Strategies

A gentleman by the name of Lord Leverhume candidly uttered these words many years ago, about marketing, "fifty percent of my advertising is wasted", the problem is I don't know which fifty percent. "The purpose of a marketing strategy (advertisement), is to attract, and hold, the favourable attention, of the maximum economic number, of the right group of people (prospective customers), while a selling story is being told, and the desired action, or reaction, is being induced.

Selling isn't something you do TO people, it’s something you do WITH people. Selling focuses on communication, listen carefully rather than talk incessantly, ask genuine honest questions that lead to encouraging people to talk about their needs and problems. Get your team to examine themselves at the end of every day, in an honest appraisal of their performance, IF I HAD TODAY ALL OVER AGAIN, HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN MORE EFFECTIVE?

The biggest challenge in marketing our products and services is perhaps pricing. Be prepared to be flexible in pricing strategies. Pricing is so visible, and so easily copied, by desperate and/or opportunistic competitors. There is a fine line between pleasure and pain, sacrificing gross profits without achieving an increase in sales, will have been the last thing you set out to achieve. Discounting is rife, and competition fierce as consumers have figured out the trends set by many major retailers, many customers no longer expect to pay full price for goods, and will delay purchase until the next major catalogue sale, or traditional sale time, set by many of these major retailers. Small business needs to learn to value add as they do not have the support of major manufacturers like the larger retailers do. Be differnt to the larger stores and market your difference and make it an integral part of all your marketing campaigns.

The Largest Room In The World Is The Room For Improvement! Believe it and act on it daily.

Referrals are probably the single most successful marketing method any business can have. Each time you have the captive and motivated audience of any of your clients ask them to tell a friend or even better two friends about how they feel. If you get teh service and the product right they will market your business for you. I ran a retail business for 12 years with about 80% of my business coming from referrals and that was one of my main goals in all of my marketing strategies. I literally spoilt my customers and had a good time doing it, while still making money, after all it does not cost anything to be nice now does it?

Capitalise on everything you are doing right. Do your homework on your competitors; find time to visit their stores. Compare their layout, image pricing, brochures, and adverts. How artistic are their displays. Analyse all of this and look for their weaknesses that you can capitalise upon by making strengths in your own operation. Don't go out and attack your competitors, attack your clients with the education of what you do better. Try to read as many market reports that you can, and analyse statistical data and consumer trends, socio-economic trends, so you can capitalise on these. People love to go with a leader.

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The Ethical salesman or Selling with integrity

Have a look and listen to what you hear around the sales force and customers alike. What do you see and hear?

Wow just in those words alone they conjure up images of deceit and people with no ethics or morals, because that is how we perceive them. I wonder why?

Have a closer look at yourself and maybe you are the salesman with the attitude "buyers are liars" or are you a customer that calls all salesman used car salesmen?

When you next go into one of these situations have a listen to your self-talk see what you are actually expecting from the interaction and what you are saying to yourself before the interaction starts.

Here I will focus on one aspect only, the selling aspect, but it can quite easily be role reversed and apply the same principals if you so wish. We are going to look solely at this from a sales perspective but to throw a curve ball at you as a salesman do you actually believe that “Buyers are liars” because if you do I strongly recommend you look in the mirror because you are a buyer on a regular basis so I guess you judging all other buyers by your own ethics and morals when you are actually the buyer. Are you a liar?

When looking at the sales transaction what are you expecting to get from the transaction, and why, are you trying to help a customer solve a problem by purchasing your product or service, or are you simply looking at the next commission cheque. Are you looking at this sale only or are you at an ongoing relationship with this customer?

Relationship building is the hardest but most rewarding approach to the sales transaction, you know you have solved a problem your client has brought to you, note the word client and not customer now, and you now have a loyal client onboard for the future. Many salesmen are only interested in the next sale the next challenge the next adrenalin rush that is brought up during the process, and in so doing they become very pushy, so pushy that the customer will tell them anything just to get rid of them, hence the term buyers are liars. Are you one of those salesmen? One who is so pushy the customer will tell you anything to get rid of you? If you are then I suggest you have a closer look at your technique and shift your thinking and attitude. I bet you are the same person who distrusts other salesman when you are in the buying situation because you base their approach and ethics on yours.

To get a sale at any cost is a win lose transaction, to get a sale while solving a clients problem is a win win situation with the second option almost guaranteeing ongoing business and referrals, of which both are important to the business and the ongoing profitability. A company can be profitable with a win lose technique but it will not last and will generally close up and either go away or open under another name because the reputation of the current name is so tarnished that word will get around and before long customers will not be knocking on the door. Go for a drive watch the car yards and see which ones have been around the longest and which ones keep trying to reinvent themselves. Do they care? “NO” do you? “YES” and that is the way it will always be with those techniques. I see car yard after car yard close up and reopen under another name another brand but the people and the techniques are the same. I also see car yards which stay but salesman come and go regularly, the food salesman tend to hang around, maybe next time ask how long he has been with company how long the company has been there if you do not already know.

A salesman with integrity will always get a genuine customer, may not get the sale at the time but, may get it at a later date. Sales are about numbers, and as one of my bosses taught me “every no is a step closer to a yes” move on quickly from the no and the yes will come sooner. Chase the no’s and the yes’s will take a while to come. Being ethical will not always guarantee a sale but one thing is for sure the customer will remember you and even if they do not buy from you at the time or ever, they will remember you enough and remember your integrity enough to refer others to you. Have you ever had a referral from someone who has never bought from you, have you ever had a referral from your opposition, when you do you will be floating on air as they are the sweetest referrals you could ever get, trust me I know and have received both more than once. And the referral from the opposition was not because of them being a bad customer but because it was more convenient for the customer, never did get the salesman’s name but I bet he has gone on to bigger and better opportunities as a result, maybe not with that existing company but there are still some companies who like to build relationships with clients.

Unfortunately salesmen have targets to meet and if they are not met it generally results in job loss so as a result salesmen feel the need to get the sale at any cost. An experienced salesman will get the sale without the compromising his ethics, he will maintain his integrity at all times. He knows that the sale will happen. I remember being in the market for a fridge had cash to buy so went shopping. An elderly salesman finally got the sale as the young salesman was trying out all these techniques he had been taught. Closing techniques do work if you can identify them when they are there and not all customers will respond to the sales training you have had. This young guy was so caught up his training that even when I pulled the cash out of my pocket to show him he still had to go through the training process he had been given and ask me how serious I was and would I make a decision today. I walked out the door dialled the elderly gentleman made him an offer then drove away from the young guy and went and paid for my fridge at another shop. It cost me $50 more but the transaction was pleasurable and I did not have to convince anyone how serious I was about my purchase.

• Selling is:- Fun

• Selling is:- Enjoyable

• Selling is:- Rewarding

• Selling is:- be very profitable if done right.

Enjoy the transaction don’t over complicate it but most of all be true to yourself and maintain your integrity throughout all sales transactions.

Most buyers are genuine buyers after all why else would they be there. Buying has a process just like selling and salesman tend to forget this. Look after your customers treat them with respect and honesty and when they are genuinely ready to buy you will more than likely be at the top of the list as you have gained their trust.

I go into each of these situations with the following perspective:

• As a salesman I believe that I will be able to provide a solution for my client and that they will buy my product when they are ready, and only after I have gained their trust.

• As a buyer I go into the situation believing that the salesman will provide me with enough knowledge to make an informed decision, but first he must gain my trust.

• In both these situations once the decision has been made to buy then the negotiation starts and

       - As a salesman it is my duty to get the best possible price for my business or my employer.

       - As a buyer I want the best possible price to ensure I believe I got a quality product at a price I thought reasonable,

       I never look for a bargain but I do look for a fair deal.

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SEO [Search Engine Optimisation]

• Does it work?
• Will it work for you?

In Brief YES it does work and it may, I repeat may, just work for you, but at what price and with no guarantees.

What I have found so far in my quest to understand search engine optimization [SEO] is that there are many facets to achieving this and not one of them is more or less important than the other.

Ask your self these Questions:-

1. If it was that easy would every one not be doing it?
2. How many web pages are like yours on the www or even in your corner of the world?
3. How many possible web sites can be at number 1 or even on the first page of Google?

Now I hear almost daily where clients are promised a number 1 page ranking or a high ranking in Google, so if you calculate how many web designers are promising this to their clients, then limit that to the number of business like yours, are you still prepared to pay the exorbitant fees they ask.

So having voiced my thoughts and my concerns lets have a look at what you can do and what you need to be focussing on to get some notice on the big www.

YOUR WEB SITE:

The first things I believe you need to understand are:

• Your Customers
• The Market you operate in
• The demographics of your market base
• What you actually want to achieve from your web site

Having looked at those, you now need to think about or even ask your customers what they want from you and how you can better serve them.

What do your customers type into google when looking for your type of business? Not what you type but what your customers type, there is a slight difference. A good example of this is I have a friend who was interested in surveys so I asked him to Google what he wanted and give me some web sites that are similar to what he wanted, he found nothing. Within 30 minutes I had found too many sites, doing what he wanted to do, for him to look at to get some ideas for his plan. 

What used to be relevant in getting good page ranking is no longer relevant and in fact can be harmful if not done correctly, as in getting your site banned from the search engine entirely. The criteria is constantly being changed so that no one site or person has an advantage over another.

The first thing I believe is required is to design your web site around your customers and their requirements. The site needs to be

• Your website must be Informative
• Your website must be Easy to read
• Your website must be Inviting enough for visitors to want to return
• Your website must be informative enough to get referrals form friends and associates of visitors to your site.
• Your website must be relevant to the purpose of your business.

Now the content of any website is what is relevant to your customers and search engines, how you present the information and the content of what you portray.

The choice on words and how you present the words, even have a look at this page and see what works, what stands out and what doesn't, because as well as providing information I am providing some classic examples of presentation. Some will work and some wont but that is my intention.

Next you need to look at behind the scenes and look at your meta tags

• Your website must contain - Page Headings
• Your website must contain - Paragraph Headings
• Your website must contain - Keywords
• Your website must contain - Page Descriptions
• Your website must contain - What gets displayed in the browser bar for each page

Click on all the pages in this site and see how the name in your browser changes with each page but also see how the site name is still there on every page.

All these play an important part in generating page ranking but more importantly, play a very important role in getting people to your website while informing them about your website before they even get to it.

The content of the page must have some relevance to the keywords and headings you use as this then improves the ranking considerably.

When you use images do these images have user friendly names and the ALT tag have a name that is relevant or are they just numbers. ALT tags are important as search engines cannot see pictures and only se ethe names and the ALT tags.

You also need to look at back links to your site, that is how many other web sites contain a link to your site and are these back links relevant to your site, for example you have a computer Shop and a butcher shop with links to each other, there is no relevance. However you have a Boat sales site and a boat detailer with links then the relevance is in the tyoe of business being operated.

I offer links, on my site to all my clients who host their website with me, are you there, check our links page now. It offers an initial linking process to get things started and get you your initial backlinks. Also look at sites like truelocal maybe get a link from the Whitepages or Yellow pages if you are in them. Also look into like minded sites, maybe your wholesalers offer links you can utilise.

The big picture is what you need to focus on and do a good job with your web site and let as many people know as possible that it is there and your page ranking will grow as your popularity does. You might pay good money to get up into the number one spot for a day or two but if no one is visiting your site because it does not invite them to or is not informative enough it will never be popular and will never retain the rankings you have paid to achieve.

As i find out more I will continue to write and grow this infornmation as well as put up links to sites I believe will help us achieve and manage a great web site for all our customers to enjoy.

This information is by no means based on any fact or predefined research but merely an insight to what I believe and what I am finding as I look for answers in this information world, in short just another opinion.

However if you want to try and get you rankings improved I have a way of assisting you and would be more than happy to discuss these options with you, but like everything, when you want to be number 1 you must pay the price it takes to get you there, but as with any race it can not be guaranteed as this WWW is a dynamic field and there are many participants.

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Retailing - THe next Generation

The future of retailng is changing - for Better or worse, you be the judge, you wont stop it

The Changing Retail Environment

In the past we have had service oriented business models that have served the customer well and the customer learned to rely on and trust the retailer and the advice that was given. The local store owner, after all, had to live within the community he served and if he was found to be wanting in his advice the locals no longer supported the store. After all there were very few stores but enough to create a competitive market and keep the retailer honest.

Today we have a retail environment where the owner is no longer a local but is someone or a group of someone's sitting in an office in a far off land looking at spreadsheets and complaining because the profits are not going up. The current owners have no concern for the local and the quality of service or advice given to the locals. In fact the owner teaches and encourages sales techniques that ensure a sale at any cost. Go to some sales training seminars and see what techniques are being taught, or simply go to a large retail outlet get someone new and test out their knowledge and selling skills.

Today we have a new consumer and this consumer is very informed, more informed than the previous generations, and this trend will continue, and because of this retailers can no longer use old techniques or old selling methods. Information is readily available and ill-prepared sales people will not survive the game but will merely degenerate the business worth, which I see happening in the market today. All the information is readily available via the internet and internet savvy people get all they need from the web and then they go shopping, whether that be online or from the old bricks and mortar stores. The problem we currently have is digesting this information as it is not well portrayed, in fact I would say it is deliberately done this way to prevent consumers from comparing apples with apples. The consumer has learnt not to trust the salesman so they do their own research and decide before they buy which one they want and at what price they are prepared to buy.

Store owners and managers need to become better equipped and more up front about all products and services they have on offer. They need to be more proactive in giving the consumer what is wanted and at the price that is readily available in other markets. The consumer has been educated to expect a discount and, now the discount model does not work. The consumer has been educated to expect massive clearance sales, and now the sales method does not work.

What works today is fair pricing based on global market pricing, which in most cases is very difficult for the retailer and the manufacturer alike. The pricing models used have appeared to be backward compatible rather than cost / profit driven. By this I mean that retailers and manufacturers look at a product and determine what it is worth in each market, or better put, what they perceive they can get for the product in each market. From here they work out a wholesale price based on a margin they expect the retailer to work within and then they work out a price for the wholesaler based on a margin they expect the wholesaler to work within. This then gives them a profit margin at a very comfortable level in some markets and marginal in others, but I would hazard a guess that the manufacturer is profitable in all markets. To encourage sales, a performance bonus is then paid based on volume which automatically negates the small business from competing on a level playing field. Today the small business as we know it is minimal to non-existent, and we now have the likes of franchises to give the buying power of chain stores.

Because of the internet the consumer is seeing how unfair this current pricing model is and is prepared to buy from where they get the best price because the old adage of offering a better service to gain a better price no longer applies. The consumer has been educated in accepting poor to no service as they are treated more and more like a commodity. There appears to be no such thing as customer relationships anymore and customers have become consumers at the request of the retail chains. Now the retail chains are struggling to deal with what they have created because they have not grown or continued to develop their consumer based models.

All the advertising you see today is price based:

"Find a better price and we will beat it by x%"

"Save up to y% of recommended retail"

"Massive warehouse Clearance Sale" and on the list goes

This trend will continue for a few more years, until the manufacturer and the retail giants realise that there is a problem with it and that is profits keep being reduced. Small business has been dealing with this for years and now it is affecting the retail chains and next will be the manufacturers. Manufacturers become the last bastion and when they realise they no longer have outlets to sell their products because of their own greed, they will slowly reverse the trend. However you will not have retailers but more along the lines of service centres and or display centres.

The new model will result in consumers eventually buying direct from the manufacturers via the internet, or from showrooms specific to the manufacturer. There may be showrooms based on product type where manufacturers pay for space to display their products but sales will not be processed through the showroom and if they are the products will be shipped from a central location away from the display centre and direct from the manufacturer. The days of selecting and receiving a product when you pay for it are numbered, and the internet purchasing is now teaching the consumer that this is the new norm.

I say you will have specific showrooms branded to each manufacturer because then the manufacturer controls the quality of the information and service by providing the necessary training to the service centre staff. They will either have their own staff or have outsourced professionals who at a fee will maintain these display / service centres and go out and install and service in home installations and service requests. Where ever possible the manufacturer will be encouraging and training the consumer to self install and diagnose any problems through the use of call centres. The second level will be to login from a distance to resolve any issues with the product and if all these fails a replacement will be shipped direct to the consumer and the old one returned direct to the manufacturer. There will be no onsite repairs or the need for costly technicians as the consumer becomes the in home technician with the aid of call centre staff.

The emergence of merging technologies will result in brand name display centres being the norm as well as having virtual online experiences to show the consumer what can be done with each level of technology. I have been saying for years that our entertainment and communications systems will be one and the same and we now have that technology even though I believe we still have a way to go before it becomes the norm.

So what does this mean for the likes of Myers, Kmart, Harvey Norman? Well all they have to do is look at what they have done to small business over the last few decades and learn from that. There is only one thing that will change and that is that the pace of this happening to them will be quicker than what it was for the small business operators. The reason for this is twofold, 1. technology is forever gaining momentum and 2. there are less of them than there were small businesses. The speed will also be determined by how fast the manufacturers grasp what is actually happening and how ready they are to embrace the new trend at the cost of retailers, their current main income source. we have already seen the power of the retailer when HP first tried to go direct, and what a quick back pedal that was, they simply were not ready to take on the new model and were not prepared for the backlash from retailers. This is now no longer rthe case.

There is one more model that we do not see in this country, and that is the very large chains like Wal-Mart. This is probably due, in part, to the consumer laws we have in place that prevent that from happening. Consumer laws will not and cannot prevent direct manufacturer sales or display centre type retailing.

Something to think about and watch out for.

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