I feel jealous.

Why? Because I spoke to a lady today who knows she is to be made redundant after many years in the public sector and is planning to start her own business when that happens in a few months.

But why should I feel jealous about that?

Most of us in business work on the 'just in time' model.

Sometimes we come up with new ideas, products or directions and they need to be actioned NOW. Maybe because financially we need to, or perhaps it's a small window of opportunity that someone else will fill if we don't act right away.

That means we have little time to make really good preparations and build the confidence building collateral our prospects might look for to justify calling us. So we wing it!

Wouldn't it be nice, just sometimes, to have the luxury of time.

Don't make it difficult for your website visitors

Tolerance levels are low. Patience is short. Not accepting that in our prospects can ruin the chances of a sale.

This morning I found a great system to help people with their web marketing. Really impressed with it, I searched around the site to see if there was an affiliate program for me to recommend it onto my contacts and clients.


Then I encountered - 'The Form'


It was lengthy and had a fair splattering of agreements that I had to agree to, which I had expected when money is involved. But, each time I tried to complete the process, it threw up messages saying that something was missing.

OK, that's reasonably normal, but what I hadn't noticed was a message in small type at the top pointing out something else I'd missed in addition to the main error it had highlighted. Not only that, but each time I had to re-accept all the agreements by ticking a bunch of boxes again.

After five attempts to say I was getting exasperated would be an understatement and just about to ditch the whole thing. It's a good job it was a damn good product otherwise I would have been long gone! I do wonder how many potential affiliates they lose?

It strikes me that they hadn't asked someone outside of the business to fill in the form as a test. If they had, it surely would have come to light.

Do you have a form or your site? Have you really looked at the messages that appear if something goes wrong? What about the page that they get taken to once completed? Is it clear what will happen next? Is it clear that the process has been successful?

Website visitors COST MONEY to attract - don't throw that money away.

If you need help or advice on your website marketing contact me via my website here:

http://www.roygough.co.uk/

Thanks is always appreciated isn't it?

Those of you who know me well also know that I really get a kick out of helping others and, like most people, I feel good if someone thanks me for it too.

Working in business networking circles it's just part of life that you would sincerely thank someone for giving them a referral, great advice or some old fashioned help. I wouldn't even dream of doing anything else and most of the business people I know work in the same way.

It's a shame everyone doesn't think like that.

Here's three situations that have arisen over the last six months. I'm sure you won't have been guilty of these but it's easy to let them pass by without realising the effect on the other party.

> I changed my car towards the end of last year and it had previously been fitted with a bluetooth mobile phone device that tapped into the radio. When I changed my mobile phone in February I just couldn't get it link despite internet searches and re-reading the manual.

The next day I saw a van in the traffic queue next to me advertising the system fitted to my car, so I jotted down the phone number. I called them and spoke to a guy out on a job. He was obviously busy but within just a minute or two was able to tell me how to fix it. I thanked him, apologised for disturbing him and told him how appreciative I was.

I was delighted when the fix worked and I'm connected up now. So I found them on the web and sent them a message telling them how helpful their man had been and how grateful I was. In return I offered to find a way of promoting his business within my networking contacts with no charge simply to repay their kindness.

And the result? Nothing, zilch, zero. Not even a 'Sorry we're out' message. My positive feelings towards that business have all but drained away now.

> I have an offline spam filtering system that sends me a message each morning with a list of, and a link to, all of the trapped emails from the previous day. Most of it is of course rubbish but one came through early in the week that looked like it was genuine but was markered as having a virus.

Now this is important to know if you are the sender as you don't want to be either sending out a mail with a virus in it or having most of your mails binned before it reaches the recipient. So I took the trouble to investigate the mail without jeopardising my own security and sent all the details to the sender (a genuine company with a good product to sell). There were some other issues with the email that would potentially stop it working for them and offered some sound advice to overcome them.

And the result? Nothing, zilch, zero. Not even a 'Sorry we're out' message.

The third example I'm not going to go into detail as it involves me helping a member of my extended family who I helped with a business opportunity. Don't really see or speak that often, but I was happy to help and use my contacts to make things happen.

And the result? Nothing, zilch, zero. Not even a 'Thanks for helping' message.

It doesn't take much to maintain contact and you never know what it might lead to.

Is selling tough for you?

Is selling tough for you at the moment? I guess for most of us it is, especially in the current economic climate.

Being a good (great) salesperson helps and will at least keep some sales flowing in, even during hard times. But just being great isn't enough anymore really. Life, the world and your prospects have moved on and the word 'gullible' has definitely been removed from their dictionary!

I have always believed that, to be a great sales person, you have to know the basics first. It's just like any new skill you learn there are some primary text books to cover and understand before you move on to more advanced stuff.

Richard Denny's Selling to Win is one of those text books. Every new sales person should at least read and understand it's contents, but it's also good to read as an occasional refresher for us all. But sales life has moved on dramatically and we need to view the process in a new light.

I came across Sean McPheat, a sales training guru, recently and downloaded his excellent eBook The Sales Persons Crisis . It just requires your email address to access and there is no charge. It's a really worthwhile read and should help you understand and cope with the changes in sales techniques required to compete today.

More sales resources are available on my Alloy CRM website here: http://www.alloycrm.com/buslinktraining

A sales meeting got me thinking

A meeting today with a small group of new sales guys for the cross platform (Mac/Apple & PC) contact management software I'm overseeing got me thinking.

I went through with them the product and it's competitors looking at a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) for each. Looked at the potential triggers for purchase and potential problems it would solve, followed up by some marketing activity ideas to get them started.

But even after all that the question was - 'Where do I start? What businesses should I target?'

Yes it's too easy to get carried away and perceive that the whole world is a potential customer and you just end up spinning around not knowing who to talk to first. Been there, done that.

When you are starting out selling something new there is always a little trepidation - Will it sell? Can I sell it?

Making a few quick wins (sales) will boost confidence and give a chance to learn what makes the basis of a good sales presentation for this product.

So looking for the quick wins is probably the first step. You've probably done an exercise to identify your ideal customers and maybe broken them down by size/sector or similar. Within that is there an identifiable group who are in a position to make a quick decision and get the purchase under way?

We identified for our Contact Management product that we could be selling to sole traders who have a decent client/prospect base such as business coaches or trainers - these people want to maximise the return from their clients through repeat sales - and businesses with a sales team where the sales manager needs visibility of the sales process and manage his team effectively.

The sales manager sale will probably be larger but will take time as the proposal will have to go to the board of directors and there is a possibility that other competitive products will be evaluated before the sale is completed.

The sole trader sale on the other hand is a one-person decision process and they will arrive at that decision fairly quickly. It may not make the same profit as the larger deal but it gets one under the belt and builds that all important confidence and that was my advice to the guys today - get out there and network with those sole traders and learn!

What are your buyers buying?

I spent some time last week with a small start up that manufactures very small run art decor occasional furniture.

They wanted me to help them setup and layout their web site based on Actinic, the popular off the shelf web shop application.

The key concept I had to get across was that their customers are not buying 'a nest of tables'.

They are buying something that makes them feel good. An attractive place to put down their wine glass at the end of a long day and relax - a table that you pull out when you have friends round and they are so taken with it they want to know where you found it.

It's the good feelings you have inside that your buyers want when they are looking for this sort of purchase.

Is that the sort of product you sell? Think about how they might feel when they have bought it and make that the centre of your sales message and it's supporting images.

Don't Compete on Price

If you are going to sell the same product or service as everyone else, sold in the same way and in the the same street too, then there is only one thing that differentiates you from your competitors - Price!

I don't know about you but I don't just want to be competing on price. That's reduced margins and a constant price war between you and your competitors to be the cheapest.

So how do you get away from price?

1. Don't sell the same product or service in the same way as everyone else.

Don't sell the 'same'! Find a way to re-package or add value to make your offer different. Seek out you customers and work out what they are really looking for when they buy from you. Tap into their desires and needs. Sell not just a product or service but an outcome.

Look for things that go with your product and bundle them in with a different price tag. Make yourself an advice and expert centre.

Do anything that steps you above your competitors and makes the price just one part of the buying decision rather than the only buying decision.

2. Don't sell in the same place.

Look for somewhere 'different' to sell. Size up your competitors and where their main selling and advertising focus sits.

Working out your customers real requirements will help you understand the problems they have and solutions they need which drive them to look for your products and services. Look for times and places that these may appear.

Work out what they may be asking or looking for - it may be different to how you would traditionally have thought. Then find ways of 'being there' at the right time.

This is all about finding your own Unique Selling Proposition or USP.

Without it you'll be selling on price and ever-reducing margins.

Need help getting your business moving? I'll see if I can help with your Sales and Marketing Strategy or your Website Profit

Get Ready for a Great 2010

Christmas is just about over and the New Year is just around the corner.

Going by the activity in the last quarter, 2010 looks set to be much better for buisness. Most seem to be waking up to the fact that sitting on your hands and doing nothing, hoping to sit it out and that the storm will just pass by isn't an option.

Doing the Second World War, Cadbury's chocolate continued to advertise heavily despite a severe shortage of their products and no chance of increasing revenue. But, once hostilities ceased and production restarted fully, the Cadbury's name was the one on peoples mind. It built their business to be the strong brand it is today.

Don't sit on the fence and wait for the world to pass you by. Get out there and let everyone know who you are and what you do - the business world hasn't stopped.

If you need help working out the best way to get your products and services in front of the right people - on the internet or in the real world - call me at Alloy CRM for a chat and see if I can help.

The 2 Appointment Sale Problem

As part of your selling do you often have 2 parts to the process?

Maybe 2 meetings or phone calls before the sale is completed?

This is quite common and, for sales with considerable commitment, tends to end up with a more solid sale with less buyer remorse and fewer cancellations.

However, handling a 2 appointment sale like this needs some thought.

During the first appointment or call the process is pretty standard:

Questioning and listening to understand the problems and pain
Understand the implications of the problem
Put forward the appropriate benefits of your solution

At this point, in a one appointment sale, you would go for the close. The buyer should, at this point, fully understand how your solution will make the difference and be really enthusiastic about it to the point of wanting to go for it there and then.

But now we're going to have to walk away.

A couple of days later we're back with the buyer to complete the sale and here's where many sales people go wrong.

You have lived and breathed this sale and how you're going to pitch the final close today since you left last time and you are absolutely bouncing with enthusiasm.

Unfortunately your buyer isn't in the same frame of mind. Although really enthusiastic at the end of the last meeting, that has dissipated very quickly since then. A million and one other things had happened in his business and personal life that have pushed the importance of your solution way down the scale.

The answer is to go back at do exactly what you did at the first appointment. 'Remind' the buyer of the problems he's facing and 'confirm' that's the case. Review the benefits and how they will overcome his issues.

Done carefully, within a relatively short time, the buyer will be back up full of enthusiasm as he was last time and gladly signing the order form. The bonus is the stronger sale that you have now.

If you then have a delivery point, why don't you do the same again? Go through the same process to ensure your customer feels great about his purchase and looks forward to the pleasure it will give him.

If you need help with your sales on or off line then contact Roy Gough at Alloy CRM.

Getting sales when times are tough

If times are tough where do you look for extra business. Is there a secret, untapped, vein of potential revenue that you can try?

Maybe there is a vast community of potential customers that you've never even come across before that are just crying out for your solution?

Sad news folks - the reality is that it's unlikely. So best you look elsewhere.

It's widely accepted that most businesses fail miserably when it comes to looking after, and selling to, past satisfied customers. Why is that? These people are probably the most receptive to your offer of further products and services.

But, beware, if you haven't contacted them at all since you made your last sale, don't just blast them with a sales pitch. That will go down like a lead balloon.

So what can you do?

Try regularly keeping them informed about things that are related to your product but are helpful to them. It could be tips on how to use your service or product better, changes in legislation that affect them or research progress that could help them in the future when they are considering replacement. The objective is to be their helpful friend in your sector.

By all means add a small piece at the end of your connection to remind them about what you have to offer, but don't make it an all out sales pitch.

The easiest way to do this of course is by email. That way the process is much simpler and cost effective. If you haven't been keeping in touch in the past, don't expect a huge rush of orders from your first mailings. But if you seed links back to appropriate parts of your website for more information, or a phone number to call for help, you could end up with some leads you might have otherwise lost to your competition.

Managing an on-going email campaign such as this can be difficult without the right tools.

There are two providers I use regularly, aWeber - probably accepted as the industry standard, and SendFree - not quite free if you want the emails to look right, but still inexpensive.

If you would like to go down this route and need some help and guidance, please contact me through my site Alloy CRM site where I help businesses increase sales, revenue and profit.

http://alloycrm.aweber.com/
http://www.sendfree.com/affref/105448/

Someone made me think about networking

As the Chapter Director of a BNI (Business Network International) group in Norwich, I was passed the contact details of someone who had shown interest in visiting and maybe joining our group. I sent out the appropriate invitation and received a reply that said they had spoken to most of our members at other networking events and they were not able to sell to them then, so there would be no point in joining. I sent them a polite (hopefully) reply explaining what networking is really about.

Yes there will always be an element of the hunter in us all at networking events, some events are more suited to it than others. Andy Bounds excellent book The Jelly Effect explains how to maximise this process well. He goes through the process of identifying your 'Big Fish' in the room and succeeding in securing a meeting later to discuss business opportunities.

However groups like BNI work on a different dimension. They are based on relationships. Understanding what your fellow members do, how they add value and their ideal target customer gives us the background knowledge we need to find them suitable prospective customers in our daily travels and maybe within our own client base.

To do this effectively we spend a great deal of time understanding each others business and gaining confidence and trust in their ability to fulfil. That's not a quick win. It takes time to build that sort of relationship, but once it's there is very sound and can be very lucrative.

So if you're just about to look at networking as a new form of marketing then make sure you understand how networking works before you blunder out there and think it's a waste of time.

Roy Gough of Alloy CRM helps businesses increase sales both on and off line.

How are you selling?

Sorry to keep harping back to this again but I just think it's so important - especially in the current climate.

I guess that in your business you will have, or do, one of these things:
1. Have a retail shop
2. Have a trade counter and display
3. Have a demonstration area or showroom
4. Have an exhibition stand for trade shows
5. Have a presentation you use either one to one or at events
6. Used a designer to create your ads and leaflets

If you are serious about growing and increasing profit through sales you will have spent a great deal of time and care making sure that these are right.

By that I mean you would take care to make sure that your products and services are presented in a way that fits the environment and client you are targeting.

If you were looking to buy a Bentley you would expect the showroom to have a certain ambiance and appear upmarket. Buying produce from a farmers market you expect it to look fresh and presented well but may feel cheated if it was all laid in cardboard boxes that seemed to come from a wholesaler rather than directly from the fields. Would you man your exhibition stand in jeans and tee shirt if you were hoping to sell to business leaders?

We are all influenced significantly not just by the product but also it's presentation. That presentation needs to reflect, and tap into, the likely reason for buying.

It is said that there are 3 reasons people buy:
Greed
Fear
Desire

I have yet to see ad ad for a Bentley parked outside a roadside layby cafe surrounded by white vans and lorries. It's more likely to be on a beautiful country road, outside a stately home or the Savoy hotel, building a desire to be part of that lifestyle.

Where am I going with this?

Fire up your web browser and look at your own website.

Does it have the right ambiance? Does it look how a buyer would expect it to look?

Help your customers understand what they will gain, save or avoid by using your product and you will have a better chance of getting the result you want from your website.

Maybe you need to look at your other advertising, not just your website, in the same way too?

If you need help with sales have a look at our Sales Accelerator
If you need help with your wesite take a look at our Website Profit Program

Internet sales preditions for 2009 UP!

A report in eMarketer confidently predicts an increase in internet sales of about 4% in the US. Now that's not much but against high street drops of up to 10% it seems like good news to me.

Additionally a survey by ATG also in the US at the back end of last year, in the midst of the downturn, showed that purchasers would be turning to the internet to both research their requirements and actually buy where appropriate more than ever before. One of the triggers, along with price, for a purchase was no cost delivery.

So what should we take from this?

Well, there is no doubt now that EVERY business should be represented on the internet. But more than that, it needs to show your business in a professional and trustworthy way otherwise those potential customers will just head straight back to the search listings to find someone else. We know they are spending, and making purchasing decisions, via the internet - you need to make sure your are getting your fair share of those sales.

If you need help to make your website work and produce profit, I offer a Website Profit Program designed to help and guide you.

Alloy CRM is a Sales & Marketing Strategy consultancy that helps businesses find new ways of increasing Sales, Revenue and Profit.

New Year - New Revenue?

New Year - New Revenue? What can you do differently in 2009 that could significantly improve your revenue and profit?

Here's just a few ideas:

• Look back through your customer list and see who hasn't bought from you in the last 12 months. Contact them, find out why and rebuild the relationship if they are still potential customers.
  
• Check back to see who you pitched for business but lost out. Try re-packaging your offer in a different way and contact them.
  
• Build a follow up program for everyone who buys from you. Use that to maintain contact, make your customer realise you care and probably gain some referrals and testimonials into the bargain.
  
• Don't just carry on with the same old advertising. Be bold and look for something different. Try different publications, divert some of your spend to internet marketing and review your website to make sure it isn't losing you potential customers.
  
• Be more targeted about looking for new customers. Look at your customer base and see which industry sector and size profile produces the best results for you, find out where those sort of businesses hang out and join in with them.
  
• Try networking. There are plenty of events around each with it's own style and visitor profile. It might feel scary the first time but it's worth the effort. Networkers love to help each other and you could well create some useful contacts.

All the best to you for 2009 - may it be your most profitable yet.

Who will be the next economic sacrifice?

The high street has taken a real battering over the last month. Some have gone down deservedly you might say. Woolworths has never really seemed to understand how modern retail works and I'm surprised that they have survived so long really.

MFI had suffered from it's appalling quality and customer service record in the past. Perhaps if they had renamed and re-branded a few years ago they might have been able to survive.

Although I don't grieve the loss of these retailers, who I didn't use anyway, my heart goes out to their staff and the many companies in their supply chain who will all lose out.

During my days in ecommerce I visited many reasonable sized businesses that were in the high street supply chain feeding goods to all of the famous high street names. I remember coming across a significant number of businesses that had one retail chain representing over 80% of it's customer base and, in some cases, 100%.

Most chains work on the 'just in time' stock principal. Which means that the retailer estimates his total supply requirements in advance. After an initial stock up, replenishment is by replacement only and it is up to the supplier to have the stock on hand to provide immediate turn around - with no commitment from the retailer to take the whole consignment if sales are bad, but penalties for you if you can't supply.

I don't know how they slept at night and I said just that to the MDs in question.

When we have a sharp economic downturn that level of reliance puts you on dangerous ground and your business can be wiped out even though your own business management and cash flow are sound.

As small business owners it is always attractive to accept business opportunities that give us 'security' by filling our order book for substantial periods. But it doesn't come without risk. I suspect there are hundreds of small businesses that spent more than 80% of their efforts pandering to MFI and Woolworths who will be left with virtually no business to speak of.

Perhaps our New Years resolution should be to spread our business across more customers and therefore spread the risk?


If you need help with a New Year sales and marketing strategy, particularly using the internet, I'll see if I can help.

Will you profit from the Google changes?

What is the point of having a website if it doesn't bring you a sale or at least high quality enquiries?

So we live and die by Googles' ability to index and rank our sites correctly to attract the right visitors. At any one time we can search ourselves on the keywords and phrases that we would like to be seen for and see exactly how we fair in the listings.

But according to search engine specialist Bruce Clay that's all about to change.

Google has, and probably always will, had to fight a battle with the 'black hat' SEO specialists who work hard to unfairly skew the rankings in their, or their clients, favour.

Google wants to maintain its standing as the leading search engine (over 80% market share in Europe) by offering the best, most useful and most appropriate web pages to us as web searchers. That's what keeps us coming back time after time.

Google has been experimenting for some time with ways to overcome the black hats by making each search unique. They are getting 'up close and personal' to help personalise each and every search that we make.

By using information gained from your previous search history, your location and a broad understanding of your 'intent' (are you looking to buy something or are you looking for information) they can create a different listing of web pages for you to view.

This is great for us as users as the results will probably be more akin to our requirements.

Google are also able now to interrogate video, flash and audio files on web sites and convert the spoken and printed word into text to help offer those in the listings too.

Overall, from a user point of view it's all good news.

How does this affect my website?

As a web site owner we still need to keep our eye on the SEO ball so that Google continues understand our site and knows when, and where, to rank it. Our problem is that we won't be able to check it's ranking for key words and phrases as that will vary from user to user.

This means that we'll need to study and understand the site analytics far more. How many people visit the site, from which keywords, how long did they stay, what pages did they view and did we gain something from them - some contact details or a sale for example?

With that information we are able to test and measure changes and influence the results without resorting to under handed tactics.

The other big change is the importance that Google is putting on what are described as 'Engagement Objects' - such as video and audio. These are seen as enhancements to the user experience and will give considerable weight to the ranking of a page. I have seen statistics that have indicated this for some time now so this element hasn't surprised me.

So the time has never been better to include video elements on your site as these changes will start to take effect during the first quarter of next year.

If you need help with video or how to make your site Search Engine Optimisation is up to scratch contact me at Alloy CRM - Sales and Marketing Strategists.

Selling is all about the numbers

Selling is all about the numbers

"Make a better mousetrap" they said, "And people will beat a path to your door"

Hmmm... Well, woe betide anyone in business who thinks that philosophy alone will make them their first million.

The business world is littered with fantastic ideas and products that would knock the socks off the competition - but have died a painful death through financial ruin. Yet, conversly, there are any number of second rate offerings that continue to thrive.

What's the difference?

The second created sales opportunities for themselves, the first just sat back and waited for the sales to come to them.

And how do you think those successful businesses 'created' sales opportunities?

They went out and got their sales message across to as many people as possible. The more they speak to, the more they sold.

I suspect, at this point, there are some folk out there wagging a finger at me saying 'Work Smarter, Not Harder'.

I absolutely agree. Working smarter means making sure that all of those people you speak to are of the right calibre to be your customers, so that you are not wasting time on people who are never going to, or able to, buy.

But make sure you talk to as many people of the right calibre as you can! That's smart, but it's also damn hard too.

Getting to speak to the right people or attracting them to your website in significant numbers is vital to your business success.

If you need help, talk to me about my Sales Accelerator Program to Increase your Sales and Profit.