Entries Tagged 'Marketing' ↓

Assign someone the job of being your assistant coach. Meet regularly. Review results. Define your goals and agree on what to test. Roll out ideas that deliver in practice sessions, see how they work in the real world. Don’t quit after one try.

When it comes to budget, spend what you can afford. Split the budget between tried and true initiatives, new projects that you’ve tested and know they’re ready for prime time play, and some that are your “farm team” because you’re still experimenting to see if they can work.

Remember that some teams have bigger player budgets than others, and that doesn’t always equate to results. If your budget is small, you’ll need more low cost players – focus on the internet and marketing activities your current staff can implement. Check with industry based peer groups on what works for them. Cut down on expensive trials by adopting programs others have tested.

Your marketing payoff ratio is defined as marketing expenses divided by revenue and also divided by gross profit. To prove marketing efforts are delivering, you want to see the cost of marketing drop, in relationship to revenue and gross profit. Your marketing budget stays steady from year to year, as you change around your “players”, your marketing initiatives.  Your marketing spend : revenue ratio drops as proof that your marketing efforts are working.

Looking for a good book? Introduction to Marketing Concepts by Graeme Drummond.

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Looking for suggestions on the best ways to make new connections with more  business people. Have to get ready for next year’s sales, and I don’t have enough in my pipeline yet to be comfortable. Feel like things are turning up and people are more open to buying and making connections, but I need to meet more people fast.

Things are turning up, but slowly. It may take twice as much energy as it did in the past to build the right connections with new prospects and referral sources. It’s worth mentioning that in most situations, people do business with people they know and like. How you go about making connections, and getting people to help you because they like and respect you, your firm, and what you stand for, will go a long ways towards making 2012 a banner year. Having a process for making connections will help, too.

Be prepared to be out there, more than ever. Realistically assess your situation. What time of day works best – morning, afternoon, evening? How many times per week can you go to functions. Who else could take over some of your other duties, to free you up to do more events.

Give yourself time to get ready, look over the roster of attendees, arrive early. Be prepared to be curious and enthusiastic. Offer to help other people make connections, and then ask them to do the same for you.

Set goals, such as number of events / month. Figure out how many new connections you want to make each month, as well as a goal for new appointments to talk about business. Then measure your progress towards those goals.

Look at every networking event as an opportunity – and then critically assess the opportunity. If you haven’t been to a group’s networking events before, before you go, ask some questions of the event organizer:

• Who typically attends? Is your target market being described?
• What kind of time and energy is devoted to making new connections?
• Who would be available to introduce you around?
• Is there a follow up system to connect attendees afterwards?
• How do people who attend rate the events?

If people are attending from the companies you want to connect with, ask another question: Are attendees in the positions you want to meet, or can they get you to those positions? For example, you may attend an IT networking function, but if you’re looking to connect with Human Resources personnel, or Finance, or CEO’s, you might be out of luck. Unless, of course, you can connect with the IT folks and turn that into an introduction to the people you ultimately want to meet.

Give off a good impression of your firm. What has your company been doing lately that might be interesting to other people? How can you use the resources of your company to help other people accomplish their goals? What can you do to create good will that you can trade on later?

When you go to networking events, be clear about what you’re looking to accomplish. Start out with a list specific to that event. Looking to meet one person who could tell you about . . . , introduce you to . . . , help you open a door at . . .

Use networking events to find out what makes people tick. What’s important to the people you meet? What do they care about? How can you connect to that, so that you become more memorable in their world?

Be sure to follow up with you get back from the event. Send emails, make phone calls, join up on LinkedIn. If you offered to make a connection, or send information, get it done.

Think long term. If you go to 1 networking event / week throughout the year, and you get 2-3 good connections, on average, per event, you’ll have 150 people added to your network. if you ask each of those 150 people to introduce you to 2-3 people, you’re up over 500 introductions in no time.

Looking for a good book? Great Connections: Small Talk and Networking for Businesspeople by Anne Baber.

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Big competitors are showing up in our space more frequently. On a recent proposal, we didn’t match price. We lost the account. It can’t come to price wars, because we can’t afford the losses. How do we compete?

When under attack, shift from defense to offense. Focus on your best customers. Sell solutions that help your customers grow. If you do cut prices, don’t confuse the marketplace about your company’s pricing intentions.

Avoid price wars – they’re bad for everyone involved. Customers focus on pricing and overlook product or service differences. Vendors cut back on research and product development. Innovation goes out the window, and the whole industry falls behind.

While the customer wins for a short while with a price war, eventually supply dries up. The weakest competitors go out of business. The remaining vendors pick up additional work, but can’t, or won’t, ramp up. As supply dries up, the most demanding customers with the lowest prices get cut off.

Be on the lookout for signs of increased competition. Ask your sales and field service people to keep you informed about who they’re running into and what others are offering. Look for customers who are switching to something different to save money. Watch out for competitors who combine products and services into a volume discounted price bundle – the more the customer orders, the more the customer saves. That’s often how prices wars start.

Develop a competitive matrix. Include top accounts, top sales people, typical offer, typical price, geography, annual volume, number of employees, other products and services offered, strengths and weaknesses. Discuss recent threats, and ways to counter, at sales meetings. If you are under attack, consider interviewing their sales people to find out what they’re up to.

Allow yourself react time if a customer or prospect asks you to lower prices. Request written details of competitors’ offers. Evaluate if customers are being offered something comparable, or if the customer is getting less as prices drop. Find out about quantity, quality, delivery timeframes, add-ons, surcharges for everything from fuel to customer service, etc. When a vendor cuts prices it usually cuts corners, puts limits on what’s included, and charges extra for just about everything.

In a down market, competition can be stiff. Your company’s job is to go after as much work as makes sense, at price points that allow you to make a profit. Select who you compete with.

Keep your biggest competitors busy going after second-rate business. Instead of walking away from bids, submit enough to make them struggle. Send them the low-grade accounts that you don’t want.

Target your weakest competitors by profiling their customers. Go after their quality accounts. Let them have the bottom feeders.

Go after competitors with only a few accounts in your target market. They may lack expertise or scope, and be easy pickings. Offer their customers a short term incentive to try your services – such as expedited delivery, or an extra service at no additional charge for a limited time.

Get to know your best customers. How does your product or service help them compete at what they do? How will a quality job by your company turn into your customers being able to charge more, or make more profit?

Focus on the best quality prospects and customers, for your company. Identify what you do best, and who is most likely to get the best value from your company’s experience. Team up with customers to go after opportunities together. Use your company’s skill at competitive intelligence gathering to help your customers gain market share. Help them to grow, and you grow.

If you believe it’s absolutely necessary to reduce prices, be careful. Set up a different brand, with a different product definition and price point. Offer a one time discount for new customers, and tell existing customers you’re doing that in order to build volume so that you can hold the line on everyone’s prices. Give existing customers a discount if they bring in new opportunities that help you grow your business.

Looking for a good book? The 1% Windfall: How Success Companies Use Price to Profit and Grow, by Rafi Mohammed.

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Reports are that my industry is down in revenue versus last year. Not much of a surprise there! Our sales are off, too, compared to last year. My question is this. What should I expect out of my company.

What you expect from your company, your clients, and your staff will speak volumes about how well your company weathers this market cycle. Reality is that there’s probably not enough business opportunity to go around in most industries. To push revenue up in a down market, everything needs to be in good shape.

Healthy growth for any business is in the range of 10% – 15% year over year growth. Anything less, and the company will be challenged to stay ahead of inflation and build reserves and resources to fuel future growth and development. Without money this year to put towards growth and reserves, the company will run into trouble down the road.

During this year, as in every year, there will be winners, losers, and those companies that are just holding on. This happens in every industry. The losers give up clients, revenue and profit to their more nimble competitors. The companies that are just holding on, hoping for a better year, are often fooling themselves into trouble, as they avoid dealing with the weaknesses inside their companies and their industry.

Looking at overall GDP growth of 3%  or less, it’s easy to calculate that achieving 10% – 15% year over year growth means your company will have to grow faster than the economy overall. Many industries are flat, or down this year, or experiencing anemic growth. That doesn’t mean that you should accept the industry norm.

Every year some companies grow, and some decline. GDP is a measure of overall economic growth, taking into account companies that gain market share and companies that lose ground. An individual company growth rate of 10% – 15% exceeds annual GDP in both up and down markets.

How does that happen? Keep in mind that in every 10 year cycle, 3 out of 4 businesses fall away. Business flows away from one company, goes to another company. To stay healthy, your company’s sales numbers need to be on the growth rather than the decline side of the equation.

Setting your company on a course to grow means focusing primarily on sales and marketing. Don’t make the mistake that many business owners make, of thinking that if you build an excellent product or service, the sales will just roll in. That’s unlikely to happen in this kind of an economy.

Companies that will succeed to a higher than average degree, especially in a constrained economy, will do 3 things right. They understand what kind of business opportunity they want to chase. They measure and manage results, adjusting plans regularly to continue to improve top and bottom line results. They focus on continuously improving know how related to sales and marketing.

So what can your company do?

• assess your customers: are they profitable, are they growing, do they respect what your company does for them; are your people steadily bringing in more of the same
• assess sales results: did the company produce growth last year in the 10% – 15% range, can it do that again this year; what areas are up / down
• check for weaknesses in sales and marketing: are you touching more prospects than ever before; is the lead in-flow increasing, is the conversion rate on prime customers holding steady or improving

Look at every stage of the pipeline, from suspects that fit minimum core criteria, to ones that are hearing about your company. Look at the number of prospects engage in a dialog, prospects with qualified needs and a budget, proposals sent out confirming your company’s offer, and closes. Are the numbers up at every stage? Is the increase enough to net 10% – 15% growth this year?

If any stages are down, ask why? How much do different stages have to accelerate in order to hit that 10% – 15% growth goal by year end?

Looking for a good book? Breakthrough Marketing Plans: How to Stop Wasting Time and Start Driving Growth by Tim Calkins.

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When it comes to sharing leads with other people, I think I’m pretty generous. It sometimes feels that I’m giving more than I’m receiving. I know that the networking premise is, I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine : but will it happen?  I don’t want to just presume that people will send business opportunities my way, I want to make it happen.

Make introductions purposefully, and ask that others do the same. Be curious. Promptly follow up on leads that come your way. Be sure to hang out in places that are likely to be rewarding.

Purposeful connecting is a way of business for some people. They thrive on making introductions, exploring opportunities. Their world, and the worlds of the people around them, expand because of it.

Think about the introductions you are about to make. How can both parties benefit. Do they do business in the same marketplace? Do they have information that might be valuable to each other? Be intentional.

As you connect people, offer to participate. Facilitating an introduction meeting increases the chances of success. Asking participants to update you on how things proceed afterwards helps to remind everyone about the role you play in getting valuable connections off the ground.

Some people get the value of giving and getting, some people just take. In your world you want people who do both. Be aware of how the people around you behave.

Monitor what happens when you do introduce people. Do they follow up and treat the opportunities as valuable? Do they “pay it forward” with introductions of their own? If so, keep going. If not, consider focusing your efforts on more fertile ground.

Some people worry that they can’t make an introduction until they’re sure both parties are qualified to meet each other. If that’s your concern, lighten up. If the connection is never made, it has no value. We’re all grown ups, and capable of figuring out on our own if a connection is worth pursuing, or not. Stop trying to protect your connections so much, and instead seek to introduce people to a wider world of ideas and possibilities.

Give people a chance to get to know a little bit about you, as you get to know them. Make yourself memorable by asking about each person you meet. Express interest in who they are, what they do. Relate something they bring up to something in your world, then quickly turn the focus back onto them.

If you’re concerned about the quality or quantity of leads coming your way, re-evaluate both your style and the places you’re hanging out. Ask yourself if the networking events you’re attending are populated with people who care about what you care about, and who travel in circles you want to be connected with. Regularly push yourself out of your comfort zone to attend new events, to see what else is out there. Be rigorous and disciplined about follow up.

At a business event you may be focused on exchanging business cards. Take an extra minute to note something memorable about each person you meet. That will make you seem more interested at the point of contact, and will also help you remember who each person is when you’re back in the office doing follow up.

Once you’re back in the office, it’s follow up time. Start to explore possibilities. Send out emails and make phone calls. Request more information. By all means suggest connecting on Linked-In. Suggest face-to-face meetings to explore possibilities. Block time in your calendar weekly to meet new people.

If a friend says they want to connect you with someone, go. If you can’t see the potential value in a meeting, ask your friend why they’re trying to make the connection. Trust their judgment, until proven otherwise. Be open to the possibility that a connection may lead somewhere that you can’t yet understand. Be prepared to put a request out during the meeting, saying both, “How can I help you?” and, “Here’s what would be helpful to me.”

Looking for a good book? The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg and John David Mann.

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Andi Gray is president of Strategy Leaders Inc., www.StrategyLeaders.com, a business consulting firm that specializes in helping entrepreneurial firms grow. She can be reached by phone at 877-238-3535. Do you have a question for Andi?  Please send it to her, via e-mail at AskAndi@StrategyLeaders.com  or by mail to Andi Gray, Strategy Leaders Inc., 5 Crossways, Chappaqua, NY 10514. Visit www.AskAndi.com for an entire library of Ask Andi articles.

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In my company, the job of marketing isn’t well defined. I worry that this year and next, we need to be a lot better at marketing, in order to keep my company growing. Without enough growth, we could be in real trouble. Any suggestions?

Marketing is a big subject, as you’ll discover once you start. No one individual or vendor will be able to do it all for you. It’s a given that everyone in the company looks to the owner for marketing direction and advice. Unfortunately, marketing is often not a core competence for the owner. You’ll need to build a team, and make time to chip away at ir over time.

In order to learn more about marketing, start by doing some research. Recognize you can’t do it all yourself. Remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it will also take time to build a robust, productive marketing program for your company.

What’s marketing all about? Take the classic education approach and read a book, or two, or three, about marketing. Take a look at competitors and peers who are twice your size, to see what they’re doing for marketing. Look at what your customers are doing – often they’ll be the most forthcoming with ideas and suggestions.

Make a long list of all of the ideas that you might want to try in marketing, including notes on where the idea came from, and who else might be able to tell you more. Build a list of potential vendors. Find out who’s been helping the competitors you admire. Ask referrals. Start interviewing individuals and companies who work at marketing. Here’s a list of interview questions:

• what kind of work do you do most frequently
• what’s an example of your best work
• what kinds of customers do you work with most often
• what kind of work and customers do you try to steer clear of
• what’s a ballpark of costs for working with you / your firm, over what period of time – what kind of budget should I expect to have
• how do you know if you have a good customer – or a project that’s in trouble
• what kind of results do you expect to produce, in what timeframe

Define where you want to get to – short term and long term. Work backwards from your company’s sales goals and activities. Figure out how much additional lead generation is needed – this year, and over the next 3+ years, to insure the company hits its sales targets. That will tell you a bit about how hard and fast you need to press forward in marketing.

Realistically define the budget for marketing. If you need things to move quickly, identify where else in the company you’ll make cuts in order to free up funds. Expect to put at least 5% of gross profit into marketing, to build fuel for the future.

Define some goals, using what you learned from your interviews. Pick one or more key players on staff, who will work with you on the project. Pick 3-4 marketing initiatives to focus on first. Define a period each week when you’ll work on marketing. Do the strategic homework first – understand your company’s position in the marketplace.

Chip away at the item list, doing trials to learn about what works for your company. Here are some of the projects you might want to explore: direct mail, telemarketing, market research, branding and positioning, brochure development, web based activities including website design, SEO and blogging, upgrading copy, print and web offer development and advertising, public relations, public speaking, networking, referrals, niche marketing.

As you work on trials, change one thing at a time, so you can measure the differences in outcomes and know what to attribute success and failure to. At this stage, the one big mistake you can make, is not to get started at all. Think of the great leads you’ll have coming in, for sales to work on, as you figure out your company’s marketing program.

Looking for a good book? The Marketing Gurus: Lessons from the Best Marketing Books of All Time, by Chris Murray.

Andi Gray is president of Strategy Leaders Inc., www.StrategyLeaders.com, a business consulting firm that specializes in helping entrepreneurial firms grow. She can be reached by phone at 877-238-3535. Do you have a question for Andi?  Please send it to her, via e-mail at AskAndi@StrategyLeaders.com  or by mail to Andi Gray, Strategy Leaders Inc., 5 Crossways, Chappaqua, NY 10514. Visit www.AskAndi.com for an entire library of Ask Andi articles.

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