Archive for Sales
How Do You Get Someone’s Attention?
Posted by: | CommentsI was in Orlando this past week with some colleagues training a medical device sales force on “purposeful communication”. “Purposeful Communication” is communication that has a goal or desired outcome and when applied to sales presentations, the objective is to create a sales presentation that is well organized around a desired outcome with your target audience.
Selling to a large or small group of potential decision makers has many similarities to promoting yourself and your business to prospective clients. One similarity is in the way you open a presentation. The opening of a sales presentation or “attention grabber” is much like the way you start your elevator pitch or promotional message.
Attention grabbers are just that. They are designed to get the attention of the audience from the start so that they will engage and listen to your message.
How effective is your attention grabber?
Here are some different suggestions on how to open your pitch to grab attention from the listeners.
- Open your pitch with a statement or question that creates some kind of an emotional bond. A good way to create an emotional bond might be to say, “Imagine yourself….. or how would it feel if….”. You can move your listener to a state of mind or emotion where they will connect with their need for your product or services.
- Ask a poignant question that demonstrates that you get their problem or challenges. “Have you ever experienced….? What do you do when….? etc.
- Share a story about yourself and your journey that connects with your business in some way. Maybe you experienced similar issues, overcame those issues and now are passionate about helping other people.
- Make a statement that has an unexpected ending or is surprising in some way.
- Use a quote or song title or lyric that people can easily identify with and fits well into your message.
Starting your promotional pitch with your name and company name is NOT a great attention grabber. You need to give people a reason to remember you before you give them this information.
Draw them in first with something that gets their attention and then talk about your business and the benefit your product or service will provide to them. NOW, they will remember your name and company!
Pitching the Media Correctly
Posted by: | CommentsPart 1 of 7
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a seasoned PR professional or a newbie, you’ll need to know how to pitch the media correctly if you want to get publicity, interviews, articles and write ups about your business.
With all the bad pitches and PR spamming, it is time to teach you how to do it the right way. By pitching the media correctly, you will see your name in ink in no time. Trust me, when I first started, I hadn’t a clue as to how to draft a pitch, but now I’ve become a media professional.
- The first and most important things you need to have are patience and persistence. The media gets flooded with millions of pitches per day.
- You must know your story inside out and backwards before you even attempt to build a media list. Get every angel of the story covered by conducting interviews with the people involved, industry professionals, and any other research you can find. Pursue the story as the same way a journalist would.
- Create variations of the story for different media outlets, but don’t embellish. Keep each variation concise and to the point because media professionals do not have a lot of time to review your story, if it is as long as a book.
- Research each contact at each publication you think would be interested in your story. Read the journalist’s work to determine what he or she is looking for. Research and find out their writing style and contact preference. Keep a top ten list of the journalists you think would be interested in covering the story.
- Test your pitch with one or two journalists. You can email or call the journalist. Keep the pitch to three or sentences at most if you call. Keep in mind that most journalists preferred to be contacted by email.
- Offer an exclusive story to your preferred media professional. The more compelling your story, the better chance it has getting picked up.
- Most journalists get dozens of pitches per day, which is why good follow up skills are essential. You should follow up in a day or two after you sent the first pitch. It is very rare a story gets picked up with one pitch. If you haven’t heard from them, then follow up with a phone call. Don’t afraid of being annoying, just tell them you are working on a strict deadline. If they are not interested, they will tell you.
- If you did not have any luck with that journalist, let it go and re-prioritize your list. Continue moving along because the more persistent you are, the more successful you will be.
- If you want to strengthen and polish your pitching skills, start with the local media because they are more likely to work with newbies.
- Once you build a strong portfolio of press clippings for your business, you will be able to create a media kit and send it out to larger publications that may be interested in covering your story.
For assistance with developing a pitch, creating a pitch letter, and creating a media list, contact Kristin at km@marquet-communications.com,
How are you doing on price?
Posted by: | CommentsI first published this discussion six months ao. Since then, I have had more and more discussions with my clients about their pricing strategies and being squeezed in this market.
In a lean economy, many sales and business development people feel obligated to discount their prices; at least, the discussion of price and where it fits in the sales strategy becomes more important than ever.
Many of my customers struggle with the issues of pricing to be competitive and also maintaining a viable profit margin.
So I’ve spent some time exploring best practices and considering what we should recommend in this market.
I’ll say at the outset that The Whale Hunters way is never to discount a price. If we believe our price is fair, and if we have a market for products and services at our prices, then discounting will only take us into a downward spiral. If a customer wants a service, and the service is more than the customer is willing to pay, we are often willing to renegotiate the scope of work, but not the price of our work.
If this is an issue you’d really like to study, I have three resources to recommend:
First, check out Dan Sullivan’s program for entrepreneurs–The Strategic Coach Inc. at www.strategiccoach.com. Dan’s built a highly profitable and durable business teaching entrepreneurs how to get the greatest value for their services and products.
For professional service firms, try How to Maximize Professional Service Fees by Alan Weiss. This little book offers 57 ways to manage your fee structure to your advantage. I’ll repeat just three of his nuggets, incorporated into the chapter “Value Must Be Based Upon Worth”:
- Value is in the eyes of the client
- Fees should be based upon fulfilling value, not performing tasks.
- Time unit billing will always be less than your true value.
A more comprehensive discussion of pricing models is available in Pricing With Confidence by Reed Holden and Mike Burton. These authors offer ten rules for pricing, the most important of which is Rule #10 — Price With Confidence.
So if the economy has got you worried about the need to cut prices in order to get business, it’s time to arm yourself with some very good advice and reconsider the cost-cutting strategy.
Join The Whale Hunters group on LinkedIn for more discussions about how to be successful selling to big companies in a tough market.
An observation about sales staff
Posted by: | CommentsI had lunch one time at a popular eatery in a nearby town. It was a place where on weekends, families and couples would have brunch or dinner; but on a weekday at lunch time, it was usually business people meeting.
On this particular day the restaurant was very crowded and I was quite lucky to get a table. My little table-for-two was positioned between two larger tables. One table had a couple who were eating with not much conversation. The other table had four gentlemen. It’s not my habit to eavesdrop on the conversations of others, but it was hard not to overhear due to the close proximity of our tables and the volume of the their voices.
After a little while it became clear that the fellow doing most of the talking was a salesman. The other three were prospective buyers or clients. The subject matter had to do with the computer software industry…I know this because my husband is a senior software engineer and I could recognize some of the phrases being spoken. I tried my best to keep my mind on my own affairs…I had dropped some paintings off earlier that were going to be in a show and I had some supplies that I needed to purchase after lunch – I had my own business to attend to. But my reverie kept being intruded upon by their discussion.
At one point I confess that I did focus in a bit…one of the prospective buyers began asking questions of the salesman. To my utter amazement, the salesman did not have an answer to a single question. In each case he replied with something like, “I’ll have to get back to you on that.“ Now, I know that it’s quite possible to not have every answer to every question a buyer might have for you. And it’s perfectly fine to let the buyer know that you will indeed get back to them with information. But to not know any answers seemed way off base.
What this told me:
- the salesman came to the meeting unprepared
- the salesman’s supervisor did not offer complete buyer information before the meeting
- there was a possibility that the software company was selling a product before it was truly ready – hence the lack of information available to the salesman
The questions I was hearing asked sounded technical…almost too technical for a selling situation. It made me wonder if the salesman could have brought along a technical support person to field those kinds of questions.
What I took away from this lunchtime lesson was the thought: as business people, are we sure of our products and services before we offer them for purchase? Can we answer questions a buyer might ask – no matter how technical? I see a purchasing situation as an opportunity to give the buyer enough information so that he can make an informed decision about my products or services.
Whether your sales staff is just yourself because your business is a solo entrepreneurship or you have many employees, your sales staff should understand fully the philosophy of your business and are committed to what they are selling – this goes without saying. What should also be a given is that you provide your sales staff the tools and information they need to do their job well.
The Marketing Mix Made Easy to Understand and Use
Posted by: | CommentsWhile creating your annual marketing plan, using a combination of elements (4 from the marketing mix) is the key to success.
The marketing mix contains four elements. The combination of the four elements is used to satisfy consumer needs and company goals, stimulate consumer interest, and generate sales.
1. Product/Service – what are you trying to sell?
2. Price – how much will it cost in contrast to competitors in the market?
3. Place and distribution – where will it be sold and how will it be delivered?
4. Promotion - how will you deliver the message to the market – advertising, public relations, direct marketing, or online marketing?
By arranging these four elements in a variety of ways, it will help you determine the highest return on investment. You might have to use a lower price, offer a coupon, and/or give a way a free-gift with the purchase in one market, while pricing the product/service a little higher and using nicer packaging in a sophisticated market.
The key to success is to try various element combinations, because it is unlikely using only one mix will generate the results you want.
A few tips on marketing:
Test, test, and test your product/service in various market segments within your target market
Offer a coupon with the next purchase on one test and use another call to action another test to see which offer generates the best response
Make your business stand out in the crowd by making yourself accessible to prospects and existing customers because most other companies will not
Understand your market’s buying behaviors, needs, wants and give them what they want.
Make sure all marketing material messages are consistent because you don’t want to cause confusion.
Make sure the product/service’s positioning is not contradictory.
The tone of all marketing materials should be consistent.
A brand’s colors must be consistent.
Test all combinations to see which combination yields the best results.
Make the USP stand out.
If you need designing your marketing mix for your annual marketing plan, email Kristin at km@marquet-communications.com for more information.
