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We all know the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. The Hare
ran helter skelter quickly running out of energy and falling
short of the finish line. However, the Tortoise plodded along at
a steady rate until finally he won the race. What no one speaks
of in this analogy is momentum. While the Tortoise may have had
slow momentum, it was momentum that kept him on his course until
the finish line. This is the steady flow of activity that builds
a strong foundation toward business sales.
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Unfortunately, often
times, we tend to fall into the category of the Hare. We only
pick up the fine techniques of salesmanship and marketing once
we become aware that sales have dropped. So we run helter
skelter to bring in new business, with no real plan in mind. The
difference is that one technique builds a steady, even flow of
sales through planning and, therefore, momentum, while the other
continually takes us back to the starting line to begin again.
It's not hard to see which will work better over time.
Every
single business participates in the exercise of salesmanship.
Some participate more subtly than others do, but all participate
in the exercise. The question now is; do you simply want to
survive in your business or do you want to thrive in your
business? Marketing is like exercise, it is an activity. An
activity that will make the difference between just surviving
and really thriving toward your dreams. If you exercise
salesmanship daily it will reward you, if you do it sporadically
it will not be as generous with you. So let's discuss creating a
plan to build momentum.
The Warm Up: Planning You may understand all the vital
ingredients to a dynamic marketing program but until you plan
your activities it will be an activity of second thoughts at
best. To really become successful you must integrate a sales
program into your daily, weekly, and monthly agenda. To do that
you must know what you are going to be doing before each day
arrives. In other words have a plan of attack for each arena in
salesmanship.
1. Target Marketing:
Target marketing includes the research
necessary to know and understand who is part of your buying
audience and how to reach them. Once that is achieved prepare a
budget and a plan for placing ads strategically both online and
off.
2. Confidence Marketing:
Once you have pulled in interested
parties from your target advertising you must gain their
confidence. In other words you must convince them that you are
the solution to their needs above anyone else. Building
confidence means portraying past experience through the use of
testimonials. Those little tiny ads your customers award you
with when you have done an excellent job. Don't wait for past
clients to give one to you, as most won't even think of it. Ask
for a testimonial and then use it to build confidence in your
upcoming clients. These little jewels close more sales than any
other technique. Confidence Marketing can also be achieved by
sharing your expertise with the use of the written word. Writing
educational articles for online and offline publications builds
your reputation as a leader in your field. After all, if the
publication editor thinks you're worth putting into print, the
audience will in turn think your worth listening to!
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3.
Permission Marketing:
We have arrived in a new era of
salesmanship. This era includes permission marketing. Some hard
core entrepreneurs are still driven by the impression that only
the direct, not invited, sale will work and that certainly
no-one will actually enlist to actually "get sold".
But as short as Internet commerce history is, it is proving them
dead wrong. Consumers all understand that there are indeed
products and services they will be interested in learning about
and purchasing and will invite you to send such information to
them. However, in order to do this there must be a platform for
doing so and this platform is generally the website newsletter.
A website newsletter invites the visitor to do something free on
entering the site, …subscribe! Once they have, you will have
ongoing permission to market you product or service to that
visitor. Statistics show us that visitors must return upwards of
7 times before they will begin making a purchase and permission
marketing is the means for making that happen.
4. Relationship Marketing:
Once all of the above have taken
place visitors soon turn into viable prospects. These viable
prospects will begin inquiring about your products and services
which in turn requires you to answer emails queries or return
phone calls to close the actual sale. Your presentation should
be concise, confident, and enthusiastic, and above all invite
the prospect to buy. This is the area when you begin to build a
one on one relationship with your prospect. Although even the
newsletter, on publication, will begin the relationship process
once you have reached the correspondence stage you are now one
on one with your prospect and they have invited YOU. That's the
very best place to be. So as with any relationship, treat them
well, and they will do the same. The Exercise: Action Once you
understand the dynamics of the basic online selling strategies
you can begin to make a plan that includes each of the four
platforms. Practiced consistently, you will begin to see your
goals and visions realized. Once you have maintained the
exercise for even a few months you will notice a momentum that
gains more progression with less effort. However you must
maintain the exercise of action or go back to the beginning and
start over.
The time to start is now; the time to stop is never.
About the Author:
Mike Radice is the owner of the powerful
Sellution.com.
Sellution is the Sales Knowledge Manager, a CD-ROM based
Interactive, Multimedia system for sales training and education,
sales process engineering and sales opportunity management. To
learn more visit http://www.sellution.com
today!
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