Deciding your price can be difficult, especially when you are just starting out or creating new products or services.
It's very tempting to finding out your competitors pricing and just undercut it.
But is that the best policy? Consider these points before you do that.
Tesco
10-15 years ago their slogan was a very clear 'Stack 'm High and Sell 'm Cheap'. It's taken all those years to modify our perception of them to be targeting the better quality supermarket retailers. It couldn't have been done over night.
They changed their out-of-town outlets to look upmarket and introduced quality brands. They made them better places to be and added 'service' to their offer to change our perceptions.
If we position ourselves as 'cheap' have we got the time, or resources, to take ourselves up in value so that we are working on better margins and become more profitable?
Price Perception
Something that has no charge is often perceived as having no value. The Business Link Workshops I have been delivering have a poor attendance from those who have booked. Is that because they are free, they have no perceived value?
Similarly, if we charge bottom prices does that brand our offer in the same way?
USP
Creating your offer as different from the competition - finding a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) - means you can charge a more realistic price as you are offering something different to your competition, taking price comparison, as a means of customer choice, to a lower priority.
Being different can make a massive difference.
Avoid Selling on Price
Find ways of selling on the benefits of your product or service. Tap into the desires, wants an needs of your potential customers and sell them Solutions rather than features. Everything in you marketing and advertising should represent how they will Feel after they have purchased rather than what it is they are buying.
Conclusion
Some businesses will find this more difficult than others as there are sectors that are really price sensitive such as home electronics. However, if it were all about price only, who would ever buy a B&O sound system instead of a Sanyo or a BMW 5 series rather than a Ford Mondeo?
Need help with your sales and marketing strategy? Call me and just ask.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
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
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
Sunday, December 27, 2009
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.
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.
What do your customers really buy?
Do you really understand why your customers might buy your product or service?
Is it because of the 'features' you offer?
Let's say you wanted to buy a new laptop computer.
You might go out and look for one with 3gb of ram, a 2.5 hour battery life and a 250gb hard drive.
But in reality you're not looking for those features because they excite you. You look for them because:
> 3gb Ram means your laptop will run quickly, smoothly and allow you to have several programs running at once without too much adverse effect.
> A 2.5 hour battery life means you can sit on the train on the way to a meeting and work for pretty much all of the journey being more productive and not wasting time.
> A 250gb hard drive means you can store all of your holiday picture and videos without running out of space.
These are the 'Benefits'
Before you went into the PC shop you did the analysis of what you wanted out of your laptop (the benefits) and the features required to achieve them.
Understanding the difference between features and benefits is critical to successful marketing and sales.
Sometimes (often, maybe) the benefits are not so clear cut as the laptop example. Take the motor industry for example.
A car, whatever type or size it is, will get you from A to B in the dry and warm. Even the performance of the car is pretty irrelevant as the speed limit is 70 mph, and it's often impossible to use the acceleration or cornering capabilities of high performance cars in this country.
So why does one person buy a small car and another buy a large luxury sports model?
It comes down to life style, status or aspirations. If that's the case then your advertising needs to reflect that.
Have you ever seen an advert for a Bentley or an Aston Martin with it parked in an Asda car park? No, but you might see an ad' for a small family car with happy parents putting their smiling children into the back seat and ample shopping in the boot outside a smart supermarket.
The Bentley is more likely to be sitting outside the Savoy Hotel or some other very swanky part of London's West End.
Right. If we understand the difference between the Features that people buy as against the Benefits that people are really looking for then we need to work that out for our business and products or services.
I came across a very useful device to help with this process in a book called The Jelly Effect by Andy Bounds.
He suggests going through a routine he describes as 'So What?'
Start by writing down a feature and then asking yourself 'So What'. Answer that and continue asking 'So What' until you really can't answer any more.
Now you are potentially at the root benefit that your customers are looking for and in a position to find ways of communicating that in your advertising and marketing.
If you want more help to find your core benefits read The Jelly Effect or call me for some personal advice.
Alloy CRM - Sales and Marketing Strategy
Is it because of the 'features' you offer?
Let's say you wanted to buy a new laptop computer.
You might go out and look for one with 3gb of ram, a 2.5 hour battery life and a 250gb hard drive.
But in reality you're not looking for those features because they excite you. You look for them because:
> 3gb Ram means your laptop will run quickly, smoothly and allow you to have several programs running at once without too much adverse effect.
> A 2.5 hour battery life means you can sit on the train on the way to a meeting and work for pretty much all of the journey being more productive and not wasting time.
> A 250gb hard drive means you can store all of your holiday picture and videos without running out of space.
These are the 'Benefits'
Before you went into the PC shop you did the analysis of what you wanted out of your laptop (the benefits) and the features required to achieve them.
Understanding the difference between features and benefits is critical to successful marketing and sales.
Sometimes (often, maybe) the benefits are not so clear cut as the laptop example. Take the motor industry for example.
A car, whatever type or size it is, will get you from A to B in the dry and warm. Even the performance of the car is pretty irrelevant as the speed limit is 70 mph, and it's often impossible to use the acceleration or cornering capabilities of high performance cars in this country.
So why does one person buy a small car and another buy a large luxury sports model?
It comes down to life style, status or aspirations. If that's the case then your advertising needs to reflect that.
Have you ever seen an advert for a Bentley or an Aston Martin with it parked in an Asda car park? No, but you might see an ad' for a small family car with happy parents putting their smiling children into the back seat and ample shopping in the boot outside a smart supermarket.
The Bentley is more likely to be sitting outside the Savoy Hotel or some other very swanky part of London's West End.
Right. If we understand the difference between the Features that people buy as against the Benefits that people are really looking for then we need to work that out for our business and products or services.
I came across a very useful device to help with this process in a book called The Jelly Effect by Andy Bounds.
He suggests going through a routine he describes as 'So What?'
Start by writing down a feature and then asking yourself 'So What'. Answer that and continue asking 'So What' until you really can't answer any more.
Now you are potentially at the root benefit that your customers are looking for and in a position to find ways of communicating that in your advertising and marketing.
If you want more help to find your core benefits read The Jelly Effect or call me for some personal advice.
Alloy CRM - Sales and Marketing Strategy
Monday, November 9, 2009
Successful Email Marketing
Email marketing is a useful tool in your marketing armoury and can produce excellent results if used with care.
I have a blog post that talks about the benefits of using email broadcasting here.
But I want to add to that with some practical advice from my own experiences.
I, along with 3 other Norwich based business men, have been running a monthly networking event that attracts around 50 visitors every time. We work with a large database that has been collected and built over 5 years and is managed through an excellent autoresponder system to ensure that subscribing and un-subscribing is handled correctly.
But here's the extra that we have learnt over time.
We used to send out two versions of the email - one which was html based and had attractive graphics and a pleasing layout, and a very plain text only version that simply had links to the appropriate events page on our website.
Like all good marketers we constantly test and measure the effectiveness of our campaigns. Over a long period there is no doubt that in terms of desired results - in our case, bookings for the event - the plain text version wins hand down.
Why should that be? I can't give a precise, scientific answer. However we must assume that the more complex html version didn't make it past the various virus checkers and junk mail filters and the recipients never even got to see the message.
The second observation is that of the delivery time.
We have consistently found that sending the message to arrive between 10am and noon gives us our best chance of instant bookings. I guess earlier than that and it gets lost among the overnight junk. We also find the Tues/Wed/Thurs work best for us too.
So, in summary, use our experiences as a starting point, but do make sure that you do your own testing. Try different times and formats - and measure the results.
If you need advice on sales strategy, email marketing or finding an autoresponder just call or email me and I'll try to help.
Useful autoresponder links:
http://alloycrm.aweber.com
http://www.sendfree.com/affref/105448/
I have a blog post that talks about the benefits of using email broadcasting here.
But I want to add to that with some practical advice from my own experiences.
I, along with 3 other Norwich based business men, have been running a monthly networking event that attracts around 50 visitors every time. We work with a large database that has been collected and built over 5 years and is managed through an excellent autoresponder system to ensure that subscribing and un-subscribing is handled correctly.
But here's the extra that we have learnt over time.
We used to send out two versions of the email - one which was html based and had attractive graphics and a pleasing layout, and a very plain text only version that simply had links to the appropriate events page on our website.
Like all good marketers we constantly test and measure the effectiveness of our campaigns. Over a long period there is no doubt that in terms of desired results - in our case, bookings for the event - the plain text version wins hand down.
Why should that be? I can't give a precise, scientific answer. However we must assume that the more complex html version didn't make it past the various virus checkers and junk mail filters and the recipients never even got to see the message.
The second observation is that of the delivery time.
We have consistently found that sending the message to arrive between 10am and noon gives us our best chance of instant bookings. I guess earlier than that and it gets lost among the overnight junk. We also find the Tues/Wed/Thurs work best for us too.
So, in summary, use our experiences as a starting point, but do make sure that you do your own testing. Try different times and formats - and measure the results.
If you need advice on sales strategy, email marketing or finding an autoresponder just call or email me and I'll try to help.
Useful autoresponder links:
http://alloycrm.aweber.com
http://www.sendfree.com/affref/105448/
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Is the 'Home' page of your website of any value?
Is the 'Home' page of your website of any value?
The way in which all the main search engines, such as Google, work is that they find your home page, follow it's navigation links and discover all the other pages that make up the site.
If you've been doing your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) correctly, each of those pages will be targeting a tightly focused small number of keywords or phrases. The purpose is to help Google understand EXACTLY what that page is about so that it can effectively determine when to show that page in the organic , or natural, listing as a good potential page for the searcher to view.
This shows that Google indexes pages rather than sites as a whole. Your Home page probably isn't sufficiently keyword focused to be shown in most listings as a response to a search query. This leads to some SEO experts to say that the Home page is of little value.
I beg to differ.
1. Unless you are a totally internet based business relying upon the search engine rankings to gain site visitors you will be using your domain name - www.mycompanyname.co.uk, which is effectively your Home page - on your business card, flyers, brochures, newspaper adverts, on your van and anywhere else you can legally find to display it.
2. If someone hears about your business they might just type in your company name. That could well produce your home page at the top of the search engine listings because it probably isn't product or service targeted.
So your Home page is absolutely vital. It's your office reception. Most bricks and mortar businesses spend a great deal on making their reception area feel warm, inviting and confidence building so that you might feel happier doing business with them.
Make sure your Home page creates a great impression and easily directs visitors to the part of the site they are looking for.
But in reality, every page on your site is a 'reception'. If that's the first page they go to on your site then it's really got to do the same job as the Home page, but do it's sales job as well. That's going to be tough to get right.
Is it any wonder that making profit from your website can be so tough?
If you need help with your site to make it profitable my Wesite Profit Program might be your answer.
The way in which all the main search engines, such as Google, work is that they find your home page, follow it's navigation links and discover all the other pages that make up the site.
If you've been doing your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) correctly, each of those pages will be targeting a tightly focused small number of keywords or phrases. The purpose is to help Google understand EXACTLY what that page is about so that it can effectively determine when to show that page in the organic , or natural, listing as a good potential page for the searcher to view.
This shows that Google indexes pages rather than sites as a whole. Your Home page probably isn't sufficiently keyword focused to be shown in most listings as a response to a search query. This leads to some SEO experts to say that the Home page is of little value.
I beg to differ.
1. Unless you are a totally internet based business relying upon the search engine rankings to gain site visitors you will be using your domain name - www.mycompanyname.co.uk, which is effectively your Home page - on your business card, flyers, brochures, newspaper adverts, on your van and anywhere else you can legally find to display it.
2. If someone hears about your business they might just type in your company name. That could well produce your home page at the top of the search engine listings because it probably isn't product or service targeted.
So your Home page is absolutely vital. It's your office reception. Most bricks and mortar businesses spend a great deal on making their reception area feel warm, inviting and confidence building so that you might feel happier doing business with them.
Make sure your Home page creates a great impression and easily directs visitors to the part of the site they are looking for.
But in reality, every page on your site is a 'reception'. If that's the first page they go to on your site then it's really got to do the same job as the Home page, but do it's sales job as well. That's going to be tough to get right.
Is it any wonder that making profit from your website can be so tough?
If you need help with your site to make it profitable my Wesite Profit Program might be your answer.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
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.
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.
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