Archive for September 20th, 2006

Improving your sales and marketing skills

September 20th, 2006 Linda Mattacks

Is it worth the effort?

We probably all know people who seem to be naturally good at almost anything they turn their hands to and it’s particularly galling if it’s something we struggle to achieve ourselves.

The same applies to sales and marketing: Some people are better and more successful than others, but, while they may have had a natural aptitude to give them a head start, almost all of them have worked hard to become as good as they are.

There’s an ancient, but very true saying:

    More sales are made by perspiration than inspiration

To help you decide whether developing and mastering sales and marketing skills will be worth your effort, a good starting point would be to check out whether your business meets the following criteria:

  • Your products, services or solutions have a perceived initial and ongoing high value and will appeal to an identifiable, clearly defined target audience

And/or

  • Your products, services or solutions will definitely generate sufficient repeat, additional or continued business from your customers once they “come on board” to repay your investment in winning them many fold

And

  • Your business is based on your people’s knowledge, abilities, level of service and professionalism, and is the complete opposite of the mass marketing, “stack ’em high and sell ’em cheap” approach

And

  • Your existing sales and marketing activities do not generate enough of the type and calibre of customers and profit you seek – you want more and are prepared to invest the time and effort necessary to make it happen

If you agree with three of the four criteria outlined, I’d say it’s definitely in your interests to ensure that your sales and marketing activities aren’t letting you down. There’s a free Self Assessment Questionnaire on the home page of the Selling For Business web site that you can complete to check out the effectiveness of your current sales and marketing communication skills – just click on the link below. That will help you to identify any areas that you need to work on and give you some ideas to start you off.

Posted in Marketing, Sales No Comments »

Your potential gold mine

September 20th, 2006 Linda Mattacks

Are you sitting on a wealth of untapped information?
If your business is already established rather than just starting up, and you have a broad customer base, you could be sitting on a potential gold mine of information that you won’t need to dig too deep to access!

Look to your best customers first
Start profiling your existing customers – If you’ve already done this go through the steps outlined below anyway and just check that you haven’t missed anything important to factor into your equations. You can do this whether your company is in business-to-business or business-to-consumer.

  • List your best customers – typically they will be 20% of your total customer base
  • Write down what it is about them that makes them “best customers”
  • Next you can look for the more obviously identifiable similarities amongst these customers
  • Then look at where they came from

But don’t forget the rest
Now that you’ve analysed your best customers, how are you going to use the information you’ve uncovered?

  • Look at the remaining 80% of your current customers plus your lapsed customers and see whether any of the companies match the identifiable similarities of your best customers. It could be that those with a close match have need of more of your product or service, but either you or they haven’t identified that need yet, or it’s being fulfilled elsewhere – Now is your chance to find out and do something about it!
  • Take the criteria of “identifiable similarities” and see if there is a specialist list available that matches the majority of them and that you could rent/buy for prospecting purposes
  • Finally, if you come across any really awful customers during this whole exercise, you might like to take a view on your future dealings with them!

Remember: It is a fact that pursuing unqualified business is one of the most common reasons companies fail to reach their revenue targets.

Happy hunting!

Posted in Business, Market/Marketing Research, Marketing No Comments »

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