating quantum shifts in results from marketing and promotions – I know, I’ve proved this with hundreds of clients for over a decade. If you want to get a better result you might just need to take a different approach and being clear about your offering and proposition, or Essential Sales Argument, as it’s sometimes called, this is the best place to start.
Nial Adams
Please don’t tell me what you do!
It’s who you are that counts, not what you do!
A few years ago I learned about the concept of ‘be, do, have’. Like most of the really important lessons in business (and in life!) it can sometimes be a few weeks, months or even years before you really understand their true value.
In my work helping businesses, organisations and people to promote their products and services, I naturally start by looking at the individuals themselves. After all, people buy from people, right?! Perhaps as a result of this I’ve carved out a successful reputation for helping people to create strong personal profiles and focus on personal branding.
So I often find people, and especially those starting out, who tend to want to tell the world about what they actually do. The fact is that there are lots of people who are really good at their specialist subject; they know their craft and could be described as experts or specialists in their field.
The thing is, it’s not what you do that people are really interested in, they want to know how it could affect or benefit them. They also want to know WHO you are. I’m sure you’ve heard of the need to articulate benefits over features. Your customers and clients don’t buy what you do, they buy the end result – the how is much less important. This is all good marketing sense and something that every smart business owner needs to embrace if they want to get powerful results from marketing and promotion.
So you’ve helped the (would-be) customer or client understand what the benefit is, or the ‘WIIFM’… What’s In It For Me, now you need to help them understand why they should buy it from you, and not just anyone else. You see, there are always TWO elements to every sales message and so many people either forget, or are completely unaware of this.
- Tell them why they need to buy your product or service, and
- Tell them why they should buy it from you!
It’s with this second element that WHO you are becomes so important. Factors such as trust, confidence, credibility and my favourite (and possibly the most powerful) ‘Social Proof’ are all centred on who you are, not what you do or sell. Above all, they want to get to know and like a person who is truly authentic…
Be authentic and let others see who you really are
So here’s my question for you; how do you describe yourself to others? Are you making the most of the personal brand assets you have as a person and are you really articulating these to the audience?
If you want to significantly dial up your profile and ‘position yourself’ effectively you need to BECOME that expert, you need to BECOME the person other people will trust and value. This creates a powerful effect; when you BECOME that person, you will start to DO the things that reflect this and, as a result, you’ll start to HAVE the outcome you’re looking for.
This concept may appear very simple and perhaps you already follow a similar ethos but my challenge is “how are you getting this message out to your audience and what could you do more to dial this up?”]
Nial Adams
Keep it Real – Become an Authority
An interesting conversation with a new client yesterday threw up a very interesting outcome. The question and scenario that we were addressing was one of how best to establish Authority – and Authority in respect to the way we position ourselves in our respective field of expertise.
If you’ve read Dr Robert Cialdini’s work on Influence you’ll know that he describes ‘Authority’ as one of the key principles of influence. If you’ve not read Cialdini, you seriously must; it’s one of, if not THE most important books on human psychology and how we relate to it in terms of marketing and sales communication. [Here’s a link – Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
The vital part to remember about Authority is that firstly you really do need to know what you’re talking about – if you think you can wing-it, forget it, you’ll get caught out sooner or later. Authenticity is one of the key elements that builds trust and forges strong bonds in every human relationship, and vital in a professional context. Through my experiences in business networking I often come across people who are desperately seeking acceptance but instead of simply being themselves, they believe that they require a mask of personality that ‘fits’ with what they believe everyone else expects of them. This couldn’t be further from the truth. I don’t want to know who you think you should be, I want to know the real you – what makes you tick, what gets you up in the morning, what excites you, what provokes you!
Trying to create a personality that ‘fits’ with the accept norm is a myth anyway. Reflecting on this the other day I realised that many of the people I value most in my life are actually a bit odd, strange and some are clearly quite barking… I’m not sure what that says about me! However, they are all completely comfortable in their own skin; they’re not trying to be something or someone else. I see the real person and connect with them. We all possess a most basic human ability to pick up on the subtle signs that others are faking it. Sure, there are some great actors out there and it could even be argued that we’re all actors in one form or another.
Nial Adams - The 'Barking Blogger'..!
The main reason that people struggle to build Authority is actually not because they have a lack of knowledge, experience or skill in their chosen field but because they have a lack of personal awareness of what that knowledge is worth to others and how to value it. We all know so much and world serves up to us, on a minute-by-minute basis, more information, knowledge and learning than we could ever hope absorb in one lifetime. What’s more, we probably only use a fraction of our knowledge and experience in our daily lives. So it’s not a lack of knowing that holds us back, it’s a lack of knowing how to harness it, for our benefit and for the benefit of others.
Stop for a moment and consider the life experiences that have brought you to where you are today. Remember that you’re at the very leading edge of human evolution; although sometimes it may not feel like it the morning after the night before! These experiences have been successful, enough to keep you alive until today and that is no small feat. Now stop and consider how those experiences and the learning you have can benefit so many other people around you. It might not be in a professional context, it could be to the benefit of those close to you, a friend who needs a caring ear and soothing words of kindness, or it could be that child who looks to you for guidance as they go forward in the world. Above all share who you really are and in this way you’ll build the trust and ‘authority’ that sets you apart from the crowd.
– Be, Do, Have…
Can you afford to waste a sales opportunity?
Can any business afford to ignore a sales opportunity these days; apparently the answer is yes.
Having worked in the marketing and promotions industry for well over a decade now I’m quite familiar with the simple process of placing orders for things like advertising space and print for point-of-sale. On the whole I’ve always found it to be a quite straight forward task. The golden rule is to set out clearly, in a language that suppliers are familiar with, the exact specifications of your needs. This ensures you get an accurate quote, the supplier recognises that you know what you want and in the vast majority of cases you get a good quality of service at a price that meets your budget. Everyone’s happy.
Perhaps this is changing and now I need to learn that the very first thing a written request for a quote requires is a clear statement at the very top, which reads:
‘THIS IS A LIVE SALES OPPORTUNITY – I’M ASKING YOU FOR A QUOTE BECAUSE I’M READY TO BUY’
You might detect a modest hint of sarcasm in my comment above and that would be correct. I’ve recently approached four local printers with to request a quote for a reasonable size print run. I’ve been shocked and disappointed that three of the four haven’t even bothered to reply. One did contact me to ask for some clarification on the copy but I’ve not heard a dickie bird since then. Thankfully the one printer who did respond was quick off the mark and offered me a great deal on a larger print run. Sadly his best offer doesn’t suit the requirement as it stands, so I’m still left looking. The other three seem to have completely passed by this sales opportunity.
"Oh dear, did we really miss that one?!"
Let me say quite clearly that I’ve often found printers to be very easy to work with, very professional and frequently willing to work hard to deliver a great service and build a good supplier/client relationship. Anyone in the print industry will know just how competitive this marketplace is. So this most recent experience is a slight shock and disappointment. Of course, the lack of effective follow-up on sales leads isn’t unique to one industry, or even the Business-2-Business market, we find it constantly in the Business-to-Consumer market as well.
I’m sincerely hoping that this recent experience is nothing more than a minor blip and purely coincidental. I could also look back at myself and remember that ‘Communication is about the result we get’ as I tell my own clients. This is always a good place to start. Did I really make it clear as to what my needs were, or the fact that order is quite urgent? In this instance I feel confident that I’ve done both of these effectively, so this experience leaves me bemused. The order itself isn’t mammoth but it will be the first of many repeat orders, so my Average Lifetime Customer Value could be quite high.
I’m sharing this experience with one clear objective; I want to provoke you to go back to your own business and confirm, beyond all reasonable doubt, that your own sales process is completely water-tight. I suggest you test the system, perhaps with a mystery shopper, to make sure that when an inbound sales enquiry arrives at your door it always enters a process that results in a clear and defined outcome. Then go one step further than this. Make sure you have some back-check process in place to ensure that every call, email or face-to-face request has been fully dealt with and ensure there is evidence to back this up. In every case there should be some record of how the request was concluded; did the prospect go ahead and place an order, or did they decline, and if so do you know why? What will you do to maintain contact with them and perhaps find a way to win the next sales opportunity they present?
In a time when so many businesses really need to ensure profitable sales continue to flow and increase, there can be no excuse for not having even the most simple of systems to ensure that every crumb of opportunity gets picked up and dealt with effectively. They also need to demonstrate that they’re open for business and ready to serve.
So, will I get my print order completed in time; yes, I’m sure of it and perhaps a few red faces might be the price worth paying to be made aware that something isn’t quite working as it should be.
Please don’t ever find yourself in the same situation.
Nial Adams
Start using the F-word!
The F-word is Back!
Nope, it’s not another TV series with our favourite Celebrity Chef who suffers with Tourettes and I’m not about to launch into tirade of inappropriate language. Mother wouldn’t like it! It is that F-word that seems to raise it’s head all too often and only eleven days into the New Year I’ve had two clients talk about it in the space of a few hours… I’m talking about F-O-C-U-S and the need for it in every business.
There will always be a never-ending line of business experts ready to give you their best advice and perhaps tell you that there is a quick way to fame and unlimited riches. Certainly, there are some basic business tactics that will help you cut the learning curve in half and propel your results but there is one fundamental element that is much overlooked; the ability to apply real focus.
Driving a business forward, especially in such ‘interesting times’, is not for the faint-hearted but fortune does indeed favour the brave. The quality that seems to be common to all successful individuals, be it in business or any other field, is the ability to apply near-pathological levels of focus to the task at hand. That may strike you as a strange concept; excess is never a good thing (or is it?!), so why is FOCUS my top prescription for a quantum shift in your results? Well, because I’ve seen too many examples that prove the argument…
Just stop and think about it for yourself for a moment; consider all the people who you could list, according to your own definition, as being successful, or better still, hyper-successful. What attributes could be linked to all of them? I’m sure focus would be high on the list.
I think most people would agree with me in that Albert Einstein is probably regarded as one of the greatest thinkers in the history of the human race, and yet the quiet, modest man, who helped shape the world we live in today, was famously quoted as having said “I’m not smarter than anyone else, I just stick with a problem longer than most other people”. His message was clear; it’s not just about the level of your intellect that will determine your success, it’s your ability to apply real focus when it’s required.
"When the why is strong enough, the how becomes easy!"
So how do we find this elusive level of concentration and when? Any situation where you really need to deal with a challenging task requires high levels of focus. Perhaps you’re creating a new product or service, or maybe planning a new marketing campaign. Or you might be be aiming to push hard on sales performance for the next quarter. Of course people have different ways of finding focus but here are my top 3 tips:
1) Make space to focus; this might sound obvious but it’s vital to lay a good foundation. Space in terms of physical space and time. Make sure you create time to dedicate yourself to the task at hand. Don’t fool yourself into believing that you can multi-task and allow interruptions.
2) Create mental space too. Having a quiet place to work and allowing yourself uninterrupted time to focus are vital but you must also allow yourself to remove other distractions. Mental space is great way to liberate yourself from the daily tasks and ‘allow’ yourself the fully-deserved pleasure (and believe me, it really is a pleasure!) to ignore other priorities. Create a temporary island and jump aboard for a few hours, or even a day or two. Leave everything behind for a while and know that it will all be dealt with soon enough.
3) Find out WHY it is important to do the best job with this task. The WHY is so much more important than the HOW, or the WHEN, etc. Among the very many valuable lessons my own mentor taught me was that “when the WHY is strong enough, the HOW will become easy”. When you think you’re able to articulate the WHY, go one level deeper and really identify WHY it is really important to you.
Start using the F-word in your daily business diet in 2011 and you’ll see a positive change, guaranteed. You’ll feel a greater sense of control, you’ll achieve higher quality results and you’re going to stretch your abilities and help yourself grow.
Nial Adams
10th Jan 2011
Use marketing to get people to BUY
Please Stop Selling!
I’ve been telling people this for years and, as you’ll imagine, I often get strange looks.
“But I’m a salesman Nial, that’s what I do, I’m here to sell, I’m here for the order!”
Yes, you need to maintain a focus on your sales results but this doesn’t mean that you’re here to ‘sell to people’. Let me ask you a question; do like to be sold to, or do you prefer to buy from someone you trust? It’s obvious and not a trick question. So, if we all know that being sold to is often the last thing that anyone wants and that many of just love to buy, then why do we think we should get away with selling to others…?!
This all starts with your Marketing Message; you need to know how to create your Proposition and use this to inform the prospect. Then help them understand, show them how you can solve the problem(s) they have and then engage them. If they see the value in your offer they’ll tell you by asking to buy from you. If you’re looking to create marketing copy that gets results and leads seamlessly to a transaction then learn to think differently and…
“Help the prospect make a quick and confident BUYING decision”… and the best way to do this is to find out their buying motives!
Here’s a great video clip I found on YouTube.com of Jeffry Gitomer. The guy talks a lot of sense… 
When is the ‘right time’..?
It’s often said that timing is everything, especially in business. There’s no doubt that it’s an essential skill for lots of people in all walks of life. I’ve met lots of people who excel in their chosen field, some are business people, some are inspirational leaders, and some have very ‘ordinary’ jobs but do them exceptionally well. Some seem to have been successful because they just happened to be ‘in the right place at the right time’… or did they?
It’s said that luck is ‘where opportunity and preparedness meet’. In other words, you’ll only ever be lucky if you’re ready to spot when it comes knocking on your door. I strongly believe that opportunities wash backwards and forward over all of us. Some people are looking for them and some run terrified at the very thought that they might need to do something about them.
So here’s my question to you; how do you know when the time is right?
There’s absolutely no doubt that being speculative in business is essential and you’ve got to be prepared to take a few risks. The smart people calculate the risk and work out all the possible outcomes. Then they act with conviction and determination. And this is my point. You can only ever really feel lucky if you’re willing to act, sometimes on a hunch or a gut feeling, ideally after you’ve done all the work and calculated if the risk might be worth taking.
There’s one sure fire way to avoid being lucky and that’s to do nothing. Strangely that’s how many people tend to live their lives. They seem to be waiting for everyone else to make the first move. And it’s always the first move that has the best opportunity.
So is good timing something that we’re born with, or something we can grow into? Do you gain more confidence as you take more risks and when is a little bit more too much? Well, here’s a reality check; you’ll only ever know if you do it. There’s no other way to answer the question.
Have you got good timing?
It’s been a strange year, we’ve seen the UK economy go through the spin cycle and it seems as if everyone’s just waiting to see who jumps first. A new government has brought about some dramatic change, with more to follow it seems. We certainly do live in interesting times. Perhaps you recognise that confidence is creeping back into your marketplace, or perhaps not. So who will lead this return to more confident times? Who’s been nominated for the role and what makes them better qualified than you? You’ll get my point… be the change you want to see around you.
I’m still searching for the answer to that question; when is the right time? All I can say, with complete conviction, is that the biggest step changes I’ve achieved in my personal and professional life have been a result of action.
If we wait for the ‘right time’ perhaps we’ll be waiting forever.
We need more Sales!
This is the perennial cry we always hear from the Managing Director, the Senior Managers and everyone else who has a serious interest in the bottom line of our business. Of course, that’s totally understandable; essentially every commercial venture lives or dies on the basis of sales activity and the resultant income that in turn translates into profit in the bank.
However, I’ve often wondered why so many people seem to miss the undeniable link between sales and marketing. For many people the answer for more sales is simply to turn up the heat on sales activity, push more through the pipeline and in many cases, dial up the pressure on the salespeople who sit at the coalface.
If sales is the workhorse then marketing is mostly seen as the racehorse; perhaps an expensive extravagance that looks good, tells the world that we’ve got a bit of money to throw about but in general it’s costly to run, can be temperamental and very few people know how to handle properly.
The answer to more sales could be just to drive the workhorse a little harder each day, aim to get a little extra value from our investment and there are endless ways of trying to achieve this. A large number of organisations, large and small, will restructure the rewards and incentives for each sales person, or being even more blatant just move the goal posts by telling the sales team that more is expected of them… end of!
Salespeople of quality and ability know this and play the game in return; but when the pips start to squeak and the remuneration is no longer enough to maintain their interest they’ll be off to hunt in new pastures. Why do you think that the very best salespeople are so hard to find and even harder to keep?
This scenario will probably very familiar to you, irrespective of which side of it you come from. Sales is a tough game and only the strong survive but is it really the best place to focus all your energy on if you want more transactions flowing through your business?
I often ask clients ‘If you had just uncovered a spare £50,000 in your business (and you had to spend it on your business!) where would you allocate it?’. More often than you might imagine the reply is ‘on better marketing’… you see, at an intellectual level many business owners know that better marketing is needed and actually crave it.
So why is it that so few people stop to consider that if you want more sales the best place to start is at the very top of your sales funnel… with your marketing?!
It’s not just a case of aiming to get more results from your marketing, trying to get a bigger bang for your buck has (and always will be) the never-ending objective of every good marketer but how about changing your marketing to create better quality and not just quantity. Another much overlooked element of good marketing is that it actually influences the sale process significantly.
As every good salesperson will know ‘qualifying’ your prospects is vital to ensuring a smooth and successful progress through the sales process towards secured business. Marketing is the very first step in properly qualifying your leads; this process of ‘self-selection’ is a powerful way to weed out the tyre-kickers and allow you to focus on those with serious intentions of buying from you.
The lesson here is clear and I hope you’ve already started to join the dots for yourself; marketing is wedded to sales and better marketing will help you increase sales potential. If you knew, with complete conviction, that better, more effective marketing could increase the flow of potential sales, and that you could enhance the quality of those leads wouldn’t you pay more attention to it?
If your workhorse is looking tired, unlikely to give much more output and you’ve already realised that you might need a better tactic, perhaps it’s time to up your game, improve your skills and saddle up your thoroughbred and be prepared to hold on tight to the reigns.
It could just be the ride of your life!
Nial Adams
If you want to increase your sales and feel that your marketing could be the right place to start then I’d encourage you to consider our PUSH Marketing Academy – you’ll find everything you need to know HERE.