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Casual Articles - Marketing & Selling to Solo Professionals, Entrepreneurs & Practitioners: the Why and How to, Part 1
There is a temptation for many entrepreneurs to attempt to duplicate their Business Plan in a Slide Presentation. This may happen understandably, because of an enthusiasm and zeal to share a concept or an idea; there is also a chance to lose your audience. Both the Business Plan and Presentation may work together better if the Presentation is a highlight of the main document.On many occasions I have been asked to join a meeting or review a Business Plan and/or a Powerpoint Presentation and have received a 40-slide Presentation. Any amount of slides over 12 (Guy K
This information, in the initial stages, must be free of charge. Even if you are a management consultant, you have to be prepared to give away something for free. You can write articles to be placed in prominent on or offline publications. You can give presentations and speeches to groups of potential customers, you can send out a free e-zine that is chock full of good ideas for them to use in their
Great sales training differs from what you’re probably doing, in five significant ways. In your heart you knew these things. You've just forgotten!(1) Nobody ever learned a behavioral skill by being talked at. Want to improve that golf, tennis or baseball swing? Don’t expect a speech by a retired Hall of Fame athlete or a video to do it for you.Yet, what do we do? We have classroom training sessions because most of us have warmed school desks for so long that we’re used to that medium. Some chalk-talk is fine, as an overall orientation, but the best method i
Services are harder to market and sell because they are invisible, intangible, and perishable. Unlike physical products, how do you market and sell something that you can’t see, touch, feel, smell, hear or hold in your hands?
Services have to be experienced. How do you experience financial planning? ‘Or insurance coverage? ‘Marketing consulting? You might call this “experiential marketing.” You can only experience the results of such things. With insurance, you experience the feelings of security and/or protection that come from knowing if anything goes wrong, you and your family will be covered for expenses or loss or equipment, home, income or life.
In the case of financial or investment planning, what you are buying is several intangible things up front: the confidence you have in the individual who is doing the planning; the team of folks who back up that specific individual; the expertise inherent in that person and their company; the company’s track record and reputation in this field; the length of time this company has been successfully doing this; and the known amount of available time and attention that financial consultant will be spending on your affairs. It comes down to experience and expertise, standing shoulder to shoulder…on your behalf.
In order to attract new clients/customers, you have to reach them, inform them and then motivate them to work with you. There are two major parts to doing this: first, marketing, followed by selling. Marketing is the name for all the things you do to create the environment in which the client can buy from you and not from someone else, your competitor. You do this by reaching your prospective clients with relevant, valuable information that they can use immediately.
This information, in the initial stages, must be free of charge. Even if you are a management consultant, you have to be prepared to give away something for free. You can write articles to be placed in prominent on or offline publications. You can give presentations and speeches to groups of potential customers, you can send out a free e-zine that is chock full of good ideas for them to use in their o
A salesperson’s responsibility can best be summarized by the following large responsibilities each requiring separate competencies: 1. Prospecting – a salesperson must always be identifying future users of the product or service and determining how they can benefit from the company’s offerings. The phrase that salespeople use is to maintain a steady pipeline of prospects that potentially can blossom into customers. Just like a gardener has to nurture planted seeds to see them bloom into flowers at some future point, so too must a salesperson be vigilant to always
Services have to be experienced. How do you experience financial planning? ‘Or insurance coverage? ‘Marketing consulting? You might call this “experiential marketing.” You can only experience the results of such things. With insurance, you experience the feelings of security and/or protection that come from knowing if anything goes wrong, you and your family will be covered for expenses or loss or equipment, home, income or life.
In the case of financial or investment planning, what you are buying is several intangible things up front: the confidence you have in the individual who is doing the planning; the team of folks who back up that specific individual; the expertise inherent in that person and their company; the company’s track record and reputation in this field; the length of time this company has been successfully doing this; and the known amount of available time and attention that financial consultant will be spending on your affairs. It comes down to experience and expertise, standing shoulder to shoulder…on your behalf.
In order to attract new clients/customers, you have to reach them, inform them and then motivate them to work with you. There are two major parts to doing this: first, marketing, followed by selling. Marketing is the name for all the things you do to create the environment in which the client can buy from you and not from someone else, your competitor. You do this by reaching your prospective clients with relevant, valuable information that they can use immediately.
This information, in the initial stages, must be free of charge. Even if you are a management consultant, you have to be prepared to give away something for free. You can write articles to be placed in prominent on or offline publications. You can give presentations and speeches to groups of potential customers, you can send out a free e-zine that is chock full of good ideas for them to use in their
It used to be that we poor, run-ragged employees could routinely expect ongoing intimidation from our bosses for a long litany of reasons, quaking in our boots those bleak mornings when we had to call in sick (even when legitimate!), quivering at the knees while pleading for a much-deserved, long-overdue raise, wishing for simple praise for a job well done but winding up instead with “constructive” feedback. Even taking time off for a joyous trip to the dentist or (God forbid!) picking our children up at school might provoke visions of the gods raining hellfire down upon
In order to attract new clients/customers, you have to reach them, inform them and then motivate them to work with you. There are two major parts to doing this: first, marketing, followed by selling. Marketing is the name for all the things you do to create the environment in which the client can buy from you and not from someone else, your competitor. You do this by reaching your prospective clients with relevant, valuable information that they can use immediately.
This information, in the initial stages, must be free of charge. Even if you are a management consultant, you have to be prepared to give away something for free. You can write articles to be placed in prominent on or offline publications. You can give presentations and speeches to groups of potential customers, you can send out a free e-zine that is chock full of good ideas for them to use in their
Prospecting is like a game of tennis, it is full of strategy if you know what you are looking out for. A good tennis player knows exactly the next possible moves his opponent will take. So is the same with prospecting. A professional sales person when calling over the phone, Never Assumes. It could be the CEO or his or her spouse or partner. You can never tell.In my early days of Sales I made some massive mistakes in regards to assuming. One of the worst ones that I will admit to (but don't tell anyone) I was working in the UK. I thought a potential female buyer wa
In order to attract new clients/customers, you have to reach them, inform them and then motivate them to work with you. There are two major parts to doing this: first, marketing, followed by selling. Marketing is the name for all the things you do to create the environment in which the client can buy from you and not from someone else, your competitor. You do this by reaching your prospective clients with relevant, valuable information that they can use immediately.
This information, in the initial stages, must be free of charge. Even if you are a management consultant, you have to be prepared to give away something for free. You can write articles to be placed in prominent on or offline publications. You can give presentations and speeches to groups of potential customers, you can send out a free e-zine that is chock full of good ideas for them to use in their
The huge advantages of starting a business dealing in laptops are not always appreciated but consider the following points . . .Laptops/Notebooks are easy to store. It is possible to operate the business from a single room. In fact we know a guy who stores a number of them under his bed. He says he can store up to twenty laptops with hardly any loss of room space.Laptops/Notebooks are always available from liquidation merchants and other specialist trade sources at prices which allow good reseller profit margins. It is a cash-doubler business for those we kn
This information, in the initial stages, must be free of charge. Even if you are a management consultant, you have to be prepared to give away something for free. You can write articles to be placed in prominent on or offline publications. You can give presentations and speeches to groups of potential customers, you can send out a free e-zine that is chock full of good ideas for them to use in their own businesses. The list is endless.
Essentially you must constantly build up your own credibility in the mind of your target group, while at the same time, building a bridge between them and you, so when the time arrives – and it will arrive sooner than later -- they “know” to reach out to you for the help they need. You have demonstrated that you have the experience and expertise they need. Or if you don’t have it personally, you are with a firm who can back you up with dozens of others who possess such knowledge and/or experience. Moreover, you must convince that potential client that you are prepared to work very hard to solve his or her problem, provide them with the coverage or security they need, or to show them how to earn the kinds of return on investment they seek. Once you market to them, you have to “sell” them on the idea that you and your firm are the ones who can do this for them.
By now, when that prospective client is reaching out to you (he is initiating the contact with you, you don't necessarily have to contact him or her), there will be few objections raised as to why you should be the one to perform the necessary services for that client. By now, s/he has a problem or an opportunity that they can’t handle by themselves. They respect you and your “know-how” or expertise, or field of experts standing behind you. They expect that you will be able to help them with that situation. It is up to you now to step in and take charge of the situation.
This is when the “selling” side of things has to take over. In the beginning, you did all the things required (essentially, this is “marketing”) that you needed to reach, inform and motivate the potential customer. Then, when that customer indicates that s/he needs help and wonders if you can help her/him with this…you are ready, willing and able to do so. Now you have to close the deal
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