What I’m talking about here is forecasts that are accurate.

Accurate enough to base key decisions on, such as whether to order more materials now, in order to be able to meet potential future orders within your stated delivery or lead times.

Accurate enough to be able to decide if you are going to avoid some short-term cash flow issues, or if you need some short term injection of cash – really critical in the smaller business.

Accurate enough to be able to decide when to let employees – or yourself – have time off for vacation.

Many production and operational processes are predictable enough – you, as the business owner or manager, have sufficient control over what’s going on, under normal circumstances.

But what about the sales operation? I mean, customers are in control, ultimately. You can’t force somebody to buy something – not legally or ethically (these 2 aren’t always the same thing!).

Well, you can reduce the degree of uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity that often reduces the accuracy of forecasts, by employing a solid, proven process-based approach to every aspect of your sales operation, not just to what happens once you’ve closed the order…

It won’t guarantee you sales success, but it will increase your chances of sales success overall. You’ll still lose some. But you should win more – partly because you’re better at selecting opportunities with a better chance of success for you, and partly because you’re better at ‘working’ those opportunities to a successful conclusion. You’ll also more likely be winning business at higher rates of margin or profit. And none of this needs you to have additional sales resources – such as sales people – or having to work extra hours – quite the opposite, potentially.

In future posts I’ll be exploring what these processes look like and how you can implement them.

For the moment, let me leave you with a couple of useful hints…!

1. Identifying the key players in a purchase decision, and understanding their position – how they see the need (or not) for the purchase in the first place, and what business results and personal wins they are looking for…
2. Connecting your products, services and/or solutions, in the minds of each key player (especially the very influential ones in this sale), to their individual required business results and personal wins.
3. Being very aware of what gaps you have in your knowledge (especially relating to points 1 & 2 above), what assumptions you’ve made, and taking steps, by way of an explicit strategy and plan, to reduce the negative impacts of these gaps and other knowledge, and maximise the positive impacts…

That’s a hint at some of the ‘what’ that is to come in future posts. The ‘how’ also comes later!

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Ben Arment (see his blog here) poses an interesting perspective: you can’t take a mediocre idea and make it viral, no matter how much marketing ‘savvy’ you have. Ben suggests that instead of focusing on the mission and ideology of what you are offering, just for a moment focus on this: is the idea of your offering a good idea or a bad idea for the community that is your target market? Could it be that you are answering questions nobody is asking?

Now, I don’t know about you, but this strikes a real chord with me.

I’m not suggesting for one minute that at the first sign of things not happening (if that makes any sense!) you junk your ideas and decide you are anwering the wrong questions – but at least consider the possibility sooner than you might have in the past…

So my call to action is simple: get clear, if you aren’t already, about the questions your community or target market are asking. What could you do to answer these questions in a more useful and accessible way for your community?

And just as I sign off, this last question emerges from the fog: are you even clear enough about who your community or target market is? (I think my next blog will be about identifying your target market!)

To your success!

Cheers

Martin

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There are just 5 types of email that you will ever send in a marketing campaign:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Conversion
• Product Usage
• Loyalty

You choose which type of email to send once you have decided why you are sending a customer/prospect an email.

Awareness – this is mostly about creating brand awareness – where either you, your company name or a product/service is the brand in question. You simply want the market to know you exist. Do not expect to close a sale from this kind of email – the intent will be to have the reader engage further with you, your company or the target product/service – for example requesting further information. You may want to consider 3-7 emails at this level to make sure enough awareness has built.

Consideration – this kind of email contains some element of education that moves the reader to taking action to try or buy what you are offering. You’ll be laying some groundwork here, for example, reminding the reader about some particular problem or dream they’re grappling at the moment, and having the reader associate this with you, your company and/or your target product/service. You’ll begin the process of building your credibility in the mind of the reader.

Conversion – the most common form of marketing email a person receives – these are your standard ‘buy it now’ and ‘sign up today’ emails we’re all familiar with. These work well when you send them at the right time – when the reader is in the right mood to buy or sign up. Send them at any other time and they are worse than useless – they tarnish your image… Sound familiar…? Send them when you effectively get a ‘buy’ signal from the reader. Buy signals will vary hugely from situation to situation, and this is where some kind of autoresponder can help, enabling the reader to ‘pull’ the next piece of the sequence in…

Product Usage – After the sale has been made many marketers get lazy, stop working or pass the responsibility on elsewhere – avoid this trap! A great example is with amazon – you buy a book for example (I buy lots of books – you can never spend enough on your education…) – immediately you get a confirmation email that also suggests other similar titles that people like you have bought in the past (students of the influence guru Robert Cialdini will recognise this – if you’re not a student of Cialdini, drop me a line and I’ll send you an overview) About a week later/after the delivery you get a follow up, asking you to rate the experience, and more titles are suggested… The point is, after they buy, they will use, and they will talk about it, whether you like it or not. They’ll likely do this on-line. You don’t have control over this conversation, but you can influence it… that’s the essence of social media marketing right there (and more on that in another article…)

Loyalty – simply put, these emails encourage the customer to use what they’ve just bought from you and to share their feedback of it with others, and to maintain and build the relationship you have with them through to their next purchase or for the life of the relationships – keep them saying nice things about you, your company and/or the product/service they just bought.

Here’s the original content bit…

When I first came across this it was a revelation – simple yet powerful. Even before I learnt more about the specific techniques to use for each of the 5 different types, just knowing there were 5 different types and what they were was enough for me to change my approach, and so begin to experience some real success. I know this can be the same for you too!

It strikes me that this simple framework can and should help you be more focused with article marketing, marketing by way of how you engage with people on forums for example, and on blogs. The sky is the limit!

In light of what you’ve just read, think about your own marketing campaign, be it by autoresponder, direct & mass emailings and even ezine issues. Which of the 5 types of email message could you do better with? Which of the 5 are you not doing, but should be?

As you reflect on your answers to these questions, begin to sketch out your email marketing campaign, let the ideas flow out on to paper.

My call to action is simple: create your new email marketing campaign action plan, and implement it. Now!

Let me know how you get on!

Cheers

Martin

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Get it direct from him at http://www.joelcomm.com/free_twitter_report.html

Enjoy!

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Go visit http://www.allgraphicdesign.com/graphicsblog/2007/11/28/120-self-promotion-ideas-for-graphic-designers-freelancers-free-or-almost-free/

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Why?

Well, at the end of every downline has to be a functioning and active retail seller, somebody selling to end users. For many MLM operations this translates to retail selling in the local region – selling away from the local region would be in my book at least, Internet Marketing…

This is necessary to generate the sales from which we get our commissions – that income we get whether we’re asleep or awake…

Anyways, there’s a great little posting here at http://www.allfreelance.com/freelancing_blog/2008/01/24/60-unique-ideas-for-marketing-your-business-offline-locally/ which you’ll find interesting & useful to get you pointed in the right direction.

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It will give you useful tools for more easily taking decisions that lead to success.

The podcast/slideshow is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjn2Vi6PK5E

Enjoy

Martin

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